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I wonder which nations are truly "antifragile" to similar takeovers? The U.S. seems especially vulnerable with its limiting two-party bias, among other factors

I wonder which nations are truly "antifragile" to similar takeovers? The U.S. seems especially vulnerable with its limiting two-party bias, among other factors. I'd argue that the level of education of the general populace in (still) functioning democratic countries might be the prime mitigation factor. Based on this, if I were placing bets on prediction markets, I'd wager that e.g. Finland would be among the last to succumb.

ljm 2y ago
It would also help to have a population without a deep-seated beef going back to the civil war. You arguably have two separate 'America's split down that historical line that might not ever see eye-to-eye and, just like the US itself has installed dictators or favourable governments by funding disruption abroad, it is open to be exploited the same way.
- p3rls 2y ago
  Albion's rotten seed was never unified as one. Seeing the civil war as some unique historical genesis of the split-- instead of a national shotgun-wedding of sorts is completely backwards.
  - giantg2 2y ago
    It wasn't much of a shotgun wedding. Yes, it was a common enemy/cause during the revolution, but then took years of debate for the constitution and years more for the bill of rights. Over time, we've forced more and more homogeneous (federal) laws. The more laws you pass, the more likely people are affected in the outgroups under the splits you mentioned and it compounds. All the concerns about states rights and small states being less powerful are still concerns for some groups of people today. We've essentially been eroding the initial status quo that had been agreed upon.
    - p3rls 2y ago
      Personally I think calling it a shotgun wedding is one of my best metaphors of the week and perfectly evokes what I was going for. Contemporaries from like Lincoln's 2nd inaugural of course would call it finer things, like a national baptism etc. but shotgun wedding captures the borderer element, too. I like it and stand by it.
      - giantg2 2y ago
        Oh, you mean re-unification after the civil war. Sure, I can see that. I though you meant the initial creation of the country.
- giantg2 2y ago
  It's not really split down the historical line of north and south. What you are actually seeing are urbanization rates, with more urbanization in the north east (this was true and a factor during the civil war too). You can look at the county level voting maps to see this exists in the north too. If you look at only state level maps, then you lose that precision. It's not a north vs south thing, it's and urban vs rural thing.
  - griffzhowl 2y ago
    I think there might be something to it: if you look at the correlation between commitment to maga beliefs and affection for the confederate flag, my guess is it would be fairly high
    - giantg2 2y ago
      You might be surprised how many confederate flags are flown in rural Union states. You'd probably have an even higher correlation with the Gadsen. Weak correlations are everywhere, we're looking for the strongest, which appears to be urban vs rural.
tim333 2y ago
You can look at countries that have remained democratically stable for a long time. The UK and Switzerland come to mind. I live in the UK and we have an odd system that I used to consider a bit of a gimmick for the tourists to take photos of but appreciate more these days. Basically the fact that we have a king but with severely curtailed powers delegated to the elected folk makes it very hard for one of them to appoint themselves effectively king, especially as the military all swear allegiance to the actual king (or queen). It's partly effective because they system wasn't really designed but evolved out of a lot of bloody power battles, going back to at least 1215 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta I used to think it was silly but if you look at rival European powers they had Russia with Stalin, Hitler in Germany, Napoleon in France, Franco in Spain, Mussolini in Italy etc. The UK is one of the very few which avoided having a dictator. [Edit - I was kind of talking about the wrong thing - avoiding dictators rather than Trump types]
- barrkel 2y ago
  The UK already had a populist takeover - Brexit.
  - tim333 2y ago
    I guess. I was thinking more of dictatorship rather than populists getting voted in. We may well get Farage voted in some time.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - ozmodiar 2y ago
    With Brexit and now this I've been thinking that if someone out there is intentionally trying to dismantle the 5 Eyes they're doing a bang up job of it. Step 1 appeal to their nationalistic or even imperial senses to make sure they piss everyone else off, step 2 stoke some internal grievance politics, step 3 get them to unload an entire AR15 magazine into their leg (to paraphrase Dril).
amunozo 2y ago
Switzerland. Power is extremelly distributed between municipalities, cantons and, in the Federal Government, there are 7 equal ministers. The system is not only robust by definition, but encourage dialogue and citizens participation in politics at every level through popular vote, educating people during centuries.
giantg2 2y ago
It's more likely to be related to culture and political structure than education is my guess. Unless, maybe, we want to use a different definition for education than just degree attainment. For example, Finland has lower attainment rates for bachelor degree equivalents than the US. This would seem to disprove your point. The real issue is the two party split and urbanized distribution. The way the voting works and the structure of the houses means that once you reach about 85% urbanization the rural areas won't matter. We can see this at many state levels that mimic national political structure. We have multiple nations within our county, with the biggest divide probably being between urban and rural. So all you have you have to do is promise the rural group who feels they are increasingly marginalized a candidate who will look out for their interest. The specifics of those promises don't really matter because in the 2 party system it's us vs them more than actual policy positions. You will find a much bigger difference looking at the urbanization based metrics than you will at the roughly 10pt difference in who people with bachelor degrees voted for. Edit: why disagree?
