The Folly of Liberal History 

will you ever do a video about ireland?

Video on the european importance of the UK ?

Kazakh* not Kazakstani

Preparation

6:07 Wasn't it Mátyás Hunyadi/Matthias Corvinus who raised taxes and formed the black army

@Anhedon It is good thing then because we had mercantilism at the time

The first functional democracy would be athens,but of the citizens and not the slaves

@@Cecilia-ky3uw yes sorry i forgot to add modern

Funny my dad(family is polish American and still celebrating) call these nobles “ tsar wannabes” or “traitors”

@@Cecilia-ky3uw the ancient Greeks also didn't let their women vote. Thank you ancient democracy!

we need to do that

@@sstff6771 Especially Google.

@@krazykris9396 according to my reading, the Sherman antitrust laws would be more than applicable to break up Google. I just don't think there's the political will to do so. Maybe the Democrats will pick up on it as a mobilizing force for voters... Hahahaha sorry I crack myself up

The US is doomed. I really wish it wasn’t, some Americans are really nice 😢

Not just tech companies, the entire economy is more or less in the hands of just a few people through a series of parent companies. Media, pharmaceuticals, real estate, food production, etc. all being prime examples of essential aspects of society being centralized under private ownership and control.

Republicans in the USA are actively working to destroy the democratic aspect of our democratic republic. That fits into the theme of this video very well

Why they aren't equivalent.

Too true, but both left and right will claim the other side is the aristocrats so nothing ever gets done.

@@kordellswoffer1520 the destruction isnt as obvious because there are no mongols around to teach people a lesson.

Yep thats what aristocrats are for to be leeches.

Thanks for the additional detail it helps explain what happened

He also kind of overlooked a much more relevant reason for Venice's decline which is the ability of many other European nations to go around it. The main reason the noble families hoarded power so much was because there was less and less of it so they tried to hold on hard to what little was left. However by doing that they only accelerated the decline even further. It's the classic case of an empire falling and warlords fighting for the scraps but just in economic terms.

The navy could have cut off all international trade and fishing as well as control the most important rivers. If anything the navy could have done a much much better job at cutting off the population from key ressources if they ever wanted to.

@@KT-pv3kl IF it wanted to. Which is why when the prime minister during the great potato famine ordered Ireland blocked from foreign aid (because "it would bring shame upon Britain to accept foreign aid" and also undercut his agenda of starving the irish into accepting industrialization) the navy did one heck of a shitty job stopping vessels filled with food from reaching the starving irish.

Funny enough, this argument is flawed in a similarly oversimplified way. Just as other country's magna-carta equivalents did not lead to liberty, living the island life was not necessarily a recipe for freedom (Japan comes to mind). Though perhaps they are both correlated with liberty, being on an island certainly keeps empires at bay (Japan, once again, comes to mind).

@@lardo1990 Well, England was unified, so it could afford to have a smaller army, while Japan was in basically constant civil war and/or a proto-military dictatorship, so it had to had a big army. I agree with you that both arguments are flawed, but neither is entirely wrong.

@@12D_D21 and one Japan unified It did become somewhat democratic for a time.

Two ways to take that: 1. Right: "Ah-ha! We must ensure a large well funded military!" 2. Left: "Ah-ha! We must have 95% tax rate!" :)

The problem is, most people don't see beyond their self interest. Short term (few years or few decades) benefit for a group of people could mean a burden for all others and, after a while, even a problem for those who initially benefited from the change.

@@bozimmerman other way around

Well, you won't be surprised by that at all if you listen to modern right wingers at all

@@tj-co9go Same with American left wingers

@@novastar6112 American left wingers are basically right wingers elsewhere. At least in major parts of Europe. In Finland I think Democrats would be right of all our current parties

I recall watching a video about the ottoman invasion that broke the nation some years ago. It was just shortly mentioned how the nobels had weakend the nation to the point of no return at that point and that even the ottoman sultan felt bad for fallen boy king. It was so absurd to see and then read about. It stuck with me like nothing else. It made me extremly hostile to anything that seems to weaken a nation for "profits". It has become a cornerstone for my national conserns. Really glad Kraut took this subject up

@@tj-co9go no fucking way the Democrats are to the right of True Finns

That's a Polandball thing

Why an octopus?

