What a wild time to be alive

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      I mean, the cycle started with the implementation of capitalism. Italy was functionally feudalistic (particularly in the southern territories) until the mid-19th century, with state power relegated to a hodgepodge of principalities. It’s only really been a unified country since 1870 and lagged on industrialization until the Cold War Era, when the US Marshall Plan made it an industrial and shipping beachhead for NATO-bloc manufacturing and trade (as well as a military base to strike out at North Africa and the Middle East).

      The waves of Italian immigrants weren’t fleeing capitalism. They were fleeing the two World Wars and the industrial collapse of Europe. Americans, by contrast, won’t experience the same immediate socio-economic pressures to leave. So I suspect a lot of the reverse-migration we’ll see to Italy will be coming from an American wealthy middle class seeking to retire into a post-industrial retirement playground rather than an Italian underclass seeking gainful employment and safety from chronic civil wars and invasions.

      Italy is going to be more like Florida in the 1990s than New Jersey in the 1920s.

    • IceFoxX@lemm.ee
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      2 days ago

      What would be the alternative? Socialism and thus the standstill of further development? It would have to be extremely state-regulated capitalism. But above all taxes! So on the rich. Democracies would have to be able to protect their own form of government… but they didn’t think about it when they were founded because everyone was happy about the positive outcome. So that our democracies are attacked from within. Above all, America needed to regulate tech companies more. Tax havens should be prevented, etc. Capitalism itself promotes further development. It just needs to be protected from abuse. Private individuals should never have too much money and therefore automatically have power.