- CharlieDigital 2y ago
  Don't know why the disagree, but this is a real problem and plagues the House of Representatives which then allows actually incompetent but loud candidates like Greene and Boebert to vote on important and serious legislation.
  - giantg2 2y ago
    If these individuals are exceptions and the rest are competent, then there should be minimal impact beyond creating a side show. As a tiny minority, they wouldn't have any real sway in the bill construction within their party, especially if it has any chance of passing. The split between the parties is usually narrow, so the representatives with the most potential to influence passing legislation are the ones near the center margins as they may vote against party lines and provide a bigger base of support. The reps near the outside margins tend to have less influence. Even if they sway some stuff during the creation of the bill, it's stuff that likely has to get ripped out to find enough support to pass into a law. But if things are passing by only 1 or 2 votes anyways, where anyone 1 persons vote is a major deciding factor, that's an indication of a bigger issue. Such a divide means that half the country feels they are getting screwed and there was little compromise to include their concerns.
adrianN 2y ago
The allies tried to make Germany robust against this.
pembrook 2y ago
Doesn't matter how intelligent or educated or homogenous culturally the Finns are...if Russia were to decide to invade. Domestic political antifragility means nothing if you're not anti-fragile in terms of the outside world. It's called the anarchic global system for a reason. The only thing enforcing norms is power and the fear of it. Antifragility would be the EU finally forming a real union. As someone living in Finland, I'm not holding my breath that happens in our lifetimes. If you take a sample of average, non-cosmopolitan Europeans, they can barely even communicate with each other in the same language. Let alone come to agreements on who's going to pay for each others bloated social welfare expectations. The EU is the very definition of Fragility. While Finland has made far more rational decisions than its EU neighbors (having correctly prioritized energy security, military, and technology), it doesn't matter because size is more important.
- tcfhgj 2y ago
  > made far more rational decisions than its EU neighbors (having correctly prioritized energy security, military, and technology Because there is one objectively correct way to prioritize /s
  - pembrook 2y ago
    I would argue everything else sits downstream from those things. It would be quite an understatement to say they are...somewhat important...in the continued existence of a country. So objectively, there is a correct way to prioritize those items if we're talking about being antifragile. People like to forget the Russian invasion of Ukraine actually started in 2014. But again, the inability of the EU to agree on even a common set of values is why we never have to worry EU countries will start seriously integrating with each other. We will remain disjointed sitting ducks as we are in love with our early 1900s romantic ethno-nationalist movement stories of who we are.
- graemep 2y ago
  You are right, but the problem with turning the EU into a real union is that it is very difficult and risky. The creation of new nations and new identities more often than not leads to violence - and they are often formed by war. Yes, the EU is fragile, but I think trying to fix it that way would be worse. I think 1) the rich democracies in Europe are unlikely to go to war with each other and 2) have good reason to unite against common threats so I think a military alliance is military alliance makes sense. Yes, we already have NATO but the US is going to be ever more focused on China, and Russia is not the threat the Soviet union was so a new military alliance focused on Russia and securing the Atlantic (the latter in cooperation with the US) makes a lot of sense. Obviously different countries have different interests (the Atlantic is a lot more important to the UK than it is to most others) but also enough in common.
musha68k 2y ago
Expanding on this, Vlad Vexler offers a broader framework here: https://www.youtube.com/live/hgPGPZRQdaU?si=4W0z1vkk2bfnueJZ https://www.youtube.com/live/hgPGPZRQdaU?si=4W0z1vkk2bfnueJZ His analysis complements the crucial discussions elsewhere in this thread about the economic details (reserve currency risks, the tariff math) and specific geopolitical impacts, by focusing on the political drivers; the nature of post-truth populism, underlying societal weaknesses, the challenge of maintaining civic coherence in the midst of it all, etc.
niemandhier 2y ago
Germany. The country was designed to be incredibly hard to takeover from the inside. Central government is weak, even if AFD would takeover the chancellorship there are few measures that would immediately allow them to intervene in the federal states or „Länder“, much much less than in the US e.g. unless there is war there is no way to use the military to force compliance. You would have to take over the country 17 times, and since the elections are not synchronised you would have to convince everybody all the time that this is good idea. Individual German federal states could be taken over much easier, Thuringia probably will be the first in 2028. The biggest weakness than is that the legal prosecution on German federal state level is under control of the executive and could be used to prosecute political adversaries. But if this goes to far the remaining parts of the country could vote to takeover the executive if there was a breach of the constitution.

