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That brings some memories.
When the referendum for Lithuania's joining of EU started, the attendance was abysmal.
It picked up when a supermarket chain offered to exchange the "I voted" sticker for a bottle of beer, a chocolate bar or a small bag of laundry powder.
If there's one thing I learned from observing Brexit first hand as an EU immigrant in Britain, is that the vast majority of people don't really care about the EU unless they are or see a way to directly benefit from it (as I benefited from Freedom Of Movement) and even when they do care they don't understand how most of the mechanisms which are the point of the EU affect their lives (hence Brexiters only saw immigration and not how an island with no natural resources and a Service-centric Economy can't just default to WTO rules for exporting Services because WTO Treaties don't cover those, whilst even Remainers couldn't see the whole "together we're stronger" side and kept claiming that Britain could "better change the EU from the inside", which is not a teamplayer position).
So EU membership ends up being sold to the public on pretty generic promises of improvement of their own lives and on single sides the EU's many-sided nature, a message which is far easier to distort and even use in reverse by anti-EU actors.
Woohoo!
So not only does putin get a big fat L, but the EU continues to grow! I believe from the EU and NATO partnerships, we will someday see 1 global, unifying government that will formalize conflict resolution, leading to a lasting and sustained peace on Earth. And what does global peace mean? It means a massive increase in standard of living for all, as well as expansion into SPACE! When we can unify as one people, only then can we truly embark on the journey Star Trek promised us.
I just wonder what our flag will look like.
But staying in the present, way to go Moldova. As a terrified American, it does me good to see favorable election results.
Two things:
That was kinda the dream after WWII, no?
Exploring space should be a uniting purpose of humanity, but colonizing space, as humans live now, is just wildly, hilariously impractical. It would be orders of magnitude cheaper and easier to live at the bottom of the ocean, or under the antarctic ice sheet. And this is speaking as someone really into exotic rocketry and transcendental sci-fi.
I'd recommend reading through Project Rho, if you're interested: https://projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/
As well as "farther future" but grounded Sci-Fi like Orion's Arm, where humanity doesn't really resemble its current form. And play KSP! The more you read and see, the more you realize "wow, sending humans through space is hard, and living there kinda doesn't make sense right now."
Being hard is the point. (That's what she said).
In making that attempt, we have to solve a lot of problems. How do we make a self-sustaining ecosystems where humans can live indefinitely? Can humans live that long in reduced gravity without issues? Can children be raised to healthy adulthood in reduced gravity? Is human pregnancy even possible there (probably is, but we don't know that for sure)? Are there technologies or genetic engineering that we could use to solve the issues we encounter?
How do we mine asteroids? How do we manufacture things in zero gravity? How do we build the Internet to handle latency measured in minutes or hours or days?
These are all hard problems, but if they were easy, then they wouldn't be interesting.
And I'd say the same for ocean colonies. That's hard, too. Not quite as hard, but hard.
Colonization doesn't make sense in light of what's likely to come first. Artifical intelligence, mind uploading, extensive genetic engineering, programmable nanotech for fabrication, take your pick... All these are infinitely more reachable and cheaper than dedicating tons of resources to sustaining a squishy, fragile human bodies in space while the vast majority are still stuck on Earth due to economic constraints.
It's just not economical until humans are so different that it doesn't really resemble are Star Trek-ish visions of humans on space boats (eg they're flying around in computers, AI are sent ahead to construct habitation, bodies are genetically engineered for survival in space, that sort of thing).
Again, I am not talking about research or the glory of stepping foot somewhere, but I just don't see the point of trying to emulate a traditional human living in an environment where it's so impractical.
I mean, I still think that having an operational moon-based spaceport is something we could see in our lifetime.
And as with all things concerning global affairs, it takes time and consistent pressure to overcome the lizard-brain us-vs-them mindsets that is inherent to our human political sphere. We've already grown to the point that we could take care of everyone on the planet, shuffling off the shackles of a scarcity-based economy which so severely hindered global human advancement in the past. I can only imagine what the combined efforts of the American, European, and Chinese economies/governments could accomplish if they put aside their differences, and embraced a true lasting partnership.
