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The Albanian town that TikTok emptied

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Re: The Albanian town that TikTok emptied

#81
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In comparison to ww2, the fall of the soviet union was worse than ww2. https://www.rferl.org/a/life-expectancy-cis-report/24946030.... To put it into perspective, after ww2, the russian population recovered in a few years. The russian population today is still below their 1990 levels. In terms of population, life expectancy, quality of life, etc, ww2 (as horrible as it was ) was an insignificant blip. The fall of the…

I disagree on how you scoped the discussion on the fall of communism. Why are we scoping down to just Russia? If you scoped broader to include the other post-Soviet counties you’d include all the countries where life expectancy has significantly increased since then. There’s also the matter of scoping WW2: I would argue that WW2’s direct effects on thousands of millions of people deserve more weight than the fall of…

> Why are we scoping down to just Russia?

Because the soviet union was russia. Russia is the successor state of the soviet union. Which country would you use? Moldova? Estonia?

> If you scoped broader to include the other post-Soviet counties you’d include all the countries where life expectancy has significantly increased since then.

Even russia's life expectancy improved after the initial disastrous decline. My point was that overall population hasn't recovered since the soviet collapse. This is true for ukraine, moldova, russia, estonia, most former ex-soviet nations. The only one to buck the trend are muslim ex-soviet nations.

> I would argue that WW2’s direct effects on thousands of millions of people deserve more weight than the fall of communism, which affected hundreds of millions.

WW2 didn't affect 'thousands of millions'. The world population in 1940 was around 2 billion. Also we are talking about the effects of the fall of the soviet union. Why I limited it to russia/soviet union.

> If we don’t take this type of scoping into effect I could claim that one person’s cancer diagnosis was a worse quality of life drop than WW2, and the discussion gets a little absurd.

Maybe it's a language issue. You don't seem to have a solid grasp of the english language. My point was that the fall of the soviet was worse FOR RUSSIA than ww2 was FOR RUSSIA. I'm not saying that the fall of the soviet union was worse overall than ww2. That's another discussion. So no. One person's cancer diagnosis isn't worse than ww2. One person's cancer diagnosis is worse than that person's diagnosis of ankle sprain. You see. You have one person and two bad events. You have one russia and two bad events. You compare the bad events on the one person or one russia.

You are being very disingenious here. I can't for the life of me understand why.

Re: The Albanian town that TikTok emptied

#82
post #50

I was just reading an article about an agency that rents out fancy penthouse suites, supercars and private jets by the hour to social media "influencers" who want to promote their baller lifestyles and amass a following. I see posts of this kind in my feed every day even though I have no interest in such content or the people behind it. It is a wild industry. 100% smoke and mirrors, yet teenagers and young men and wo…

> People going to college and getting jobs nowadays are “NPCs”, and the only true way to live is to go on luxury vacations and drive fancy cars full time.

From the perspective of the ruling class (whether the capitalist elite of the haut bourgeoisie, or the pre-capitalist elite of the landed aristocracy) people with jobs have always been NPCs, and there’s always been a segment of society below that elite that spends money to conspicuously adopt outward trappings of elite lifestyle (and attitudes) for attention, as a tool for entertaining the masses, and for grift. Modern “influencers” may use a new medium to reach their audience, but they aren’t otherwise a particularly novel thing.

Re: The Albanian town that TikTok emptied

#83
I felt at the time, and still do, that the arab spring was fueled by the ability of people to see life in other places via satellite TV and Internet. "Hey, life doesn't have to be as bad as it is here."

Even before then I thought it might be great to make A4 phased array antennas with photographs of dictators on them so people could put them on their walls were satellite dishes are forbidden.

