Thanks, great reply! Strong argument overall, maybe the only major disagreement here is with nuclear energy. Here in Finland electricity is some of the cheapest in Europe and while it’s not entirely due to nuclear that is a key factor for us in self-reliance and energy security especially when you’re going down the renewable road, because you do need some kind of a stable backbone for days where solar and wind just don’t produce enough, at least until there are better storage options. There’s a huge need to optimize the energy mix with renewables because it’s unsustainable to have these massive price fluctuations currently and I don’t see many solutions currently that have more potential than Nuclear, especially if we can make SMR’s a reality. I am of course aware also that Nuclear by itself definitely isn’t a cheap way to produce electricity, but I believe especially SMR’s and other advancements can do a lot there.

Thanks, that is a relief to hear, the Russia issue is the most pressing from a foreigners perspective like mine, but for you guys of course there are a lot of other things at stake too. Hope whoever’s in power keeps Germany as a European powerhouse and one of our most crucial allies!

Good, substantive comment. I disagree on the Covid part though, Sweden managed Covid wonderfully with quite liberal policies on that front. Don’t you worry with Die Linke that they’re quite pro-Russian or is that a mistaken view from me?

Could you elaborate on what they voted for? I mean yes AFD is certainly not to be supported, but I suppose it depends on what was voted upon as well. And yeah obviously marital rape is a horrible thing to support, so point taken there for sure.

The eww comment is interesting, I understand if you’re not a fan of conservatism as I’m not a fan of that either, but in Europe generally speaking the problem with the left is that they’re socially liberal which is great but then their economic policies have generally lead to overtaxation and overregulation.

It would be great to have a truly liberal government with far less government spending and far more individual freedom and also individual responsibility. Militarily the left is also understandably cautious given the history, but right now a militarily strong Germany would be needed by the rest of Europe.

I don’t necessarily see right leaning as bad automatically, but is there something extreme about the CDU or just that they’re right-leaning?

I see, I think the consensus view here is quite left-leaning so maybe that’s where the negative view comes from. I’m more Kokoomus leaning myself so I don’t see it as bad but I can understand there’s a lot of polarization going on right now.

I’d love to hear why they suck and who would be better and why. SPD track record has been driving Germany to the ground the past few years and the Green denuclearization policies are a disaster both in terms of economics and self-reliance. But of course those view are mine and may well be wrong, that’s just one viewpoint and perhaps poorly informed.

Which party do you think would fare better and why? What I thought I knew about Merz is that he favors tax cuts and deregulation, which are definitely factors that Germany does need currently, but am I wrong about his views?

I see a lot of negative comments about the CDU here, but I certainly think Olaf Scholz is a bit of a disaster. From a Finnish perspective at least it seems in fact that apart from the Nordics and Eastern Europeans the rest of Europe still doesn’t have their shit together regarding Ukraine and defense in general. I don’t think CDU would necessarily be worse on that front and I do think they might be stronger on the economy too, Germany needs to get a bit more competitive going forward.

Well for me the most surprising thing perhaps was just the sheer scale and sophistication of the scam industry as well as the fact that some of the victims of the scams were in positions where they should have known better and were in positions where they made a lot of damage to the surrounding community.

As a Finnish-Canadian I’m all in on this trend. I’ve already switched out the majority of apps and subscriptions to European alternatives and have been buying European products for a while now, even chose the car with that as one of the criteria. I’d love to hear about good Canadian products that I could buy that are available in Europe.

For those interested in the topic I’d definitely recommend listening to the Scam Inc podcast series from the Economist, it’s a great series and first 4 episodes are free to listen as far as I know.