I’m curious, doesn’t WhatsApp require a phone number to be attached to an account? As in, I thought activating it doesn’t work on devices without a SIM card?

It’s a first step. One thing this will (hopefully) provide is more accurate data on exactly how much wealth is being hoarded. The current data is being assumed to be underestimating the actual numbers

That headline had me confused a bit before I realised it’s about stuff originating from Kazakhstan

Yeah I remember reading about it. This is probably a step in the right direction without having looked at all the details

Stopping the wealth accumulation at the top through taxes on property above a threshold.

And, supplementary:

Stopping tax evasion by implementing a global tax cooperative so nations can stop competing in a downward race on tax rates

Dingos would hunt at packice holes if they had access to them?

Honestly I hate clouds of strawberry hitting me even more than regular cigarette smoke

I just wanted to say that the differences between Söder and Merz arent that big compared to other people that once were in the talks

The more interesting canidates would have been Günther or Wüst, both of them are currently ruling their states together with the green party and seem happy about what they were able to achieve there. Söder and Merz only differ a bit on how much they love bavaria.

I think protesting against the vote of the average Joe in a way that affects the average Joe is quite valid. The politicians got voted for their policies, they wouldn’t be doing their jobs if they just shifted their whole position because of a protests that are expressing quite old ideas. The average Joe has to stand up and vote for people that actually want the change we need.

The pressure regarding queer rights was successful because it became a less and less favourable position to be against those same rights in the public view. Being conservative regarding fighting the climate change is still a pretty favourable position so not enough pressure can be built by protests against politicians alone.

And, one aspect that is overlooked in the discussion, at least in my opinion: People are allowed to be angry at the state of the world and the popular opinions, and express that anger publicly and in the face of the general public. This is a valid thing to do.

Maybe I missed it but it seems the average Joe voted for people that are responsible for what’s going on right now instead of trying to change direction drastically right?

There’s a difference between wanting to feel pleasure at the result of killing someone and wanting to feel pleasure over the result of killing them?

I’m not sure what the difference between those two options is. But those aren’t the two options I was talking about. There are people that enjoy the process of killing things. There are people that like to eat dead animals but do not enjoy the process of killing the animal. Those are two different things in my mind.

There is a difference between wanting food you think is delicious and killing something for that reason and taking pleasure in the process of killing something. In one scenario the killing is a necessary evil in the other it’s the whole point of the process.

Aside from that the fact that so many people do pay “hitmen” should tell you that they do not enjoy the killing part, because otherwise they’d do it themselves.

Uhm, what 96% of the population actually kills stuff themselves?

Yeah that’s true. But the market demands it nonetheless and thus liberals are happy to use public funds to further corporate goals, even if it means that there is also some egalitarian aspect to it.

Yep that’s why the left is losing voters. This is, somewhat funnily, a result of them being partly successful. One of their main programs they actually achieved back then was to make education more accessible to the lower classes. While the education systems still have a lot of flaws, they are more egalitarian than they used to be. Percentages of people with higher education have exploded. (This is of course also driven by market demand and that’s why the liberals supported these policies to an extent making them possible). With this they split their former voting group into academics and non-academics. But they source a lot more party-personelle from the academic portion which leads to a feedback-loop that favours the academics. Since academics tend to have higher incomes and sometimes accumulate a little wealth they’d like to keep, the left depending on these voters looks a lot like the parties that always wanted to protect higher incomes and wealth.

The ones that were left behind by that development are the ones that got turned away from the left.

Actually Piketty writes about this in his book “capital and ideology”. The left has been slowly losing support in the lower education classes which traditionally voted left, this has apparently been going on since the 1960s/70s. They either went to conservatives or stopped voting. Now that there is a new party that claims to actually listen to their concerns (even if they won’t actually solve any of these concerns) causes them to flock to that party. They have been disappointed by everyone in the political system and the populists are using this to their advantage.

Nazis don’t just become the way they are. There are reasons people flock to the far right. Not naming these reasons and being content with “Nazis will be Nazis” isn’t productive.

Politics that consistently benefit the upper classes, while always framing the necessary helps for the weakest as stealing from the lower classes will get you there.

This didn’t just happen, we did this to ourselves.

The long term strategy is to destabilise the CDU by forcing them into unfavorable coalitions. Which they have probably achieved this time. If the CDU looks bad enough in 5 years the AfD might get enough votes so that no government can be built without them

Sometimes though a judge has decided that it is factually correct to call the leader of a party a fascist because he is one