This is quite an inflammatory comment that warrants more justification. Many countries have struggled with organized crime infiltration of government and have no connection to colonialism, and many colonies also had organized crime. You are implying at one that colonialism prevented this organized crime problem and would eliminate it and the harms of colonialism are lower than organized crime. Those might be defensible positions but you neither articulate them nor defend them.
And then you realize that, ironically, LLMs and archive.today, both actual bots, can scrape the site just fine. The latter also serving you the content with no paywalls, ads, JavaScript, permalinks that 404 after a year, and all the other anti-features. It's almost as if news websites looked at the pains one has to go through to legally play a video game in 2026 and all unanimously went "I want this!".
And then a few years later when the site shuts down because nobody was willing to pay for the content that it would still be around if you and others had just ponied up the cost of one morning latte each month.
United States of America are at risk of becoming mafia state. Very obvious and very significant, with fewer and fewer possibilities of reversal remaining each day.
Americans and Western Europeans have no idea what it means to come from a country where the government can’t maintain a monopoly on violence, and when you say stuff like this it comes across as complaining about “first world problems.”
What’s happening in South Africa is a phenomenon that happens around the third world. And it’s an enormous tax on half of the human population, even in relatively affluent countries like Mexico. Even in many of the countries that don’t suffer from internal destabilization by non-state actors, the solution has been dictators like Saddam Hussain in Iraq or El-Sisi in Egypt. It’s a subject that warrants thoughtful analysis and problem solving by people in the first world. We need you guys to think about how you overcame those problems so those lessons can be applied to countries that desperately need the help.
As someone who was born in Russia and lived there in 1990s, I have quite a good idea of this arrangement. This was not mafia state yet. The mafia state is the modern Russia, where former organized crime groups became fully integrated into the government. Technically, the state retains the monopoly on violence. Practically, violence comes from influence of competing groups within the state. And yes, US is moving towards the same regime type. This is clearly visible to me, from my Russian experience, but I don't understand how to convey this to Americans.
You’re correct that affluent white liberals in europe and america have trouble understanding how different the third world really is. They think their mindset and values are universal and simply can’t understand what they’re seeing when they observe societies that aren’t based on the same foundation.
> We need you guys to think about how you overcame those problems so those lessons can be applied to countries that desperately need the help
We have studied this problem ad nauseum. The West knew the answer until about a century ago.
Europe became orderly through shame culture, executing criminals and destruction of clan culture.
El Salvador is a modern example.
The remedy is violent, unkind, and not communist so we get indefinite unbounded suffering instead.
28 comments
[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 34.0 ms ] thread> Reasons may include:
> Rapid taps or clicks
> JavaScript disabled or not working
> Automated (bot) activity on your network (IP X.X.X.X)
> Use of developer or inspection tools
I mean, I guess. I'm using Firefox, I have an adblocker, and I have tampermonkey installed? And turning off Javascript isn't a bad idea, either.
And there is nothing anyone can say to talk me out of adblockers - ad networks are a delivery system for malware and fraud.
>Please enable JS and disable any ad blocker
What’s happening in South Africa is a phenomenon that happens around the third world. And it’s an enormous tax on half of the human population, even in relatively affluent countries like Mexico. Even in many of the countries that don’t suffer from internal destabilization by non-state actors, the solution has been dictators like Saddam Hussain in Iraq or El-Sisi in Egypt. It’s a subject that warrants thoughtful analysis and problem solving by people in the first world. We need you guys to think about how you overcame those problems so those lessons can be applied to countries that desperately need the help.
The ideological and demographic makeup of certain internet communities makes them incapable of understanding what you mean by this.
I’ve seen enough white Christian men shoot up schools and mosques in my lifetime to roll my eyes at this statement.
Americans are still getting lynched.
We have studied this problem ad nauseum. The West knew the answer until about a century ago. Europe became orderly through shame culture, executing criminals and destruction of clan culture.
El Salvador is a modern example.
The remedy is violent, unkind, and not communist so we get indefinite unbounded suffering instead.
https://www.thecommonsense.co.za/economics_and_policy/govern...
https://www.sars.gov.za/wp-content/uploads/2025taxstats/2025...