I have to disagree here. The carpenter would ultimately had a similar quality of life with empire or without… Life in the west would be very different for sure, but i would not qualify it as worse. Consumerism would be replaced by a far more sustainable lifestyle and we would have replaced our incentives based on GDP long ago, but does not mean less quality of life, just a more just one.

I hear you Cowbee! I’ll be be reading that wiki page latter on today. But again, the regular European carpenter does not benefit from an “exploited” cheaper iron ore in the form of cheaper nails… Not even from cheaper wood, if anything, people will appreciate more wood and hire more carpenters to fix wood cabinets rather than dispose after being worn out… It is a complicated economy…Companies like Ikea do indeed benefit from exploitation, but not the Slovenian carpenter with a market with cheaper wood and cheaper nails.

Now, you could go with　that Ikea does benefit, so that those companies pay taxes that the carpenter will ultimately benefit from… I could see that, but, again, we know that these large corporation do not pay their fair taxes, let alone, compensate for the negative externalities they create, so i do see no net benefit to the average EU citizen on the exploitation their countries participate on.

That would be nice to debate, but I hardly see how that is possible. I see you posted that the EU does colonialism in Africa… The EU per se, only finances some NGOs that may have some hidden agenda but hardly substantial in those countries. The other EU’s domain is to assign free trade agreements with the poorest countries, but I don’t think it is conditional and hard to see as malicious. Now, the EU is clearly now exercising power well beyond its mandate and, what it is worse, for evil… Gosh, it is now even blatantly violitig it is own laws. What I do see exercising colonialism is by some member states, usually correlated with its own GDP and that they now shield themselves behind the EU flag.

That is what many “anti-colonial” gets wrong… they see it as a “white” vs “colored”; it is power against powerless. A carpenter in Slovenia does not have anything to do with colonialism in Africa, Americas or Asia, neither does a farmer in Salisbury or a fisherman in Bilbao… but their white vs colored argument is gold for the architects of colonialism since it shovels that carpenter, farmer and fisherman toward the powers be just for the skin color. Let us remember that groups of people, before embarking in colonialism, did not have any problem abusing and killing the neighbor. Racial distinction only became far more prominent in recent history.

When a neighbor to one side of your home actively participates is genocidal intent, and the other neighbor in the other side also does the same but he smiles at you and even lends you a cup of sugar when needed… I am sorry, but there is no “lesser evil” here… I will vote for anyone but any of them, even if there is no chance it will make a difference now!

However… that is not a ‘wasted’ vote, but actually an extremely important one… although for a longer term, for following elections. If Democrats see that they loose an election because they loose 3% of typical votes to a third party, they will try to accommodate the concerns of that 3% next time around. If that 3% keeps voting Democrats, there is no incentive to change. The same applies for the Republican side. If the big political parties don’t address that still, magic can happen, out of the blue, that 3% can become a 13% movement and donations start coming and in two or three years you have a chance of introducing a capable third party… either way is a win.

No voting, in theory, should have a similar wake-up power as a vote for a third party, but in reality it does not… in the mind of politicians it a much costlier vote to get to it ends usually dismissed as a lost cause; they don’t take much reading into 25% or 45% absentee vote… but 1% vote loss to the other side or a third party is watched as a hack, specially in highly polarized elections when it is hard to compensate that 1% loss with voters from the other side!

So mark what is your critical red lines and if no major party respects them, do vote for anyone, anyone that does, no mater how small… don’t try to do short-term political engineering since political parties have thousands of people far more capable than any of us at doing political engineering and start throwing around catchphrases such as “lesser evil” or that the other side is “fascist/communist” that is solely designed to leave you parallelized.

Finally, it is the problem of political deception. When it is so blatant in both sides, the same principle applies, vote for anyone, anyone that has not lied on your red lines so far, make your mark that you are sick of deceptions so politicians know they have to address it. Again, don’t try to find the lesser evil while indicating your neighbor that smiles at you, that you are okay tolerating with his crimes and deceptions.

Lovely and well researched post… till I see the “tend to be people who also believe that they’re being monitored by the CIA, or that Covid vaccines are implanting mind-control receivers.…”. I find it problematic that both are considered as the same type; there is an incredible abundant evidence that security apparatus of different countries (not necessarily just the CIA that ’ technically’ can only operate in non-Americans) are indeed scrutinizing phone’s data to well beyond what we would consider “the regular suspects”… way beyond! The other, is just people that, while rightly so can be skeptical of government intentions with global mandates, they hide behind that paranoia for their lack of technical and intend knowledge. As the meme says… “we are not the same”.

As for GrapheneOS vs Lineage OS, I am torn. For the majority of people, as of today, LineageOS is just fine… I like that it brings diversity of hardware too since it discourages governments from having to intend to compromise different manufacturers (thing that GOS faults at). Now, more people in GrapheneOS will bring awareness too and more privacy conscious apps. So, for majority of people, do install LineageOS (or their variants), you will be taken good care of… However, for a minority of people, minority but not tiny! you know who you are, you will do better with grapheneOS (hope someone is scrutinizing both GOS and the Pixel hardware though).