@@frituurpan31 it represents the trade routes, something along those lines.

Tea bag ftw

@@luisnemecioaguirreflores2284 Nah, it's because the Venician flag has tentacle-like fringes/pennants

The MC didn't destroy feudalism, but it did curtail royal absolutism, as opposed to what happened in France. So that's something, right?

@@hoi-polloi1863 Yeah, the UK somehow struck a balance between mostly figure head monarch and a relatively healthy parliamentary gathering (while France had a far too strong king ending in riot and revolt, while Hungary had overly strong/corrupt aristocrats weakening the state to the point of mass rioting, if not for the Ottoman annexation).

So the events of 200 years prior?

The real birth of modern democracy was the English Civil Wars, and the development of compromise between fundamentally incompatible political worldviews into a single political system. The Magna Carta could have been that point, but the conflict really only formalised the previously informal relationship between the barons & the nobility.

I think the biggest proof of your argument is the fact that the feudal system would continue to exist largely unchanged with the exception of the addition of a parliament for another 200 years, only breaking down in 15th century England with the combined whammies of the Black Death, Hundred Years War, and the War of the Roses, with the rise of the centralized Tudor dynasty. And even then it wasn't until the English Civil War where the compromise between Parliament and the Crown came to be in regards to sharing power.

There's also the fact that using an octopus to represent encroaching power and influence has been a thing in political cartoons for almost 2 centuries.

@@SeruraRenge11 That would be true, but it has head flaps and a halo, and her headband, and says "wah", so it's 100% a hololive reference

@@CSDragon No I know it is, I just mean it works as a double reference.

@@SeruraRenge11 ah yeah. That's why it was an octopus in the first place, but the artist decided to make it _our_ octopus :D

23:15

chad

imposter. im the real joe carr

I think you should be given honourary scotish citizenship, for deep frying your arm :)

I've also never heard it referenced in a positive light either. Nor was the expansion of government reach seen as a win for the people but a changing of concentrated power into different hands.

Not to mention right now too

Certainly a bad thing on his part

@@clbrans1 The Muckrakers are the only thing I can think of that are talked about in a positive light. That and Teddy Roosevelt.

@@atticusroot8016 that’s the progressive age. The guilded age was before that

Truly the moment ever

Epic hunger moment

Hungary Hungary hippos

The Hungary Games?

as if england didnt

And that the ottomans literally prohibited trade with the east which is the main reason why the Americas were discovered. It's crazy how he didn't mention that before the ottomans there were the Arabs who allowed trade and then the ottomans came and forbade it, which negated the main reason for Venice's existence. Then ottomans conquered many venecian outposts, the Portuguese discovered a new route around Africa and the Spanish literally discovered a new continent. Now the Mediterranean's importance was fading away as a new model of trade, the triangular trade, became the norm. Yet he managed to blame it all on free markets somehow...

Might’ve been able to turn it around, if not for _FUCKING NAPOLEON_ showing up.

@@benismann Thing is is that England was huge, Venice was not.

@@benismann England also had a channel between them and all their enemies, making it much harder for enemies to actually sack England and deal serious damage ti the mainland

That's why I always use air fryer 😁

@@Zeyede_Siyum clearly you own an air fryer

Good health to you bro🥂

You can't tell me what to do

I DO WHAT I WANT

hope you are doing well too

@@Kraut_the_Parrot I'm trying brother 🥰

@@Kraut_the_Parrot Hi Kraut! Still waiting a video on the thought of European Sphere of Influence (to finally break free from the Anglo-American influence) and the decay of American dominance on the liberal world (although it seems to be on the rise again).

