[another2another]

>A <$insert hyper emotional disparagement>. Dictatorships need hardly interfere with the "stability" of a society which <$insert random example some democratic failure>.

And yet they do interfere. We've seen plenty of evidence, from Russia, Iran, China and (I still can't believe how they got competent at this, but there you go) North Korea.

And in some cases they've been successful at destabilizing formerly fairly sane and stable democratic countries. The social divisions that the UK And US currently find themselves in could be attributed in part to this steady drip of caustic interference.

However, as a "short term pessimist, but long term optimist" (Hitchens), I'm optimistic that we will start to introspect a bit more as societies and begin to be less easily manipulated. It will take a while, but I believe even now the tide is turning.

[blooalien]

> "And yet they do interfere. We've seen plenty of evidence, from Russia, Iran, China and (I still can't believe how they got competent at this, but there you go) North Korea." (Emphasis; Mine - To single out the bit I'm replying to specifically.)

I still can't believe how readily so very many people continue to fall for it time and again, despite the lessons of history.

[another2another]

Your answer seems a bit vague to me, so I can't follow what your objection is.

But just to be clear, my surprise at their abilities stems from the fact that their country is so insular, tightly controlled and technologically backward* (look at a night picture of N. Korea, for instance, 80% dark, with no basic streetlighting), that it surprises me that they can allow a portion of their society to roam and participate in the internet freely without infecting the rest of their country.

The Doublethink needed to pull that off must be staggering (thank you Orwell for giving us a vocabulary to express the concepts and experience of living under totalitarianism).

*I know they have ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons, also I'm pretty sure their internal surveillance tech is also top notch.

[Ray20]

> the fact that their country is so insular, tightly controlled and technologically backward

A totalitarian country can invest billions of dollars from the federal budget into propaganda in another countries. You don't need technological supremacy to pour money into something. Tight cotroll and insulation makes the task easier, not harder.

> that it surprises me that they can allow a portion of their society to roam and participate in the internet freely without infecting the rest of their country. Isolation and elimination of infected individuals helps prevent the spread of the disease through hte population

[randmeerkat]

> I still can't believe how readily so very many people continue to fall for it time and again, despite the lessons of history.

“The bigger the trick, the older the trick, the easier it is to pull.”

“You believe it can’t be that old, and it can’t be that big for so many people to have fallen for it.”

[RobotToaster]

Whatever marginal effect foreign interference has, it's almost certainly dwarfed by interference, or "lobbying", from domestic capitalists.

[another2another]

This is certainly an issue, but apart from environmental legislation (e.g. please may I pump raw shit and tonnes of pesticide into public waterways) their main interest is at least in preserving public stability, general wealth and happiness.

Dictatorships though have a more macroscopically sinister agenda against successful democratic rivals.

[thunky]

Don't forget entertainment news (CNN, Fox, etc) who play no small part in dividing/destabilizing the country.

[gengwyn]

Foreign interference is almost always bad and against the interests of national security. Lobbying on domestic policy actually has some important uses.

[LtWorf]

But most of these uses only favour few rich people.

[Lendal]

I haven't read much about the domestic capitalists and lobbyists attacking our critical infrastructure with cyber-attacks. Please tell us more about this.

[solarpunk]

They're the ones that cost-cut the operations of aforementioned critical infrastructure to the point of it being so vulnerable...

Just look at catastrophes caused by PG&E in 2018, ERCOT in 2021, or First Energy in 2003. Not a single one was caused by an attack on critical infrastructure, they're just cutting corners!

[RobotToaster]

They don't have to, they just buy politicians that remove safety laws and break strikes against unsafe working conditions. The Ohio rail disaster was just one example of this happening.

[MSFT_Edging]

> The social divisions that the UK And US currently find themselves in could be attributed in part to this steady drip of caustic interference.

Please look away from the curtain hiding rising wealth inequality, cost of living, and the financialization of daily needs. There are no material explanation for the rising contradictions. It is simply our boogymen misleading our population.

It is good we as a society make bets on housing! Who needs to sleep under a roof when you can own shares!

[another2another]

I agree with you that things are currently quite bad, and need to get better. From my UK centric viewpoint, over the last decade Brexit, climate change and the pandemic have proven fertile ground for diverting peoples' attention away from societal issues that have not been addressed, or have even exacerbated by wilful neglect of basic services by Government.

But I have the feeling that that well of constant culture wars has run dry, and people are becoming more wary of being drawn into endless fruitless debates about these things. And after looking up form their smartphones they've finally seen all of the signs for Food Banks, noticed that the weather has gone insane and that the price of biscuits is inhumane and asked themselves 'how did we get here?' 'how do we get back to a better place?' and will hopefully agitate again for a better society.

Swings and roundabouts.

[theossuary]

I'm confused by your comment. First you call climate change a distraction; then you list it as something people are finally becoming aware of? The endless debates were to try and stop it. The population not being able to is just a reflection of the majority.

It's odd how people are trying to divide politics into "culture war" and real problems; it wasn't that long ago climate change was considered a culture war. Labeling something a "culture war" is just the first kneejerk reaction from the right when they appose something.

[another2another]

Creating a culture war is often the first reaction of the right to things they don't like in order to blunt their effect.

"loonie lentil eating lefties", "greenies", "mad Greta" (I'm making these up, but I'm sure I'm sure there's plenty of similar examples). People used to be comforted by these ad-hominems, and it allowed them to continue buying aspirational 4x4 off-road vehicles and 3 flights abroad a year without touching their conscious. They could laugh, share memes, ignore news stories about forest fires in Canada in December or massive loss of ice shelves in Antarctica and carry on as usual.

