Depends on the area. Lots of countryside areas have high unemployment statistically, but are actually very chill because there are so few people, and most of them are retirees. With adequate internet connectivity they can be perfect for remote workers.
>Lots of countryside areas have high unemployment statistically, but are actually very chill because there are so few people, and most of them are retirees.
Not true. Unemployment numbers don't account for retirees or children of school age or involved in education/trainings programs.
If an area has high unemployment it means only adults of working age not involved in any schooling, trainings or apprenticeship, who are able bodied to work but don't.
"Work ethics" = Spending the best years of your life doing something you don't like, just to make shareholders richer while you remain relatively poor.
As an extreme example we have South Korea, which is essentially a dying society with fertility rate of less than 1. So no, "work ethics" as understood in East Asia is not a good thing for society or individual.
I think the frequent comparisons of GDP leads the West to heavily underestimate Russia.
While GDP may be lower than Italy and per capita is weak, a nation like Russia can probably accomplish an order of magnitude more large scale projects, and also sustain a certain economy climate for much much longer than we think.
So don't underestimate Russia, even though we'd like to think they're soon running out of steam to continue the war in Ukraine.
On the other side of the comparison, I think Italy is a lot more capable than many people give them credit for, so the comparison is not quite as damning as it may first seem.
On just one axis of consideration, Italy has a blue water navy with power projection capabilities roughly similar to Russia and India, surpassed only by the United States, the UK and France.
I think Italy also ranks higher than most anglosphere laypeople would estimate in terms of GDP and scientific output, although this is hard to pin down since I'm talking about layperson perception. Basically, I think Italy is more relevant and capable than people generally give it credit for.
GDP seems like a very questionable, and likely misleading, measure to me, even for Western nations.
For example, Canada's inflation-adjusted per-capita GDP has supposedly increased over time, yet for many Canadians, the standard of living is now noticeably lower than it was (or would have likely been) two or three decades ago.
In terms of production, Canadian businesses and governments generally don't seem to have become more capable and productive, and actually seem to struggle now with the sorts of fundamental work that they managed to pull off in the past. Many common services and products are noticeably worse now than in the past, in terms of cost, quality, reliability, delivery time, and so forth.
And very interesting to note that your name is VancouverMan. The other day I saw a YouTube video about an IT guy struggling in Vancouver and he mentioned one example of two immigrants - both doctors - having to stay in someone's basement as there was simply no way for them to afford a house (rent or buy).
My favourite tidbit for when someone brings 'less than Italy hur dur':
Italy: Size of the labor force from 2014 to 2024: ~23M
Number of pensioners in Russia from 2012 to 2022: ~44M
Italy population? ~58M
There are almost twice as many pensioners in Russia than people in the labour force in Italy and it's 2/3 of the whole Italy population. The whole GDP comparison here is moot.
Is that surprising for a resource oriented economy?
Aramco (Saudi Oil) is the second biggest company in the world, yet GDP of Saudi Arabia is about that of Poland
A GPD lower than that of Italy? Here's something better: per capita is lower than that of Bulgaria's. Perhaps Putin's plan is to lower the country's population to increase the per capita ratio?
There absolutely is a black market for selling airplane parts to sanctioned countries. As an example, Cuban state airline Cubana has been flying ATR turboprops with American made engines (and many other parts) since 2002 or so. Even with wide sanctions, Iran has maintained an operational fleet of old Boeings, and during past decade even newer aircraft.
The potential huge impact of climate change could very well start the nuclear war. Masses of hungry, broke and desperate people don't do good for politics as we've seen again and again in the past. One can only hope that they turn against corporations and the 1% instead of electing fascists.
Living in inner city might make you a social hub if you're an extroverted person in the first place. For an introvert like me it didn't make much of a difference, though I did find a spouse, which probably wouldn't have happened in the countryside.
I think everyone should move away at some point of their life, but permanent city-life isn't for everyone. I simply enjoy gardening, small-scale farming, tinkering and trekking in forests way more than any services cities offer.
> I think everyone should move away at some point of their life, but permanent city-life isn't for everyone.
I think this is the key, people should experience different cultures, lifestyles, and social opportunities. I'm an introvert myself, but I'm passionate about certain topics and enjoy discussing them with people who are also passionate about them.
Finding these niche communities or people who shared my ideas was impossible for me where I grew up, which was much less densely populated than where I live now. Now I have access to additional sharing of ideas, gatherings, and social bonds that I couldn't have imagined before I came to an urban area.
I never thought of myself as a city person, but after living in a rural area, a midsize city, a huge city, and a small town, I've found that my current large to midsize city is where I thrive.
Apart from farming, there is an obvious source of income - tourism services for urban people who want to relax in a more peaceful environment. Lots of old and small farms in my country have moved to that after farming wasn't profitable anymore.
Also, there's something beetween between big city suburbs and middle of nowhere. Smaller towns can offer a healthy amount of jobs and services, especially ones that are within commute distance from larger ones. Moving from a village/town of 4000 people to one of 140 000 didn't really change my daily life much, apart from having more variety of food in supermarket, and much more expensive and worse housing.
How exactly is Reddit a "porn filled shit hole"? I don't see any porn in the vast majority of subreddits. Nobody forces you to visit the rest, and they are typically even marked adult-only.
Besides, are porn and racism really the only questionable things in social media? What about extreme violence, videos where real people get shot or blown up? Somehow messed up American society thinks that violence is quite okay thing for people to see, but nudity and porn are not.
> How exactly is Reddit a "porn filled shit hole"? I don't see any porn in the vast majority of subreddits. Nobody forces you to visit the rest, and they are typically even marked adult-only.
My bad, I should have said "reddit is a porn spammer filled shit hole" on top of really being a "porn filled shit hole" /s
The fact that you feign being oblivious to all the CSAM, depraved porn and revenge porn hosted on reddit really doesn't make any difference.
> The point is that as a Reddit user, you won't see that content unless you disable your NSFW filter and go searching for it.
The point is that people use reddit to hotlink depraved, illegal porn images and videos and spam these media on other forums. That depraved content is not moderated, it should not be possible to hotlink porn material from reddit. The platform is not moderated like you claim, a checkbox in the preferences is not moderation, if evading "moderation" consist simply in hotlinking porn hosted on reddit.
> That's completely tangential to the stated problem though.
No it isn't "tangential", it is what makes reddit a "porn filled shit hole", these are your own words.
> That sounds like your own personal beef, which as we can see from Reddit would not hamper user growth.
Sounds like you have your own personal beef against reddit alternatives when reddit itself is a "porn filled shithole" which you refuse to acknowledge for some reason.
Elm has lots of great ideas, but if I were making decisions in a company, I wouldn't use it in production for anything big and long-living. Simply too much of a risk in terms of support, and finding developers with experience using it.
Only contacts I've had about Elm positions have been about rewriting existing Elm apps to something else.
Software devs may always move somewhere with lower living costs. Good for lots of people who have been forced to move into places like Silicon Valley with crazy expensive housing, even though they would rather live elsewhere.