@@hughlevantjames905 why would he make a video about something that's not happening tho? The US has remained a stable 1/4 of the world's economy for a long time and been 1 of 2 or the only superpower also for a long time, and Europe (who are not the only ones) relies heavily on the US for certain things like military. Meanwhile Europe has been becoming a smaller portion of the world economy, its geopolitical prominence has been shrinking, and the only parts of Europe which aren't 100% in the American sphere of influence are those which have some influence of Russia and/or China as well or instead. The only ways in which Europe projects any influence on the rest of the world at all is that the French and British still desperately try to cling on to their former empires in the British commonwealth and whatever France calls its whole deal of filling West Africa with their military

@@kevincronk7981 Dunno where you're getting your data but the US has had a similar fall in share of the world GDP as the EU. (Excluding the dip from the UK.) The EU is constantly forcing their own rules onto huge multinational corporations and EU corporations still have an (unfair,) stranglehold over much of Africa's and South America's resources with a good part of Asia as well. Chinese growth appears to be peaking with their construction industry for one finally starting to fall. (Construction industry is usually a good economic health indicator.) US influence in Europe has certainly declined massively, especially due to the previous president sabotaging many things. Less and less the EU looks to the US while more and more they criticise it.

Most interesting is that, they actually do!

As a Swiss, I actually enjoy being in a country which does not have a large bias as we didn't really take part in imperialism or expansionism and like the small village in Asterix and Obelix stayed for ourselves, mainly fought with each other or with invaders and primarily grew by territories wanting to join us. At least that's how I remember it. Unfortunately we are inevidably less important in the grand scheme of war history and politics, so there isn't much content out there to challenge those memories that stuck with me from the unusually boring history lessons. (our own history always felt a bit boring and between 1291 and the french occupation, not a lot has happened besides some quarrels between regions and churches) Anyways, because of this lack of bias, I tend to believe we don't receive a distorted image like Russia teaches about Stalin being a great guy and enemy of Hitler rather than being a Russian version of him that just got backstabbed before backstabbing him or America as the great sole savior of Europe during WWII rather than just being a part of the Allies.

@@HighFlyer96 As an American. I was never educated on history in such a way. I believe you’re talking mostly about rural America lol.

@@conlanvanhook2452as a rural American, we’ve always labeled it as the “arsenal of democracy”, but never as the “savior of democracy”

@@americannightmare425 Because theirs a lack of intelligence

what is a Hungry? There's no way you misspelled it twice

Ok it's fixed

Not to mention that the heavy handedness of the aristocracy towards the common people caused a large scale rebellion headed Gyorgy Dosza. And that fatally wounded national unity, which led to the catastrophe at Mohacs.

Wanna know the best part? Even after Hungary was conquered by the Ottomans, the aristocracy still managed to extract taxes from almost all their former lands. Villages were forced to pay taxes to their Hungarian hereditary landlords (in exile in Austria), their Ottoman direct overlords, and often to the Catholic church as well. The noble families even managed to negotiate an even better deal from the Habsburg monarchy after their lands were reconquered in the eighteenth century, so much so that they repeatedly obstructed attempts by the emperors to end serfdom and guarantee civil rights! Aristocrats are scum.

@Kraus von Grat Fair point since aristocracy basically is a subset of timocracy

Did you also have to do military service?

@@DimesAndNichols it’s required

@@DimesAndNichols all Koreans do, BTS apparently got drafted and in the north they also do but much longer

​@@edp4463 BTS went against the wishes of the government, afaik

@@edp4463 wait can we send BTS to North Korea?

The general problem with government intervention and regulation that a lot people choose to ignore is that it can just easily be used to hurt the general populace as help it.

@@guppy719 Argentina is a good example of this. On top of that you gotta add that the spam of so many supports to the poor through use of Welfare State policies, plust the regulation and manipulation of the market that messes up the prices, creating desemployment and raising the poverty line, created a culture of expecting always help from the govertment, which ultimately establishes absolute support to the party whom benefits you the most. There is nothing more vile than this, because it causes a lot of people who work and pay taxes(Be bussiness owners, non-irregular workers. Yes we pay high taxes as if we were in a nordic country) to be hateful or agaist of such policies, which makes a lot of the supporters of the party that promotes this bs, in turn, to mark those who protest as "Gorilas", or basically, people who hate the poor.

