u/RandomGuy2285

this could have only happened in Europe, in other places that aren't super poor, they would straightforwardly buy ACs or consume more Energy, in India or Southeast Asia or Latin America or the developing World, they (or we or us?) are just gonna use more AC and Energy and that's a big trend in the past few decades, of course a heat wave still happens and isn't fun and the infrastructure might be lacking, but at least more is being built and the direction and idea is clear

however the Europeans won't do it for Ideological reasons and it's not like they can't afford the ACs made in Asia, it's a few hundred bucks, maybe more because dollar stuff, but the energy costs to run it in the Energy hellscape of a continent, also to be fair, their cites and Grid for a long time wasn't built for that sort of heat and even today it's like a few days a year

but the Energy thing is the really damning one, and if these Europeans are complaining this much online, and they've been ranting about this the past few years every summer and expect more of this, just either fucking buy the thing and shut up or admit you can't pay the bills and then you're energy policies were idiotic and the Americans have something

a bit angry, but whatever... I'ma straighten up

and as for the setup, and look, it's just some Window modifications or Holes on a brick wall, and changing electrical modes, China would have done this very quickly, sure the fundamental design of the homes mean there would be issues, but that's life and you adjust, it's not like it's Impossible

or either just admit your labor situation is so fucked you can't do shit, and I like workers being well paid and Uniformed but not to the point that the whole point of their job can't be done, I'm sorry, that and maybe the drill itself is too expensive to run and the bricks are expensive to be made in Europe, which itself ties back to the Energy issue

and as always this is a compromise, cost-risk-benefit is something the Western World really needs to figure out, it seems the West has a problem with doing very basic stuff at scale, as with the Americans with Face Masks, or fixing Potholes

and then you realize this energy crisis and inability to do things out of capacity decline and risk-aversion goes into literally everything

• Europe does not have it's own Internet or AI, despite having a Population of 450 Million, Russia which has a third the Population and a Fraction of the Economy has Yandex or Telegram
• the German Mittlestand and the Central European Automotives, these century Old Companies and pride and joy, are being outcompeted left right and center by China, maybe this also has something to do with the Energy
• while Americans love praising it because of their own dysfunctional Healthcare system, the Public Healthcare system has become a nightmare of it's own with long wait times, part of this is Aging, part of this is Talent Decline, also Expensive Machines, then again I wonder that all of those might themselves have something to do with Energy? how much does an MRI machine cost? what kinds of salaries you pay your specialists in a scarce system, the Job Market being hell, this goes into just systems in general
• you got horror stories where the European Parliament was not air conditioned except for the top floors (where the higher level bureaucrats worked) so the lower-level bureaucrats don't get AC, or European Branches unable to run their Computers or Servers because it's so Hot
• I might also add Europeans driving less or having less Appliances in general besides AC and the Joke is that Europeans and Asians hang their Clothes while Americans have washing Machines and Dryers and Drive everywhere, and Asians dream for something like that, the often explicit goal is to achieve the Western especially American Middle Class lifestyle, the Europeans just make do with less and live with it and take some pride, okay, maybe there's something about "doing more with less", I kinda like Swedish/Dutch Minimalist Apartments or IKEA furniture and I like good public transit (also more efficient) and don't like Driving, but I feel like when People can't afford ACs/Heating and everything is expensive, 8 Dollar Pastries and while inflation in the 2020s is something, the rise in prices of European stuff at my Grocery is just something, and Industrial losses left right and center, this is getting too far

to be honest, the whole problem with Bureaucracy is somewhat overstated by the American Right, Europe has always been more statist than America for cultural reasons and under competent leadership like De Gaulle with the TGV, Airbus, or French Nuclear Fleet, this can end really well

once you're acting like a dunce in Energy though, literally one of the basics in National Development is energy, stuff you advice third world countries to develop in UN drafts, well, I almost don't care about your Politics or Economics, starve any System of resources and energy and it will die, in the most literal sense, all organisms run from energy from sunlight, the food they eat, or Photosynthesis, and a Nation or Civilization grows it's food from sunlight or mines coal from sunlight long ago or processes Uranium that has absurd calorie densities with brains

at least for America you can have fun blaming systems or who or that, although the Americans are also guilty with their own overregulation and NIMBYism and while they didn't shut down their Nuclear Plants like Germany, they stopped building 40 years ago, and they offshored their manufacturing like Europe, in Europe, it's becoming embarrassingly simple

