What we've discovered is that authoritarian countries frequently machismo virtue signal, and when the rubber hits the road they don't know how to fight.
I imagine that the real harm will be like in most of Southern Europe where once mighty nations languish as their economies labour under the weight of regulation and the population is mostly poor outside a few cities.
Their generals will fall to femboys and furries. But their businessmen can still win.
“The population is mostly poor outside a few cities” seems to have been a historical norm in most of the world, for one reason or another (regulatory capture / colonialism / decline of key industries / etc).
(And I wish we had more concrete data to critique instead of vague, monolithic enemies like “administrators” or “regulations” (typo), where each side simply fills in the blanks according to their own biases.)
> (And I wish we had more concrete data to critique instead of vague, monolithic enemies like “administrators” or “regulations” (typo), where each side simply fills in the blanks according to their own biases.)
But yes. I would further suggest that sometimes people get too invested in online spaces and calibrate their worldview based on it perhaps a bit too much. (And prior to this it was traditional mass media, or their IRL local community echo chambers, etc.) It takes effort to find and evaluate truly original research.
I imagine that the real harm will be like in most of Southern Europe where once mighty nations languish as their economies labour under the weight of regulation and the population is mostly poor outside a few cities.
Their generals will fall to femboys and furries. But their businessmen can still win.