ljm 2y ago

It would also help to have a population without a deep-seated beef going back to the civil war. You arguably have two separate 'America's split down that historical line that might not ever see eye-to-eye and, just like the US itself has installed dictators or favourable governments by funding disruption abroad, it is open to be exploited the same way.

p3rls 2y ago
Albion's rotten seed was never unified as one. Seeing the civil war as some unique historical genesis of the split-- instead of a national shotgun-wedding of sorts is completely backwards.
- giantg2 2y ago
  It wasn't much of a shotgun wedding. Yes, it was a common enemy/cause during the revolution, but then took years of debate for the constitution and years more for the bill of rights. Over time, we've forced more and more homogeneous (federal) laws. The more laws you pass, the more likely people are affected in the outgroups under the splits you mentioned and it compounds. All the concerns about states rights and small states being less powerful are still concerns for some groups of people today. We've essentially been eroding the initial status quo that had been agreed upon.
  - p3rls 2y ago
    Personally I think calling it a shotgun wedding is one of my best metaphors of the week and perfectly evokes what I was going for. Contemporaries from like Lincoln's 2nd inaugural of course would call it finer things, like a national baptism etc. but shotgun wedding captures the borderer element, too. I like it and stand by it.
    - giantg2 2y ago
      Oh, you mean re-unification after the civil war. Sure, I can see that. I though you meant the initial creation of the country.
giantg2 2y ago
It's not really split down the historical line of north and south. What you are actually seeing are urbanization rates, with more urbanization in the north east (this was true and a factor during the civil war too). You can look at the county level voting maps to see this exists in the north too. If you look at only state level maps, then you lose that precision. It's not a north vs south thing, it's and urban vs rural thing.
- griffzhowl 2y ago
  I think there might be something to it: if you look at the correlation between commitment to maga beliefs and affection for the confederate flag, my guess is it would be fairly high
  - giantg2 2y ago
    You might be surprised how many confederate flags are flown in rural Union states. You'd probably have an even higher correlation with the Gadsen. Weak correlations are everywhere, we're looking for the strongest, which appears to be urban vs rural.

tim333 2y ago

You can look at countries that have remained democratically stable for a long time. The UK and Switzerland come to mind. I live in the UK and we have an odd system that I used to consider a bit of a gimmick for the tourists to take photos of but appreciate more these days. Basically the fact that we have a king but with severely curtailed powers delegated to the elected folk makes it very hard for one of them to appoint themselves effectively king, especially as the military all swear allegiance to the actual king (or queen). It's partly effective because they system wasn't really designed but evolved out of a lot of bloody power battles, going back to at least 1215 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta I used to think it was silly but if you look at rival European powers they had Russia with Stalin, Hitler in Germany, Napoleon in France, Franco in Spain, Mussolini in Italy etc. The UK is one of the very few which avoided having a dictator. [Edit - I was kind of talking about the wrong thing - avoiding dictators rather than Trump types]

barrkel 2y ago
The UK already had a populist takeover - Brexit.
- tim333 2y ago
  I guess. I was thinking more of dictatorship rather than populists getting voted in. We may well get Farage voted in some time.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- ozmodiar 2y ago
  With Brexit and now this I've been thinking that if someone out there is intentionally trying to dismantle the 5 Eyes they're doing a bang up job of it. Step 1 appeal to their nationalistic or even imperial senses to make sure they piss everyone else off, step 2 stoke some internal grievance politics, step 3 get them to unload an entire AR15 magazine into their leg (to paraphrase Dril).

amunozo 2y ago

Switzerland. Power is extremelly distributed between municipalities, cantons and, in the Federal Government, there are 7 equal ministers. The system is not only robust by definition, but encourage dialogue and citizens participation in politics at every level through popular vote, educating people during centuries.

giantg2 2y ago

It's more likely to be related to culture and political structure than education is my guess. Unless, maybe, we want to use a different definition for education than just degree attainment. For example, Finland has lower attainment rates for bachelor degree equivalents than the US. This would seem to disprove your point. The real issue is the two party split and urbanized distribution. The way the voting works and the structure of the houses means that once you reach about 85% urbanization the rural areas won't matter. We can see this at many state levels that mimic national political structure. We have multiple nations within our county, with the biggest divide probably being between urban and rural. So all you have you have to do is promise the rural group who feels they are increasingly marginalized a candidate who will look out for their interest. The specifics of those promises don't really matter because in the 2 party system it's us vs them more than actual policy positions. You will find a much bigger difference looking at the urbanization based metrics than you will at the roughly 10pt difference in who people with bachelor degrees voted for. Edit: why disagree?

