ossobuco
Joined 2 years ago
Joined 2 years ago
I like pretty much every choice that has been taken when designing the language, except maybe the lack of namespaces, which can be solved anyway with prefixes.
The lack of OOP features is the best part for me, it's rewiring my brain in a good way and I can now also reason much better about RDBMS schemas. Data oriented design is the most helpful approach I've stumbled upon in my career.
Hard to tell, to be honest. Maybe the solution is a presidential republic with a federal government like the USA. Maybe it's to give more control to the EU parlament.
IMO the EU has expanded too much for its weak government model, and has now too many conflicting interests within it. It can't work without a strong central government, and since we can't find an agreement between all members on what that government should look like, we might as well split into multiple smaller unions where members interests converge.
> I even consider somehow that is a mistake to even vote for those if the discussion is not about the EU and the direction we want the EU to go but about how can we protect their own country where country = ANY of the members.
I agree, that's why it doesn't make sense to go through national elections to pick a commissioner, that will also skew the vote in nationalist terms. We have the EU elections to take decisions about the EU, but it turns out the EU parlament is pretty much powerless.
People LOVE to take cold showers while feeling morally superior to the evil Russians.
The point is that we have 2 levels of indirection before we get to the commissioners: national elections in EU usually determine the composition of the parlament, then parlament makes a government (first level). The head of government then appoints a commissioner (second level).
The decision citizens take at national elections is determined by a variety of factors, first of all at the national level.
Given this context, to claim that citizens have any influence on who's part of the EU commission is delusional. If they did, we certainly wouldn't have Von Der Leyen in power, since she enjoys a measly ~34% approval among EU citizens.
Notice how those who urge citizens to sacrifice for a higher cause never have to sacrifice anything themselves.
You realize that cannot work when both the council and the commissioner play on the same political agenda? For the council to hold the commissioner accountable it would mean to admit their own guilt. There is no incentive for them to do this, so there is no mechanism for accountability at all.
One example? VDL privately conducting EU business with Pfizer for a vaccine purchase on her phone (illicit) and refusing to provide the text messages to the EU's general court. All while her commission is supposedly based on defending standards of transparency, efficiency and so on.
What about her countless delusions about Russia's economy being about to collapse while all she accomplished was to send EU in a recession?
Or her blindly pursuing a policy of dependence on the USA and hostility towards China, only for the US to dump us as soon as they got a new president?
Please tell me where's the accountability in all of this.
Or why now, given her track record made up entirely of failures, we should trust her to guide the EU into a new very delicate historical phase.
They won the war, the goal was clearly defeating the axis. Did you have a shower today or did you achieve a just and long lasting personal hygiene through water?
You should at least be brave enough to say it like it is: you want to win the war.
The only problem is that this time the enemy has enough nuclear weapons to trigger a new ice age, so you resort to Newspeak.
> Also, obviously I hope that this time around it’s not too late to prevent facists from burning Europe to the ground before we can defeat them.
For how I see it we got them already in the commission and doing all they can to burn the EU to the ground.
We already have an umbrella and it costs 3 times as much as Russia's umbrella, while being much less effective. So before burning another €800 billions Iwish we'd put some effort in finding ways to make our current $450 billions of yearly expense work.
Seriously, if we need 10x Russia's budget to keep up with them we've already lost.
On the other hand, if the ultimate goal isn't to make Europe safer, but just to enrich a bunch of weapon manufacturers, then I'd say this plan works perfectly.
Why is VDL ruling the commission if her previous performance was terrible and she isn't viewed favorably by the majority of Europeans?
Why was she appointed by MPEs with secret ballot?
Given the current situation, do you really believe the democratic system in place for the EU provides efficient mechanisms for holding elected officials accountable for their actions?
I'd honestly expect better from the supposed "cradle of democracy".