it's a bit ironic that the Industrial Revolution started in Europe because of abundant Coal in Britain or Belgium or Czechia and Deposits, but Europe's unwilling to burn Coal for environmental reasons, and they're also unwilling to maybe Import very tiny amounts of Uranium and Nuclear Material (might as well be Coal, a Solid Mineral, but Overpowered, the amounts are so small they're not bound by scale constraints, you can literally Smuggle it, that's it's beauty in a way, but have it's own constraints like requiring a skilled workforce that Europe has or at least used to have but they can be retrained)

but if they're unwilling to do both, then I guess Europe is just unlucky to have nothing like the Permian Basin with lots of Oil, the difference between Coal and Oil is mainly for vehicles or Mobility, Coal is a heavy Rock and Oil is a liquid and Oil is more immediate and dosen't require as much complexity to handle

and as for Renewables, People talk a lot about Solar and Batteries but that requires a lot of Industry because it's about mass, the panels, Batteries, blades, Nuclear and Oil, Coal, not so much, it's a few fairly compact facilities, China dominates this straightforwardly because that have a massive Industrial base, Coal is the cheap way to build that, but why not Nuclear? the West likes small talented teams anyway, and once you have the Renewables then plug it to get even more Energy Abundance

and I could think of so many "futuristic" things to be be done with 10x the energy generation of today and just brute force

• you could desalinate water so cheap water and utilities for your Population and Industry
• if Vertical Farming or Lab Grown Meat (the same basic technology for all lab-generated food, in a facility with national security implications for both war and climate change and also for space colonization), energy definitely is the main constraint there, Vertical Farming has long been more efficient per space from the start, it's just that sunlight is free and wiring and bulbs and electricity aren't
• also, it looks like AI's main constraint right now is Electricity and Water, if so, plug this all then plug the AI in your factories to make even more stuff, maybe you need to build the factories first so you have the engineers who know how to do this all, in the US, AI hasn't lead to an Industrial boom because of this and in classic American/Modern Western Fashion, while there's a lot of angry discource about AI in White Collar Work or Art, the Industry part is almost quiet, in a society with very few Factory workers that aren't that powerful politicaly or "loud"

and I don't think Europe should burn just Coal is a final permanent strategy and Trump is somewhat idiotic his strategy is fracking, it's okay but still Finite, still Polluting, the smart way is what China's doing, but at least Trump has that plan, and at this rate, Europe is already just burning coal as a survival measure, not for any grand ambitions for anything, while still charging their people absurd gas rates and they're not even environmentally friendly, and they're just stuck at this doom loop

now, I might have overgeneralized a bit, Europe has many countries, Germany is the worst example and Austria and Italy less so, but France has it's famous Nuclear program that allows it to be more autarkic in Oil from Russia or the Middle East, Eastern Europe is actually building Nuclear now

however

• the European Economies are interconnected so the Issues in Germany are rippling across all Europe, if Germany makes less and more expensive stuff, that is just more expensive stuff for French or Greek markets, and Germany makes up a lot of the EU's burger to be "redistributed" to poorer countries
• and there are continent-level universal trends, no one wants Coal until they're parched, and they're just losing to China, besides the aforementioned Automotives, there is sort of a competition in the developing world of who will build your metros or highways, one side it's European or Japanese, they're often working with each other, and then Chinese, and the Chinese is winning, true even in Serbia literally in the middle of the EU

and to be honest I think even the French Nuclear Fleet is not enough, and Eastern Europe is also not building enough, and while again, France and the US is not dumb enough to just shut it all, they have stopped building for 40 years for aforementioned reasons and aging Utilities and wires and pipes around it, just the trends of Nuclear in the past 40 years means the whole field is just underdeveloped everywhere, there are 400 Nuclear Power Plants in the World, there could be thousands of tens of thousands, and there are 60 in France, maybe it has to be a Hundred then a Hundred more in Germany and that's light

and this sounds trivial but this is the kind of Problem that can easily turn Europe into the third world backwater of Eurasia, gold flowing out to buy Chinese tech like in Centra Asia or Southeast Asia so the grey streets are lined with BYDs (it already is) or Huawei's and they'd still find a way to "own the Americans" and once the Mittlestands and top Industries are gone, it's only leverage in this world is maybe some tourism or Cultural Important, quote the "Museum of the World" (and I'll get into this later) and scale, 450 Million People is quite the market and talent pool even if it's not particularly skilled or specialized to just ignore, this is basically the Southeast Asian way, which okay, except Southeast Asia has a lower GDP per capita for that reason and SEA still makes stuff that people can afford

one of the most effective ways to impoverish a region to irrelevance is to wipe out it's fundamentals, you can conquer a region and it will rebel, you can even wipe out the Population but the new Population there might become like the Old due to the Fundamentals the build a similarly structured Empire, i.e. Byzantines to Ottomans, but you can destroy the Canals and in Irrigation and in desert regions, this can be devastating