CharlieDigital 2y ago
Don't know why the disagree, but this is a real problem and plagues the House of Representatives which then allows actually incompetent but loud candidates like Greene and Boebert to vote on important and serious legislation.
- giantg2 2y ago
  If these individuals are exceptions and the rest are competent, then there should be minimal impact beyond creating a side show. As a tiny minority, they wouldn't have any real sway in the bill construction within their party, especially if it has any chance of passing. The split between the parties is usually narrow, so the representatives with the most potential to influence passing legislation are the ones near the center margins as they may vote against party lines and provide a bigger base of support. The reps near the outside margins tend to have less influence. Even if they sway some stuff during the creation of the bill, it's stuff that likely has to get ripped out to find enough support to pass into a law. But if things are passing by only 1 or 2 votes anyways, where anyone 1 persons vote is a major deciding factor, that's an indication of a bigger issue. Such a divide means that half the country feels they are getting screwed and there was little compromise to include their concerns.

adrianN 2y ago

The allies tried to make Germany robust against this.

pembrook 2y ago

Doesn't matter how intelligent or educated or homogenous culturally the Finns are...if Russia were to decide to invade. Domestic political antifragility means nothing if you're not anti-fragile in terms of the outside world. It's called the anarchic global system for a reason. The only thing enforcing norms is power and the fear of it. Antifragility would be the EU finally forming a real union. As someone living in Finland, I'm not holding my breath that happens in our lifetimes. If you take a sample of average, non-cosmopolitan Europeans, they can barely even communicate with each other in the same language. Let alone come to agreements on who's going to pay for each others bloated social welfare expectations. The EU is the very definition of Fragility. While Finland has made far more rational decisions than its EU neighbors (having correctly prioritized energy security, military, and technology), it doesn't matter because size is more important.

tcfhgj 2y ago
> made far more rational decisions than its EU neighbors (having correctly prioritized energy security, military, and technology Because there is one objectively correct way to prioritize /s
- pembrook 2y ago
  I would argue everything else sits downstream from those things. It would be quite an understatement to say they are...somewhat important...in the continued existence of a country. So objectively, there is a correct way to prioritize those items if we're talking about being antifragile. People like to forget the Russian invasion of Ukraine actually started in 2014. But again, the inability of the EU to agree on even a common set of values is why we never have to worry EU countries will start seriously integrating with each other. We will remain disjointed sitting ducks as we are in love with our early 1900s romantic ethno-nationalist movement stories of who we are.
graemep 2y ago
You are right, but the problem with turning the EU into a real union is that it is very difficult and risky. The creation of new nations and new identities more often than not leads to violence - and they are often formed by war. Yes, the EU is fragile, but I think trying to fix it that way would be worse. I think 1) the rich democracies in Europe are unlikely to go to war with each other and 2) have good reason to unite against common threats so I think a military alliance is military alliance makes sense. Yes, we already have NATO but the US is going to be ever more focused on China, and Russia is not the threat the Soviet union was so a new military alliance focused on Russia and securing the Atlantic (the latter in cooperation with the US) makes a lot of sense. Obviously different countries have different interests (the Atlantic is a lot more important to the UK than it is to most others) but also enough in common.

musha68k 2y ago

Expanding on this, Vlad Vexler offers a broader framework here: https://www.youtube.com/live/hgPGPZRQdaU?si=4W0z1vkk2bfnueJZ https://www.youtube.com/live/hgPGPZRQdaU?si=4W0z1vkk2bfnueJZ His analysis complements the crucial discussions elsewhere in this thread about the economic details (reserve currency risks, the tariff math) and specific geopolitical impacts, by focusing on the political drivers; the nature of post-truth populism, underlying societal weaknesses, the challenge of maintaining civic coherence in the midst of it all, etc.

niemandhier 2y ago

Germany. The country was designed to be incredibly hard to takeover from the inside. Central government is weak, even if AFD would takeover the chancellorship there are few measures that would immediately allow them to intervene in the federal states or „Länder“, much much less than in the US e.g. unless there is war there is no way to use the military to force compliance. You would have to take over the country 17 times, and since the elections are not synchronised you would have to convince everybody all the time that this is good idea. Individual German federal states could be taken over much easier, Thuringia probably will be the first in 2028. The biggest weakness than is that the legal prosecution on German federal state level is under control of the executive and could be used to prosecute political adversaries. But if this goes to far the remaining parts of the country could vote to takeover the executive if there was a breach of the constitution.