The welfare state can not exist in world where the government is against population growth. You cant have a robust welfare state and make through policy and propaganda 4+ child families rare. We need an exponential curve of population to maintain it, especialy when its at european levels. Mass immigration of uneducated people from low income countries doesnt cover the gap, especially when the government extends welfare to them.
With how many statements of fact you make, you are pretty wrong. There's not one of them being right. We have enough productivity that a minuscule part of the population can produce and distribute the basic needs for every human on earth. There's literally humans that can't find jobs to do because we don't educate them well enough to go and offer services that other humans need. Not only that, we try to say that they don't deserve enough pay to supply their basic needs.
And yes, I'm talking about teachers and medics. We don't have enough of either, because we don't pay them enough compared to their workload. Those things we will always need, in great quantities to support our population. Greater quantities than engineers, architects, researchers, etc. but guess where everyone flocks because it pays more?
A welfare state that was genuinely targeted to serving basic needs of the population would look vastly different from present-day France and other comparable countries. Take a look at Singapore; last I checked, it was not known as a place where people might be at risk of starving. The underlying problem is that people expect the welfare state to solve issues of social marginalization, which are actually the result of fraying social capital as opposed to a mere lack of resources. Welfare states make these issues actively worse, not better.
For instance, when every employer (including those that may be only marginally successful to begin with) is expected as a matter of law to extend onerous labor protections against firing and laying off to each and every worker,[0] this results in marginal workers (who may have been socially marginalized originally for reasons of ethnic heritage and the like) being completely excluded from the market, which makes their plight even worse. (Except for forms of "gig work" or informal employment, of course - which in practice function to sidestep the most onerous regulations to some extent.) A very relevant issue in present-day France.
[0] And to fund those costly welfare programs through payroll contributions that are levied on employees and employers alike - which is its own issue and often amounts to exploitive, confiscatory taxation for the most marginal workers.
Legalizing abortion, unneeded regulations that require car seats at later ages which disincentivize more children for lack of car space, zoning that removes green space and side walks in favor of car infrastructure, expensive education and health insurance (family premiums are insane compared to individual), incentivizing two worker house holds through tax policy.
Health insurance? Are you sure you are talking about welfare states and not America? Which welfare state has expensive education and health insurances?
The last sentence is doing a lot of heavy lifting for a post that collapses if poked gently with a stick.
"The welfare state cannot exist without exponential population growth."
Sounds mathy, but is wrong. Welfare states do not require exponential population growth. They require a sufficient ratio of contributors to dependents, plus productivity. Those are not the same thing.
Exponential curves + limited resources = ecological faceplant. No serious economist argues that infinite demographic growth is a prerequisite for social insurance. What they talk about instead are levers: labor participation, productivity, retirement age, automation, taxation structure, and yes, migration.
"Government policy makes 4+ child families rare."
Prosperity itself lowers fertility. Governments can nudge at the margins, but they are not mind-controlling people out of large families. Most people stop at one or two kids because time, money, energy, housing, and sanity are finite.
"Mass immigration of uneducated people doesn’t cover the gap."
Ah, bundling multiple claims into a single blur. Efficient, but sloppy.
Refugees are not permanently "uneducated"; education and skills are state-dependent, not genetic properties. (Except if you are one of those right-wing grifters that think only white people are capable of intelligence, and maybe east asians. Those people get a hearty fuck you from me, that is not worth discussing at all).
Early years cost money; later years often don’t. But you know what, the same is true for children.
Fourth argument: "Extending welfare to immigrants makes it worse."
This assumes welfare is a static pot rather than a system designed to convert non-participants into participants. Welfare states don’t exist just to reward contributors; they exist to stabilize societies over time. Cutting people off doesn’t magically turn them into productive workers. Quite often it does the opposite.
Now, let's zoom out a bit for the real category error here.
Modern welfare system are intergenerational risk-sharing mechanisms, not growth cults.