• arguably the Islamic World has never recovered from the Mongols destroying all the Canals in the 13th Century then European Boats made their Pan-Eurasian Trade routes Important
• conversely, one of the ways to enrich and empower a region is also this, Medieval Europe rose from the Dark Ages and being the Periphery of the Mediterranean World from when the Heavy Plow can utilize the Moist, Dense, but potentially fertile soils and the Mythical Forests and Bogs from Antiquity were drained

in the Pre-Industrial sense, more fertile Land equals more Crops to grow on more Sunlight (the Key word in a lot of this) for more and "healthier" (well fell in carbs at least) people to do more labor, and back then, a lot more labor is manual and since Grain dosen't have the fuel density of Fossil Fuels and Humans are squishy and weak compared to machines of steel and plastic, you need a lot more of them to do even basic things no one has the emotion to do, 30 men to move a heavy piece of stone, so it sucked for them and that's why Machines fueled by Fossil Fuels are nice for standard of living

honestly as with Climate Change, in the West the starting assumption is to either pretend it dosen't exist (Deniers) or to assume we must cut back and that Industrialization is unsustainable (okay, go to the Congo)

in China, well, it's not a major focal point in general and this isn't something anyone directly says, but it seems the implicit idea is that as with the general big scary problems of the Nation or the World, it will all be fine, the government will somehow take care of it with it, that is High-trust assumption, but the Chinese do have a good track record for their People and High-Trust Worldview do just appear naive to Low-Trust Cultures but High-Trust Cultures win, honestly at this point, while there is probably a lot to be said about the current "Elites" in the West, the Wets in some sense just needs more of a concept like this, you can't realistically rival China by just Decentralize Deregulate Everything, sometimes there are perks to Centralization

the West swears "Geoengineering is hard and risky".... while being the same societies that can't build or make anything because it's so overregulated because it's "hard and risky", at some point, someone's gotta cut the chase, someone here are just bad engineers or is too risk-averse, and honestly while Soviet Communism or Maoism is what it is, there might be something in their mentality of "beat nature", might just be that the Soviets were never as good Engineers as the Chinese

and if we can't do geoengineering on Earth or think it's "disgusting" for people to be consuming "too much" energy, that is blatantly the European view of Americans, forget about Space Colonization where even your air isn't free, and if we can't actually maintain industrial civilization because of climate or ecological constraints, either admit you just want a lot of People to die and for standard of living to be way lower, which they still don't say directly, but they are getting there, or another Society thinks "we can do it", does well their engineering, and maybe they fail, but also maybe they actually succeed then their People live better lives and then they'd crush it in war, and this optimistic view of the future and the already tangible benefits of cheap electronics from the Battery Revolution from China is why China is so popular in the Global South

all while the West talks about I don't even know what now, it used to be Human Rights which maybe chauvinistic but at least that's optimistic and then they'd sell you some nice complex CD player or Open a McDonalds and it's this sign of development but now it's just corporate or environmental Doomerism and the Western public is so divided nothing coherent is coming out? and I'm saying this as someone who personally is pro-America/West in terms of values if you read my comments

and keep in mind Europeans, you do not have an ocean protecting you, it's a bit too romantic to talk about the Museum of the World which to be honest might not be so bad in, you do get Europeans who resign themselves to this and if you're gonna buy your technology from the Americans, better be nice to them (which you aren't), but the Americans can fuck up as much as they want but they have two oceans separating them from the Old World, you're in the Western Edge of Eurasia, bordering Russia to the East, in Terminal Decline itself, and probably more importantly in the long run, the Muslim World on your Southeastern Flank and across the Mediterranean

and a poor weak Europe is liable to be screwed over by a developed Middle East which sounds insane until you remember the kind of relationship Europe and the Islamic World had until Vienna when Europe pulled ahead

eventually, someone will win the Middle Eastern Game, the Society will calm down, Chinese technology will flow out of the Hexi Corridor and the Muslims can paste Chinese LEDs on their Cities, use it for Robotics or Industry, and paste it on Metal Frame on lots of Drones, (this is basically what Bayrkatar and Shaheeds are), overwhelm with sheer Numbers as per Drone Doctrine to push north back to the Iron Gates and the Bessarabia Corridor and Dominate the Black Sea Littoral and back North to the Steppe

and I haven't touched into Mass-Migration or Demographic Collapse (which themselves might be connected to this but are another topic)