​@@guppy719regulation is often only applied so far that it actually destroys competition for large corporations and banks rather than disrupt the bad business practices. Its a terrible balance.

Also, Hungary’s geography made it much more vulnerable to outside invasion than England, which is surrounded by water, and famously expanded its naval might through the very lucrative art of piracy, rather than any monarch’s efforts.

The Golden Book - which restricts government control to the oligarchy - predated the decline of Mediterreannean Trade.

The argumentation is a copy of the argumentation from the book Why Nations Fail. The writers, and Kraut, only focuson the existance of inclusive institutions to create a healthy and prospering society. This is indeed a bit monocausal

This is ESPECIALLY true for Venice and Genoa, whose declines in the wake of the discovery of the Americas is well-observed. Kraut’s videos often suffer from this phenomenon of turning complex issues into mono causal events that respond exclusively to whatever he’s arguing, even if they contradict each other.

@@vitorboldrini6337 So the equivalent of expanding the english navy, for hungary, would be expanding it's army. But hungary cut it's army budget by lowering taxes.

I was looking for this comment!

wahnderful

Truly WAHnderful!!! W A H!!

And oh my, the WAH, the tenticles, the world domINAtion, and the FLAT tax. Why it's so perfect fitting. Maybe all billionaires are TAKOdachi XDXD

Humu humu

That is true. Just nobody likes talking about the end.

Not storytime. Propoganda.

Well the fact that Christians have created their own creation museums in challenge to the scientific method does show what U.S. education has become.

@@ludgeisatmcdonalds Pretty much. The unsavory origins of history education is as state propaganda to justify the state and society in its present form.

that's not just the US, as @joe lee said, it's propaganda, and every modern state requires constant propaganda

Whig historicism can't reasonably be separated from Liberalism. One can't critique the idea of inevitable progress without also critiquing the movements which have affected the changes which are then held up as examples of progress.

@@rwatertree popper was an explicitly liberal writer whose critique of historicism is ultra foundational. I think you can absolutely criticize any teleological historicism without throwing liberalism as a whole in the trash, lmfao.

@Zioptis eh, there aren't any serious alternatives that have been founded yet.

But Kraut *is* a reactionary.

@Zioptis The way forward after liberalism is for a work in progress that's still going on for, idk, about 200 ish years or so?

Kraut videos are not complete with out ravignon in the comments

Never thought I'd find a fellow Takodachi on a Kraut video. Edit: Just spotted it!

nah historical materialism ftw

@@solgato5186 Historical materialism is just looking at history in a very narrow way to justify your ideology

WAH!