But why import uneducated immigrants when you could import educated ones instead? The Canadian model has been a resounding success on that front and European countries should copy it. (And no, the "brain drain" argument doesn't really hold water. The successful migrants/expats tend to go back to their homelands after a while and become a much needed force for progress there, if there's even the slightest scope for actual improvement.)
You're mixing up refugees and economic migrants, which makes the argument collapse immediately.
Refugees are not "imported." They are people fleeing war, persecution, or state collapse under international law obligations that Europe helped write. You don't get to say "we'll take the engineers, but not the bombed-out schoolteachers." Treating asylum like a points-based talent visa is a category error, not a policy preference.
The brain drain argument absolutely does hold water. Systematically pulling scarce doctors, engineers, and academics out of low-income or fragile states weakens those societies. Some people return and contribute, yes, but many don't, and many return to systems too damaged to absorb their skills. That's not controversial. It's well documented in development economics.
What's being presented as "common sense" here is really a value judgement: that human worth should be ranked by immediate economic utility to the receiving country. That's not a fact, and it's not how real migration systems actually work.
If the goal is serious policy discussion, collapsing refugees, migrants, education, and prosperity into a single slogan doesn't get you there. It just makes the world simpler than it is.
One more point about the word "import," because language matters in how we think about policy.
Describing people as being "imported" frames migration as a centrally planned, top-down process, rather than as a response to war, persecution, economic collapse, or climate pressure. It shifts attention away from those underlying causes and toward the idea that governments are deliberately "bringing people in" as if they were interchangeable inputs.
That framing makes it easier to talk about migrants in abstract, instrumental terms, sorted by usefulness rather than understood as people reacting to circumstances, and it tends to oversimplify how migration actually works in practice, which is far more reactive and constrained than intentional or engineered.
Being precise about language helps keep the discussion grounded in reality rather than drifting into metaphors that flatten complex human movement into something it isn't.
Statistics differ, but refugees granted protection range from a single-digit percentage of recent immigration into France to about ~15% or so (other countries have a somewhat larger share, including other European countries). It's true that many people tend to conflate proper refugees and economic migrants to whom a points-system might apply, but this is a general problem with how migration policy is discussed on all sides of the political spectrum, not something that's original to my comment.
Want to admit more refugees without endangering social cohesion? Then you should make sure that you're also carefully selecting your economic migrants as best you can. It's not a matter of assigning different human worth to each, but of simultaneously abiding by legal obligations towards actual refugees that are binding for the country, and also trying to do the absolute best you can for the highest amount of people who might be wanting to expatriate to it for different but nonetheless valid reasons - without unduly burdening that country and society in the process.
This is not true. Women entering the workforce instead of having babies earlier in life lowers prosperity. In our society women working during those early years creates more prosperity (two incomes) but those who are very rich like Musk has no issue producing a big stable of kids.
I don't believe that there is a single case in world history where increased family income did NOT reduce the number of children per family. Likewise with improvements in child mortality.
Well, those people are resistant to facts and logic.
But when you think about it, their survival depends on it, so it makes perfect sense.
Most of those making those arguments have cushy bullshit jobs, completely dependent on stealing the work of others to live. Funnily enough, you would pay them to do nothing; it would be preferable for society because it would cost less money, and they wouldn't be able to create insane bureaucracy to satisfy their power trip.
But it doesn't matter; reality has a way to always catch up and expose the liars. The system is clearly unsustainable, and enemies have been probing for weakness for a while now. It's unclear how long we have left until a full-strength attack happens but it seems hard to avoid now.
It is a very abstract term. It is like ”democracy”. Yes, you can clearly say that North Korea is not a democracy. But US? Well, depends on who you ask.
Same with welfare state. Which countries do you count as non-welfare states? And when do they stop being a welfare state? Let’s take Poland as an example. When do they stop being a welfare state? If they lower the unemployment payments, will they stop being a welfare state?