But as the pot starts to boil harder I get the feeling people are looking away from these distractions and beginning to look more critically at the information they're getting, and beginning to wonder if it's not such a funny joke after all.

[Loughla]

>But I have the feeling that that well of constant culture wars has run dry,

Honestly, I don't believe that statement. I think many people equate the culture war issues to the issues later in that second paragraph with the economy and climate (if they even see an issue there). If our leaders are failing at [insert culture war issue here], then that explains why they're failing at [insert economic issue here].

[MSFT_Edging]

So the culture wars are very interesting. The core of the the idea of a culture war is that class is divided by culture, rather than position in society.

You can look to old propaganda from the early 20th century in Italy and Germany where characters would speak to this. They would deny class lines based on wealth or capital holdings and insist the true class was defined by in and out cultural identifiers.

These culture wars we've been seeing are not organic. They're seeded by orgs that can make money off the outrage. It might be dramatic sounding to say, but the increasing prevalence of culture wars is indicative of the rising tide of fascism. Our societies have done a lot to weaken unions and redefine the meaning of class.

Because we redefined class boundaries to be cultural, we've created an artificial alignment, where say a working class queer urbanite and and a working class non-queer rural worker get shafted by many of the same mechanisms, but are seen to be in different stations because one has access to a bus and the other drives a pickup.

At the end of the day, material issues are what hurt people, but now the rural working class will blame the urbanite, rather than the capitalist that has strip-mined their town, and the urbanite will blame the backwards bumpkin rather than the capitalist that has strip-mined their city.

[verteu]

Since 1990, NYC rent has grown at 3.4%/yr, wages have grown at 3.4%/yr, and minimum wage has grown at 4.7%/yr.

Doesn't seem too terrible to me?

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUURA101SEHA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ENUC356240010SA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/STTMINWGNY

[MSFT_Edging]

While I wont argue pointlessly, I am curious what the median values look like for these stats.

In the US, averaging falls short due to said inequality. A smaller group of people have vastly increased wealth, while others stay stagnant. This moves the needle for certain statistics that don't give a full view of the issue.

Its easy to say "hey the average is fine" when you're talking about NYC where stock brokers and high end real estate really drags up that average.

From the 2020 census, the average income was 107k, where the median income was 67k.

[verteu]

EDIT: Seems the best metric is "avg rent burden", the ratio of median_rent/median_income.

It increased from 25%->27% from 2001-2024 [a].

Far from a catastrophe, though there is an upward trend since 1999 [b].

There are spikes upwards and downwards, and I'd guess the upward spikes make much better clickbait.

[a] https://cre.moodysanalytics.com//app/uploads/2024/02/image-1... , from [4]

[b] https://www.moodys.com/web/en/us/about/insights/data-stories...

--

Yeah, I couldn't find localize median wages, so I thought minimum wage would be a decent lower-bound.

Nationally, the easiest numbers to find are Wolfram Alpha's [1]:

Median wage (2001-2020): $27060 -> $46310 (2.9%/yr)

Mean wage (2001-2020): $34020 -> $61900 (3.2%/yr)

Bottom 10% wage (2001-2020): -> $18140 -> $27340 (2.2%/yr)

Mean->Median gap isn't too large, but the bottom 10% is pretty bad.

I think there was a temporary spike in rent burden [2] [3] which quickly reversed [4].

[1] eg: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=median+US+wage+2022

[2] https://www.moodysanalytics.com/about-us/press-releases/2023...

[3] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DP04ACS006037

[4] https://cre.moodysanalytics.com/insights/market-insights/q4-...

[raxxorraxor]

Can you give a tangible example where disinformation from China impacted any domestic topic in the US?

Sure, there is propaganda and attempts to influence certain topics, but I wouldn't want to give up privacy because I don't like some content on TikTok.

I think the divisions are of domestic origin and this argument is more or less FUD.

And no, you will hardly ever get rid of surveillance powers once established without serious political shifts.

Propaganda messages are quite easy and public. And yet I don't think you can name a single instance where such a message would have influenced the beliefs of a significant portion of the domestic population. If so, which message, what topic and who was targeted?

I think an example of propaganda is that you need to give up your freedoms for security because of "disinformation". A wrong statement on the internet became a threat to democracy.

[another2another]

>I think the divisions are of domestic origin and this argument is more or less FUD.

I agree, many divisions are definitely of domestic origin. However we definitely know that foreign interference has been at play to identify and amplify those divisions.

>If so, which message, what topic and who was targeted?

5G - weird one I know, but agitators gonna agitate.

Climate - Russia was a massive oil exporter, de-carbonizing efforts threatened that.

Atomic power in Germany - Russia definitely didn't want Germany achieving independence from their gas imports.

BRICS - China would love to de-dollarize the world.

>And no, you will hardly ever get rid of surveillance powers once established without serious political shifts.

And this is the advantage of democracies, big shifts can happen. With Dictatorships however it usually takes violence. A lot of violence.

[snapcaster]

5g? why would china be anti-5g? how is the whole BRICS thing propaganda or foreign interference (is NATO propaganda or just an association, don't even get your point since BRICS isn't even that organized)? I was on the fence but this response put me super firmly into the "this argument is FUD" camp

[LtWorf]

Do you think the alphabet soup doesn't do any propaganda?