How dare you point out an inconvenient fact which contradict the narrative< Its not like the starting premise (the fall of Hungary and the Golden Bull) was not a straight-up oversimplification of the story and at best honest but gross mistake (and at worst outright rewriting history). The Hungarian nobolity resented and hated the Black Army, because it was the very embodiment of going toward the other extreme - the king, Mathias Hunyadi who basically founded it was very literally the first absolute monarch, who trampled over ANYONE who opposed him, put ridicolously high taxes on the peasentry to finance he's dreams to become the Emperor of the HRe though conquest etc.). For ALL (i repeat, ALL) fabric of Hungarian Society the Black Army was the symbol of oppression - even though the rest of society jsut got a other tyrant back, namely the nobility. That and the Hungarian nobolity was basically in a 120 year long constant civil war, where the Western half of the nobolity wanted a Habsburg ruler and the Eastern half wanted a Polish/Hungarian one. And Kraut CONVENIENTLY left out a very important detail in this regard too: the King of Hungary is elected by the nobility since its foundation. Its the legacy of the Magyar tribal Confederacy, where the 7 tribes elected its Tribal High Chief AND the High Priest (the Kende and Kundu in Hungarian - dont ask which one is which, that is lost in History). And the most invonvenient fact of all: Hungary is NOT destroyed by the Ottoman invasion. It was split into three (the Transylvanian Principality, which claimed itself to be the legitimate claimant of ALL of Hungary and the Throne of Hungary), the Austrian controled Royal Hungary and the ottoman occupied territory. Besides the occupied territory Hungary de facto existed up until this very day - its institutions remained, the nobility's right to elect the king remained until the Pragmatica Sanctio was passed by Maria Theresia, the Hungarian Diet remained up until 1848 and the Austrian Emperors are almost every year forced to call it. In fact Hungary was the ONLY continental European nation which didnt experienced Absolutism for more than a decade or two thought history. And all of that is actually thanks to the Hungarian Golden Bull, the doccument which allegedly killed the country. Despite the country bascially existed in all except name until 1848. Andeven then a short year after the Habsubrg Empire is basically forced to become the Austro-Hungarian Empire... Hungary ceased to exist for 20 year, what a tragedy... in exchange of avoiding ALL the absolutism shit the rest of the continent suffered and up until WW1 having the EXACT SAME legislative developments as the UK or the US. And even that is only stopped because the Western powers screwed us over. Hard time. Personally i didnt even bothered watching further than the 7:30 mark. If by that point the premise is wrong on SO MANY LEVEL i dont see the point of hearing it out further.

Well having an entrenched oligarchy certainly didn’t help.

Youre entirely misunderstanding the use of the word, in this instance, bwcause of your odd sensitivities. Illiteracy

indeed, my man kraut need more respect for his work, its top tier

Jedes Mal, wenn Kraut ein neues Video veröffentlicht, lerne ich viele neue Dinge. Er schafft es jedes Mal, mich zu überraschen.* The words are all correct, but german punctuation is sometimes a little tricky. The Problem with your version is, that the first sentence says:" Everytime, when Kraut releases a new video." And your second sentence:" I learn many new things, He always manages to surprise me." As you can see, you merely need to move the "I learn many new things" to the first sentence and adjust the word-order accordingly. A trick, that is taught to us germans, is to check if the mainclause makes sense without the subordinate clause, as the subordinate clause is only meant to give more information. In this case it would be:" Jedes Mal lerne ich viele neue Dinge"/"Everytime I learn many new things" and the additional information is:" wenn Kraut ein neues Video veröffentlicht"/"when Kraut releases a new video".

True

@@koschmx i love your comment

@@koschmx Damn, I just wanted to Help him improve. I guess you really are right about that aspect of german culture. xD

He's not bad on stream either. I wish he did more content.

Dog this vid came out 5 mins ago how do you know what the video is like

@@glue6143 I dont yet, I just wanted to say that I loved all his previous videos :)

Kraut post a video I have to share to all my friends and like it with 5 different RU-vid accounts that i created to like his videos

It's amazing how this known liar is still around lol.

A Liberal Democracy is just as capable of being cruel to foreign nations/people as Dictatorships. More to the point, the Glorious Revolution was touted as a starting point for Liberalism. It having immense inequalities doesn't diminish that.

The personal is political, as ever. How tedious. You're as guilty of the "whiggism" the English author of the concept was trying to convey.

@@stephenjenkins7971 That’s fair enough, I understand that ultimately the Glorious Revolution did end the attempt to bring Absolutism to Britain and that it’s constitutional monarchy would be built on those foundations. But you’re more than correct to say it’s inequalities are much more apparent under an apparently democratic parliament than they are under a feudal monarch. For example, Catholics and Jews had to wait until the Victorian age to be granted the same rights and freedoms that Protestant Englishmen were granted by the Glorious Revolution.

The people who set the Glorious Revolution in motion were of course hypocrites as the Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland so proves but it doesn't detract it's historical importance in the evolution of parliamentary democracy in the British Isles, the US (it was an important source of inspiration their founding fathers) and elsewhere

@@vatsal7640 As far as I know Cromwell merely allowed Jews to return to Britain, specifically England during his regime. Daniel O’Connell, the leader of the Catholic Emancipation movement, even advocated for a law ordering Jews to wear a Star of David on it to be removed.

