The numbers since 2022 are to be taken with a bucket of salt.
And it's undeniable that the whole country is falling backwards - the economy is in tatters with high inflation, high interest rates , severe economic and kinetic damage to the main revenue generating activities (export of oil, gas, raw materials, military equipment), a poorly hidden ballooning debt crisis. And worst of all, a leader who cannot admit defeat so can't get the country out of the quagmire. So things will get a whole lot worse before there's any chance of them getting better.
Since your other comment got rightfully flagged, I'll respond to you here.
The numbers from 2024 are reflective of the complete disappearance of russia from global markets. For instance, there have been no military procurement deals after 2023, only deliveries of previously ordered stuff.
The poorly hidden debt crisis is within the regions paying the death and recruitment bonuses, and the military contractors forced to sell at a loss and being propped up by state backed loans (one went bankrupt recently). Neither of those show up on official state debt numbers, but are unquestionably a problem for the state budget to fix. The one where 50% is being wasted to achieve nothing in Ukraine. At the best of times there are a few kilometres here and there, but even that is over now.
Ukrainians still unequivocally support keeping the war until russia agrees to leave them the fuck alone, and they get security guarantees (if you think you have polls saying otherwise, look again in the questions and answers, a tiny majority are ready to surrender Eastern Ukraine to end the war now, but practically nobody is willing to do so without guarantees). Those are achievable objectives. On the other side the leadership cannot admit defeat or they'll get toppled, and has no hope of achieving anything they could spin as a victory. So they keep wasting human lives to prolong the inevitable defeat.
No, this isn't a natural law of the universe. Sometimes thing get worse and then stay bad for a long, long time. We happen to exist in a relatively stable, prosperous period. We have used that prosperity to build a system that is more complex and brittle than any time in the history of the species. It won't be pretty when we reach the inevitable crisis.
The people in charge have never seen suffering and don't understand the essential role they have in preventing it. Instead they're disassembling the plane for parts while we hurtle toward the ground.
There's so many variants of prisoner's dilemma at this point which have their own winner I give up tracking. I've heard the most "realistic" one have titfortat as winner, but I've also heard that in certain population mixture, the one who defect more wins.
Sure, it's a bit of an absurdity eventually, but when we talk about what we're actually trying to talk about with prisoner's dilemma, which is interpersonal and intergroup interaction, publicly announcing intent to collaborate and then consistently following through on that promise, seems to yield the most desirable results.
Social media (et al) already know each user's age.
They could "protect the children" at will. They simply choose not to.
Why this kabuki?
"Yes, please, regulate us" while making any formal regulation moot?
Directing attention away from the bot plague?
Pushing age verification to protect their algorithmic hate machines?
Monkey motion to avoid talking about true privacy? (Specifically, all data encrypted *at rest* using translucent database strategies.)
In conclusion, I can't treat these age verification proposals as good faith efforts while the core rot of the social medias remain unmitigated.
I loved that era. I was a BBSer from about 1988 through 1994 or so, on several systems with FidoNet and RelayNet / RIME. I also ran my own BBS for a while, eventually it had some Usenet newsgroups and Internet email through UUCP (anyone remember bang paths?)
What I miss most is the local community aspect. In my teens and early 20's I met several friends through BBSes.
Pick a target amount of inequity. Act to hit that goal. Adjust as needed.
For example, I advocate restoring our gini coefficient from the current 0.48 (?) back to 1970s era 0.35. People smarter than me will figure out how to best measure inequity, ideal targets, and implementation details.
Arguing about all the misc tax rates, purposefully ignoring the macro, is an obfuscation strategy to prevent taking any action at all. Straight out of the CIA's field guide on sabotage.
Edit: "civic religion" aha. Sorry, I should have guessed you were trolling. Can't wait to see what kind of revolution you cook up.
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