Hacker News Reader

Comment by RestlessMind | Hacker News Reader

> The EU is number one in quality of life and that’s all that matters to me

Probably it is time for you to learn the plight of fellow Europeans then. The society is stewing for quite some time now, for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_vests_protests

The symbol has become "a unifying thread and call to arms" as yellow vests are common and inexpensive, easy to wear over any clothing, are associated with working-class industries, highly noticeable, and widely understood as a distress signal.

Rise of far right parties across Italy, Germany, Hungary, Poland, France and many other countries is another clear signal that EU's quality of life may not be great for everyone there.

View on HN

Pole here, what "far right" parties are you referring to? If it's PiS then they were ousted in the elections last year with a 30-year record breaking voter turnout of 75%.

As for the other party that fits this description they're their own worst enemy, as they're an amalgamation of groups which don't really have common interests aside from a few talking points.

If you believe that PiS doesn't have a strong base to count on, you're naive.

All it takes is another term of pain, and they'll be back.

Case in point, America. A former president who by all counts should have lost the election a year ago, was literally begging on Truth Social for donations, facing numerous criminal trials and convictions, just retook the hot seat.

> If you believe that PiS doesn't have a strong base to count on, you're naive.

I've met their voter base. The young, educated, city-dwelling part.

Of course they'll be back, but like every political movement based on cult of personality, they have no coherent plan what to do should Kaczyński die/retire, aside from infighting. Arguably the vultures started circling already. The MAGA party will face the same predicament once their leader inevitably leaves the stage.

My take is that since both Kaczyński and Trump haven't appointed a successor, their political projects will die with them. Their opponents need only to survive until that happens.

> their political projects will die with them

I so wish that you are right. I am afraid you are not though. Trump is a symptom of the growing discontent in the society. If not Trump, it would be Bernie or someone else. But the tinderbox is there. Someone just needs to take a match to that.

I mean, I know that right now every party not endorsed by liberal mainstream media is "far something", but calling PiS "far right" is an obvious hint that any further discussion on politics is pointless.

Yep. As a simple exercise, visit e.g. the Ireland subreddit and see how many young people there are complaining about the cost of living and are talking about emigrating.

Being number one doesn't say it's good for everyone here. It says more about how bad it is in the rest of the world.

Also, here in The Netherlands the yellow vests were mostly conspiracy theorists who would pull something to protest against out of thin air. That movement died down pretty quickly.

Protests here are almost always against (perceived) government overreach. In most countries even being able to protest is considered a luxury. That's why you don't see that many in the US.

The idea that conspiracies could thrive under economic stress doesn't even occur..

Well being loopy isn't too good for economic success so that's a factor? Though for sure I've met some incredibly loopy people that had some great dice roll streaks.

But there are a lot of other factors in the problem and making it an economic issue really obscures some of the more important factors.

Intellectual laziness, idle brains, idle hands, toxic memes and bad actors making bad use of them.

schizophrenia has been proven to be stress triggered and im just not interested to listen to humanity idealization by engineers any more, with the endless utopias and perfect characters, and the blame on everyone not fitting into that template under duress. What good is a construction plan for a machine with all parts carved from diamond? If you cant integrate a real humanity in your perception , your plans and interests, why even waste public bandwidth on your ideas and the terrors they will become ?

I would accept the point that stress triggers schizophrenic behaviors.

When we look at magical thinking as one of those light schizotypical behaviors large portions of the population exhibit these symptoms.

They drink from the cup of nonsense to excess.

There should always be room for drinking from the cup of nonsense but too much and its difficult to be useful to yourself and your family.

Actually, I think our quality of life is going downhill. Things are very expensive and the taxes are still high. I think that the reasons the far right is winning everywhere is because people feel they have lost something. I agree. We have. We bought into the neoliberale thought mill and simultaneously lost our belief in social democratic welfare state. We are in short, becoming more like the states. But without the things that make the states so great. The states can basically print money and then other countries will begrudgingly buy dollars to keep it from inflating top much. So its basically global nation state socialism.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com