Concepts don't need to be known by name. Sometimes just living their spirit, thinking alongside their lines is enough for that concept to influence how you see the world. This happens because we don't live in a vacuum and constantly take info from the surroundings, getting our worldview changed by the speech communities we partake in. So even if you knew liberal history late in your life, it probably influenced much of your interpretation of the world in the years prior. It's the prevailing narrative of history in the west of today.

Man Thai history sounds interesting, you get any books or sites I could search to find + learn this information

@@8kuji The problem with "A History of Thailand" by Baker and Phongpaichit is that it skips much of the Sukhothai and Ayutthaya periods, although it is understandable considering their themes with the book.

@@8kuji If you're into lectures, check out the RU-vid channels FCCT (Foreign Correspondents of Thailand) and the Siam Society.

@@8kuji For books (recommended to me on askhistorians): "Thailand: A Short History" (3rd edition) by David K. Wyatt. and "A History of Thailand" by Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit (4th edition for this book is coming out very soon).

And in Ivan Nagy, the premiere danseur par excellence.

@@lizannewhitlow1085 sorry I only know English, what does that mean?

@@kevincronk7981 Ivan Nagy was a handsome famous male ballet dancer and a Hungarian hero. World class!

just be careful not to use only Hungarian sources, their neighbours have quite different view of history than them. For start do not use that map. Greetings from Croatia :-D

@@ivanjovic6287 maybe Hungary's neighbors are in wrong and need a history lesson

Lads kinda walked into it making their flag like that.

spaghetti monster could also work

Wah

Wait what

23:14 Oooohhhh. Kraut is a Tako confirm?

Wah!

Oligarch takodachi

Well it did in the 300s by the anglosaxons, in the 800s by the danes, and in 1000s by the normans..

All hail the priestess

Lmao I'm glad I am not the only one that noticed it.

Yeah it’s an ina reference, she even said Wah! After she died lol

They were not so deep-thinking and studious people as American propaganda portraits them.

@@novinceinhosic3531 They were put through the typical Classical education which was rigorous.

ALL HAIL THE WAH

Isn't that just another way to say that humans will always be flawed in some way?

As a person inclined towards authoritarianism, the video was still valuable for me

@@jensjensen9035 What makes you inclined towards authoritarianism?

@@Fractured_Unity (domination fetish)

@@Fractured_Unity seeing how stupid the majority of society is for one

@@user-zj6hn4nb1m But plenty of authoritarian leaders are stupid. At least in democracy there’s a higher chance of holding those in power responsible. There are more incentives for competent leadership in democracy than authoritarianism

Brietannia the legend! Loved your video on why Wales & Scotland have parliaments and the possibilities of devolution etc. Really wish more people watched your videos 🙌

@@lordgemini2376 Appreciate the kind words! tbf my channel has only been posting content since mid September 2021, so to be on over 2k subs is pretty good imo.

Agreed, but many of these companies do share similarities with the robber barons(corporate lobbying and illegal union-busting come to mind). Not to mention that some industries(like online shopping and space travel) are only accessible to very large corporations due to the expenses required to ship items overseas or to build rockets. Many of these new industries, just like the ones of the 1800s, are monopolized by billionaires because you need money to make more money, and this holds especially true for new or expensive technology.

@@nepdep1945 The union-busting thing, to me at least, is complicated. Unions have a bit of a mixed history in the US. On the one hand, they're responsible for several of our current labor laws, which is undoubtedly a positive. On the other hand, the UAW (United Autoworkers Union) is almost directly responsible for the suppression of electric cars. They correctly assumed the electric powertrain of a battery electric vehicle requires none of the competencies of an internal combustion engine. In the interest of protecting jobs, they vigorously fought against electric vehicles - and still do somewhat to this day. It's not hard to see why Tesla would be wary of the UAW. To expand on that, the teachers union and police union are both widely regarded as being a net negative - since they block the firing of bad teachers and bad cops. Europe, I think generally, has had a better experience with unions - though with the recent Volkswagen scandals I'm not sure if that's actually true.