And at what timescale do you think Poland will stop existing because of demographics?
This is just derailing the topic from a french office suite into some sort of political statement about immigration. Looking at this green account's other two comments, it's all troll...
Let’s take Poland. They are a welfare state. They don’t have open borders for illegals. Not sure what you are talking about. Let me guess you are American who never set foot in Poland and just assume it has open borders?
> There is nothing to disagree about. With current demographics projection no amount of taxes can cover welfare states
Okay? Let's get rid of that much more expensive type of welfare then!
As if we have "real capitalism" - not even on a scale of local bakeries any more. Even the small businesses often are just a shop owned by a corporation. Not that I'm against some level of concentration, a lot of economic activity requires it. A lot of products are too expensive and require a certain scale to be viable at all.
What is the goal of economic activity anyway? For the few to live well, while the majority struggles? By "struggle" I don't mean that the majority already lives in the streets, to me it is enough that they have to be afraid. Of getting sick, of losing the job, of anything bad happening. I saw myself how a single unfortunate event could spiral out of control, and a guy making a lot of money in enterprise sales ended up alone, broken, and sick in the streets. I count all those having to fear such a development as part of the "losers", even if they are still making money and living in their house now. That fear, suppressed or not, should not be necessary, and it influences stress levels and decisions, consciously or not.
I mean, you are also right with your message, and I actually agree.
The flow of money around and away from too many people should not be happening. Being part of the economy should be easy for the majority, and real "welfare" should only be necessary for the sick and otherwise temporarily or fully disabled.
If a lot of normal people need welfare, something is not right.
But then you need an economy that provides those easy options to participate and get enough of a share.
You also need a system where an unfortunate event (or some) does not put you into an unescapable downward spiral, and provide a way back into the economy.
Hi, I'm Emmanuel. I have 5+ years of experience in software and product. I like smaller companies and fast paced work environments. Feel free to send a mail or a PM if you have any questions
I would agree, personally - I won't go near DNP, and even the newer stuff like BAM15 that is supposed to be incredibly selective I am quite suspicious of.
But you still see people losing tons of weight on GLP-1s wanting it to go faster, drop more pounds, etc.
I'm a big proponent of them - and I have enough risk tolerance that I'm on grey market retatrutide - but I see a lot of people that want to just keep adding more and more chemicals to the equation to solve the issue. I've taken the time to significantly modify my food and exercise habits, and believe that I'll be able to maintain my weight loss if I were to go off of the GLP-1. But a lot of people haven't. They eat the same bad food, just in lower quantities, don't increase their protein and fiber intake, don't exercise, and just up the dose or add a new compound when their rate of weight loss doesn't satisfy them.
There's tons of interest in BAM15, clenbuterol, and all sorts of experimental substances. Tons of people taking things like tesamorelin and ipamorelin too.
I think the GLP-1s are basically miracle drugs that have allowed a lot of people, including myself, to totally revamp their approaches to diet and fitness. But there's a lot of people that are going to be more than happy to increase their cocktail with anything they think will get them skinny faster.
Uncouplers are particularly useful to make sure your metabolism doesn’t slow down, which makes getting off those drugs when reaching the right body fat percentage without regaining everything way easier
Losing weight through any method will make your metabolism slow down - fat is metabolically active. Uncouplers won't change this. Even if 100% of your weight loss is fat, your BMR is going to drop. The amount of metabolic adaptation from caloric deficits is grossly overstated by many people, and the "starvation mode" adaptation is temporary. Just reaching a maintenance level of calories for a relatively short period of time is enough to reset it - but this change is minor to begin with. The majority of any metabolism slowing will occur purely as a function of weight loss.
The issue with regaining weight after coming off these drugs is that people don't change their habits, and once they are off, they no longer have the limited appetite, and return to eating like they did before, which just results in the problem reoccurring. Uncouplers won't change this.