Also the website you gave is so incredibly interesting, I need to look at it more before I can appropriately sing its praises
I still think that having an operational moon-based spaceport
Depends what it's used for, but yeah. But I think the human habitation would be extremely minimal, and it would be more of a utilitarian "midpoint" for deep-space missions and a research site rather than a place of extensive human habitation.
Also read: https://www.orionsarm.com/xcms.php?r=oaeg-front
It's a fictional universe in a wiki format (with some short stories), but based on hard science, and (IMO) a much more realistic idealized depiction of what future humanity could look like.
Hopefully our election across the pond will go against the fascists as well. 🤞
Most of my problems aren't caused by conflict between my nation and other nations. One world government is just another government, it can be a capitalist hellscape just like mine is today.
I keep seeing this repeated, but it's simply not true. Capitalism isn't the problem, Oligarchy is. This article I linked mathematically proves that it doesn't matter what form of governance your society uses, it inevitably falls into an oligarchy without strong recurring investments into social welfare.
So, keep voting for the people that want to expand social security, expand job protections, expand medicare/healthcare, increase the minimum wage, while decreasing cost of living, education, and housing (progressive democrats, basically).
If we can get Kamala in office, with a supermajority in the house/senate, we could finally pass some much needed shit, and stave off the inevitable turn to fascism that an oligarchal society seems to induce. It would have been better if we just elected Bernie Sanders, but can't stall progress for perfection!
That's literally saying that capitalist economies concentrate wealth and lead to oligarchy. It's not talking about "any kind of government" and in fact it's always talking about economies: specifically free market economies only. You can combat those forces, but they're the forces of capitalism, and capitalism is the problem.
You show a lack of knowledge and imagination. This is capitalist realism incarnate. Yes, every kind of capitalist economy moves towards oligarchy, good point?
Hell yes. Fuck you Russia, fuck you putin, fuck you orcs. We get another W
I read orcas for a second and I was like fuckin free Willy is a bad guy?
Moscow stands accused of launching a massive campaign of vote buying, funneling cash through its proxies into the accounts of ordinary voters, as well as using social media to sow fears about the prospect of EU membership leading to a direct conflict with Russia.
Watching Putin fail never gets old.
the prospect of EU membership leading to a direct conflict with Russia.
Classic abusive relationship.
"Look what you're going to make me do!"
This confirms that Russia wants to annex Moldova
The funny thing is that Putin thinks he's following the same playbook of "color revolutions", a conspiracy theory popular among Marxists, and showing practically why it doesn't work. But he keep trying because he believes it's actually being used against him. So he keep failing hilariously like that again and again.
If only he kept failing - see brexit.
Best way to show that he did fail in the end is to kick out every politician opposed to rejoining the EU and rejoining. Before UK falls any lower.
A conspiracy theory popular amongst delusional Marxists-Leninists, and that's an important difference.
Still it's funny to see these (often) so called anti colonial thinkers struggle with the idea of self determination of other nations. Nothing can happen without American involvement, obvs.
American diabolism - just American exceptionalism in a mirror.
Imagine if this went to their supreme Court and it was like "actually no vote wins"
Thats how things work in American elections at least
get fucked Putty-boo.
That's a really tiny margin, I wonder what the arguments against were.
Probably recycled the Brexit ones.
I saw the whole Brexit thing first hand and I also saw how EU Membership was sold in my home country of Portugal which was way poorer, and the arguments were anchored on completelly different things.
The whole argumentation in Britain was anchored on quite massive Delusions of Grandeur (i.e. "Britains and Britons are better than the rest") amongst most of the population (even Remainers used the argument that "we can better change the EU from the inside", a viewpoint anchored on the idea that Britons knew better that everybody else) whilst in Portugal it was almost the opposite since one of the attractions of EU Membership was bringing better laws to Portugal from Europe (back in the 80s there was this whole idea that everything from richer nations abroad was better, which in this specific subject turned out to be mainly true).