Those in the U.S may not refer to it as "whig history," but it definitely has is own version of it. In some circles, it's implied with American exceptionalism talking points, but it can also be seen whenever people use the phrase "the right side of history" when fighting for causes. This suggests that the cause will inevitably win and be socially accepted, leaving the opposition to be derided by future generations. But there's no guarantee of this.

Anarcho capitalists aren't interested in equality or the greater good. Their idea of a level playing field is that everyone (and particularly themselves) should not be hindered by the state to create monopolies.

Adam Something did a series of videos highlighting what happens in an Anarcho-capitalist society.

The problem is that those monopolies in US were created or legitimized with the help of the government. We don't know what markets would look like or develop without the government as a third party. The example of corporate owners asking state forces to crush strikes is a perfect example of this

@@cv4809 we have a pretty good idea during the gilded age though. Corporations with no regulation, free to do whatever they want. So they hired mercenaries to kill dissidents, replaced men, women, and children when they got injured or died in the dangerous factories. And to make sure they kept making profits they put guns to their employee’s and debter’s heads to vote for who they want in power. That all happened because the government refused to get involved in the free market until Roosevelt.

I think anarchy in general has this criticism that eventually some kind of state will form, be it left or right wing anarchy.

Although I don't think the background music is too loud but rather the voice is too low.

Agreed. While subtitles would be fine, I'd like if Kraut upped his own volume

or, idk, add such simple thing called "subtitles" :/

The current Uk conservatives have a long history of change and enfranchisement. They gave the women the vote and they also gave all men the vote in 1918 with the liberal PM Lloyd George (thatchers favourite PM after churchill) and David Cameron passing the same sex marriage Act. People like to pretend they don't change anything or like they are anything in comparison to the American republicans but they aren't. They are the most successful conservative party in Europe for a reason. They generally don't believe in radical change same as the majority of the country but their deeply held liberalism unlike the American religious conservatism means they naturally believe in change albeit at a slower, less radical pace. Thatcher being the exception as she was a Conservative radical

The Golden Bull should then serve as a reminder that changes in power structures are not always positive developments, no matter how it looks on the surface.

@baconsir1159 sure, look at France on their 5th Republic, clearly their doing something wrong by abandoning their institutions everytime it gets tough

Wah...

I don't know much about coal workers, but I know with your other 2 examples those were cases where there was such public outrage that the government made changes so that was no longer the case

Those are almost all cases with immigrants. Guess where such things happen in the modern day? The exception is the coal mining region where the process of taking power from business and moving it to the civil service was followed by vigorous attempts to eliminate the coal mining business. Power doesn't disappear and if you give it to people with no stake in anything they will burn everything down just to use it.

That type of thing was common everywhere in that era. Not a dismissal or justification, but shit conditions in factories and such was par for the course and not uniquely American.

What where?

@@josephstalin3508 23:15

Try to take comfort in the fact that things could always be worse. Chances are that you live a vastly more comfortable lifestyle than about 99.999% of all the total humans who lived in the past or present

@@gregbors8364 This. Fact is that humanity's current state is about the best it has ever been in its existence. The point is not to despair, but be aware and not allow it to degrade.

@@gregbors8364 nowadays (in first world countries) is definitely better than just about any other time since the invention of agriculture, but I've seen pretty plausible arguments that life may have been better back when we were all hunter-gatherers. I don't personally think that's true, I think life may have been worse after the advent of agriculture than before it, but I still think living in the US today is better than any life as a hunter gatherer. But it's a pretty interesting idea.

@@stephenjenkins7971 The only path that leads not to degradation is the willing graceful and respectful decay. The one free from malice and the clinging to power. All attempts to preserve and continue on are ultimately identical to choosing a violent malevolent degradation as that is all that awaits you in the end.

true tako over here