Re: The Albanian town that TikTok emptied

#84
post #50

I was just reading an article about an agency that rents out fancy penthouse suites, supercars and private jets by the hour to social media "influencers" who want to promote their baller lifestyles and amass a following. I see posts of this kind in my feed every day even though I have no interest in such content or the people behind it. It is a wild industry. 100% smoke and mirrors, yet teenagers and young men and wo…

> People going to college and getting jobs nowadays are "NPCs", and the only true way to live is to go on luxury vacations and drive fancy cars full time. What do you expect when there are no good jobs left over for college grads between the double whammy of a pandemic and LLM automation threats? Not everybody can be software engineers and most other entry level jobs simply don't pay well enough for a decent life in…

Skilled trades still pay decent - and will probably improve as gen xers who dominate it rn ages out.

I think given the housing shortage there's a lot of untapped potential in construction/furnishings we'd only need a but of deregulation to unleash.

Re: The Albanian town that TikTok emptied

#85
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

USSR collapse was disastrous whether you agree with it or not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-Soviet_conflicts And on top of that go over what every post soviet republic went through after USSR collapsed. Those countries were under dysfunctional system for 70 years and suddenly they're being thrown in a 180 turn economy without any institutions. Also keep in mind that majority of republics were left on their own…

How do all of those conflicts compare to the 61 million people killed during the halycion days of the USSR? https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/USSR.CHAP.1.HTM#:~:text=In... .

You mistake me for USSR advocate. I’m not. With that being said, you can’t just dissolve such system in a year. It’s like waking up from comma and entering adult world all of a sudden. Dissolution of USSR without any planning was the reason for infamous 90s, oligarchs usurping all of the resources and kleptocracy across whole post-Soviet space. USSR should’ve went China path, for better or worse.

Re: The Albanian town that TikTok emptied

#86
post #74

Europe's Cocaine Tsunami[0], a documentary by VICE, is about Albanian Mafia and Columbian clan del gulfo. Here, you can hear about how Albanians in UK are 'enslaved' by Albanian mafia families, and how many young Albanians from Northern Albania leave to work in the cocaine field. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTOwZxRT5Qc

Not available in my (EU) country. Are you aware of any other links to this? I’m interested but a quick google showed nothing

Re: The Albanian town that TikTok emptied

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People going to college and getting jobs nowadays are "NPCs", and the only true way to live is to go on luxury vacations and drive fancy cars full time. What do you expect when there are no good jobs left over for college grads between the double whammy of a pandemic and LLM automation threats? Not everybody can be software engineers and most other entry level jobs simply don't pay well enough for a decent life in…

Skilled trades still pay decent - and will probably improve as gen xers who dominate it rn ages out. I think given the housing shortage there's a lot of untapped potential in construction/furnishings we'd only need a but of deregulation to unleash.

Skilled trades destroy your body and are generally unappealing for very good reasons. The unions play gatekeeper in a closed shop industry with mandatory apprenticeship training (and not to mention the perceptions of class and sexual harassment issues). We need more white collar paper pushing jobs that pay well even if they don't necessarily generate value. If the massive tech-enabled concentration of wealth continues, we will have societal problems. You can already see this happening in countries like Japan and Spain where growth has stalled and the youth are suffering from massive unemployment.

Re: The Albanian town that TikTok emptied

#89
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really would not say it applies to whole Eastern Europe. Baltics, Poland, Slovakia, Czechia, Romania and many other places are developing fine and less and less people are emigrating. And the picture definitely is nowhere near as depressing as Albania and this region in particular.

Baltics lost and continuing losing population for decades, however currently their population is propped by migration from Belarus (since August 2020 and then next waive after Feb 2022). Even with those trend Lithuania has lost 1/3 of its population in 30 years. Czechia and Poland has a influx of Ukrainians since Feb 2022. On other side Bulgaria is losing ~1% annually without signs of stopping. So yes, I would say th…

So does Italy, Japan, China and many other places.

Birthrates are low.

Re: The Albanian town that TikTok emptied

#90
post #35
post #21

Nice that social media is providing a clear pathway out of towns like this. Sad for the people left behind but the answer is for them to leave, not for everyone to be trapped there. And note the Eastern Europe is doing great at the country level. In general people should engage in more geographic mobility.

Get misled by a TikTok "influencer" and go join a street gang or be forced into prostitution in other parts of Europe? I wouldn't call that "escaping" anything.

Are those really the only two options?
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