[inglor_cz]

Comparing Austria-Hungary to the former Soviet Union is pure lunacy. I wonder if you have been reading Mencius Moldbug too much.

"The reason Europe has been doing poorly lately is because of deluded utopists thinking it isn't. "

So you think that democracy is inherently poorer and weaker than autocracies? (Again, this sounds like Mencius Moldbug.) We have had our fair share of autocratic empires in Europe across centuries, all of them are gone. Many actually collapsed after losing a war. How so, if they are so inherently powerful?

We have different problems, such as aging of the population. But so does China, which worsened its own demographic situation by clinging to its autocratic One Child Policy until 2016, about 20 years more than it was even useful.

We also have a bureaucratic problem. Again, this is not specifically democratic disease. Every big country requires bureaucracy to run, and it can easily overwhelm the rest of the system.

[saubeidl]

I am pretty much diametrically opposed to Yarvin ideologically. I think his plans are for a dystopia.

I do think that bourgeois democracy is just a thin veil for capitalist interest and that unless the economy is democratized, nothing is.

The closest model to follow would probably be post-Stalin-Split Yugoslavia under Tito. I especially like the concepts of worker self-management, which imo is a much more meaningfully democratic system than the autocratic capitalist ownership structures of western liberalism.

[inglor_cz]

Tito was, by all accounts, a very capable politician, but he also built a system that, 10 years after his death, disintegrated in a fountain of blood.

I like systems that withstood some test of time and adversary winds. Titoist Yugoslavia didn't.

OK, so you like the concept of worker self-management. At the same time, you admire the economic power of the US and China. Neither seems to be based on worker self-management.

Worker cooperatives are legal in most of the world, but regardless of local specifics, they seem to have trouble crossing a certain productivity level. The largest one is located in Basque country, where a local feeling of nationalism and somewhat of a siege mentality re larger nations (France, Spain) might have fueled its size. In general, cooperatives have trouble holding on to their best talent, because it can get better wages elsewhere.

If worker cooperatives were a globally competitive institution, we would see a lot more of them.

[saubeidl]

I think the mistake of Yugoslavia was letting reactionaries and nationalists creep back in after Tito's death. To me, it proves the necessity of some domestic repression to keep our worst impulses in check.

Regarding worker cooperatives and competitiveness, as a socialist I do not believe the market is a good indicator of a systems quality. This, too, can be solved with a bit of state force. If the only legal structure for a company is a worker's coop, then we don't need to worry about talent loss to non-coop companies.