Also on the Economic side of the argumentation, in Britain which is a much wealthier country the argument that "we lose money because of the EU" (which, by the way, was total bollocks) was easy to believe, whilst in Portugal it would be a crazy hard sell since the country is much poorer and the only natural resource it has is the sun, which is hardly something that could be claimed that the EU wanted to steal ;)
Then there's also the whole "big" (relative to the rest) country and "small" country side of the argumentation - being part of a big group is a massive protection for small countries in a World were medium side and bigger countries will invariably bully smaller ones, not always in peaceful ways (just look at what Russia, China and the US do, the latter sometimes via proxys as is doing at the moment via Israel).
So I strongly suspect that in Moldova the arguments were similar to those in Portugal and not at all like those in Britain.
Britain which is a much wealthier country
Eh. They joined back in the days with a completely shot economy. WWII, then the loss of the colonies, all that coal+steel industry failing on the world market and getting further gutted by Thatcher, etc. Then they joined, and their economic situation improved. Then they left, and it has reverted to its shot state.
What Portugal has less off is absurdly rich people, but don't think for a second that the median Portuguese is worse off than the median Brit: London is a financial hub surrounded by a third-world country and it wasn't really that different when they were still in the EU: It was EU structural funds which kept the British periphery somewhat afloat.
Thinking of it, that was probably the reason the nobs wanted to leave: Looking at the balance sheets they didn't see "oh we're paying in, and we're getting stuff out", they saw "oh, we're paying in, and the plebs are getting stuff out". Can't have that.
I don't think Britain ever got out of being poor, and that at least had something to do with Brexit happening. Sure, there's London with it's finance people doing things that make money without actually needing to do any work, and other big cities do OK, but the rest of us scrape by. Former mining towns, former manufacturing towns... None of these places came back to life. They're not anything now. Just former something towns. And by and large, they voted for Brexit to happen. It wasn't a particularly sensible decision, but there you are. More of a protest vote that got out of hand.
That said, I think Portugal is still poorer by a long way. I lost count of the number of times I clicked Brazil while playing Geoguessr and it turned out it was Porto or something. It's an East Europe country that happens to be in the west.
The main argument Putin's side had was "we will pay you to vote for us."
Thankfully, it didn't work.
Putin will be sad
Fuck yes! Putin failures are some of the best failures!
Mhm. For some votes I'd rather see a 65-75% requirement. Not every vote should be 50%, especially on a scale like this.
That was my initial thought aswell, but after thinking about it I changed my opinion to preferring the simple majority.
Imo one of the deciding factors is how you think about it. Do you see it as a choice between two conscious actions (acceptance or active rejection), or is only the "yes" vote an active choice and "no" something of a "natural" state?
Also if you set hurdles for change to high, then you are potentially hindering progress and systematically favoring conservatism. Which isn't always bad, but the status quo and how things were done in the past aren't always sustainable and worth the advantage.
Such significant commitments on a national level with international treaties should I think be carried by more than a simple majority. Its not a simple choice and without decent will behind it there is every chance it doesn't last or causes enormous strife within the populace. But the vote is advisory and fundamentally will probably be based on the majority regardless so its now up to government to decide if its enough to move forward.
Why would you like to see a supermajority in order to join an economic union?
See Brexit. That was to leave but same principle.
Given how much noise exit parties, or generally anti EU sentiments can cause, I'd also prefer a higher bar. Be welcomed if you join, but please be sure about it.
The EU isn't just economic.
And you can literally say only half the people want it, which doesn't make sense for such big decisions. "Most" people should want it, but I wouldn't call this "most people" in the practical sense.
Canada has a law to this effect called the Clarity Act to make sure that Quebec never votes for independence by a margin like this.
If it was genuine (no interference) then I can see how having nearly half the folks opposed to joining could cause some, erm, friction in the union.
But I'm willing to make an exception in this case - when Russian disinformation gets involved, it makes sense to move the bar in the opposite direction to counter them!
Moldova is a major tax haven, right? Is this going to start changing that?