If people want to sustain their weight loss, they either need to change their lifestyle and eating habits, or they need to stay on the drugs, and potentially even both.
Let’s be real: both of us have no idea of how it would play out. Pharma companies will try to add them to their stack at some point, and then the real world data we currently lack will decide for everyone
Org mode offers so much more than just syntax. You can use org files as a calendar, a todo/issue tracker with time accounting, a diary/knowledge base (zettelkasten, org-roam), as a literate programming tool (think jupyter code notebooks but for practically any programming language with org-babel), or a publishing tool (static site generator, latex/pdf export) all at the same time.
To be quite frank, Org mode is a lifestyle which existed long before Notion or Obsidian did. Saying that it has a barrier to entry is a bit of an understatement.
Having said all that, quite ironically, I've migrated over to Obsidian because I started using Intellij more for work, meaning that I don't need Emacs for its other capabilities all that much.
Markdown is a markup tool, i.e. you decorate your text. Orgmode on the other hand is a complete toolbox where you can add tags to notes, filter on these tags, manage calendars, etc. You can enter tables both for formatting and spreadsheet like calculation.
And you can insert snippets of code into your notes, like
#+BEGIN_SRC shell
ls | wc -l
find . -type f -name "*foo*"
#+END_SRC
(or javascript, elisp, html, ... instead of shell) where the markup is changed appropriately in these regions.
You can even augment orgmode with elisp code if you are so inclined.
`org-mode` used with Emacs is the tinkerer's dream playgound. Apart from the basic markdown stuff, there are so many wild things you can do. For example, org code blocks are not just the basic markdown code blocks that show formatted code. Org code blocks can actually be executed and can show the output of the code, inline. So you can write code blocks (that may include data found in variables/tables/etc elsewhere in the org file), then "refresh" your org file and all the inline outputs of the code blocks will be updated.
But to answer your main question, markdown is used for writing text which can then be converted to HTML, PDF, etc, etc. It's used just to format things. org can be used in that way, and it might feel better/worse depending on what you feel about the choices used for various formatting styles.
However the big gain of org is that you can use it to format dynamic tables, handle todo-lists, have deadlines, recurring tasks, etc, etc. It makes no sense to compare org-files with markdown-files. It's like saying "I use notepad how does Excel help you do more?" - they do different thigns.
Now, much like excel, most people don't do everythign with org, but they can if they want to. It is extraordinarily flexible, and can be extended with custom lisp code if necessary.
I track rental properties with an org-document for each property, and I get per-year profit/loss statements in a neat format with graphs too. You can't do that with markdown.
Markdown is just a markup-language, while orgmode is a tool-collection with a community of its own, which happens to also come with its own markup-language. That's not the same, and comparing them on that level makes little sense.
> Genuinely curious because I tried at some point and it felt too heavy.
Which part felt heavy? The syntax? The tooling? The setup? orgmode's purpose is to deliver an environment for managing your notes, tasks, data, etc. Of course, will it be more heavy than just the markup-language alone, as most documentation focuses on the tooling and which jobs you can execute with it. This more akin to a whole Office-suit, than a simple plaintext-editor.
Orgmode has standardized primitives for the things which exist in some markdown note taking implementations but differ from implementation to implementation.
Markdown doesn't have a built in concept of todo or tag or scheduled event, for instance. It wasn't built for that.
I hate emacs but orgmode is still the file format which contains all of the primitives I need for my notes which looks like it will have the most staying power. I hope to be able to edit the same files in 2035 using whatever brain-connection device everybody is using in the future that I used in 2015 running on a netbook with 1GB of RAM.
Markdown files from the note taking flavor of today will have to be migrated somehow.
I don't use it anymore but org-babel allows you to execute commands in code blocks. I would use that to build interactive explorations when learning how APIs work for example. I didn't find that nearly as seamless with Markdown.
Combined with org-agenda you also unlock a calendar with recurring events, task priorities and more.
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