Re: Note - ISP Screwed Up - Can WRITE But Not SEE

On 25/01/2025 10:32, D wrote:

Apart from a few years in the UK, europe was never about the free world. Europe has always been about socialism, high taxes, and authoritarianism. I suspect that this is due to its history with kings n' stuff.
 

You should wiki read 'the iron law of Oligarchy'
There are certain political arrangements that are stable, or not, depending on the nature of the country.
E.g, Russia is stable with an Mafia style oligarchy because the riches belong to whoever can hold ownership of the oilfields.
The UK was stable with a democracy because of the massive amount of wealth tied up in the 'bourgeoisie'  - small companies that made things, bug companies that traded things and so on. Ownership of land per se ceased to mean wealth and power around 1800. The nivels of Jame Austen coincidentally document that with the 'upper classes' consisting of landowners with ivome from tenant framers, but alos people running sugar plantations in the West Indies, and of course Naval captains whose wealth came from the legalised piracy that was war at sea then.
Later on the mill owners in the North became immensely rich as well. Wealth is political power, which is why the Socialists want to remove it from you.
The greatest political power we still have is defined by how we use our credit cards. Cf Elon Musk or Bill Gates

The small pockets of liberty are, some parts of eastern europe (fiscal liberty), switzerland, monaco, andorra, the channel islands, liechtenstein. I think that's about it. Oh, if you dive below the first level of legal paragraphs you could add cyprus and malta to the list as well.

I think it is all changing. The old 19th century empire building mentality of the EU and its minions, and Russia, is not supported by rather too many people who are rather too well informed via the internet.
I think a more sane arrangement will be NATO style voluntary associations of smaller entities, into trade agreements, defence agreements, but not agreements that pass their sovereignty to a centralised anti-democratic bureaucracy.
--
“It is not the truth of Marxism that explains the willingness of intellectuals to believe it, but the power that it confers on intellectuals, in their attempts to control the world. And since...it is futile to reason someone out of a thing that he was not reasoned into, we can conclude that Marxism owes its remarkable power to survive every criticism to the fact that it is not a truth-directed but a power-directed system of thought.”
Sir Roger Scruton