And then you realize that, ironically, LLMs and archive.today, both actual bots, can scrape the site just fine. The latter also serving you the content with no paywalls, ads, JavaScript, permalinks that 404 after a year, and all the other anti-features. It's almost as if news websites looked at the pains one has to go through to legally play a video game in 2026 and all unanimously went "I want this!".
And then a few years later when the site shuts down because nobody was willing to pay for the content that it would still be around if you and others had just ponied up the cost of one morning latte each month.
This is quite an inflammatory comment that warrants more justification. Many countries have struggled with organized crime infiltration of government and have no connection to colonialism, and many colonies also had organized crime. You are implying at one that colonialism prevented this organized crime problem and would eliminate it and the harms of colonialism are lower than organized crime. Those might be defensible positions but you neither articulate them nor defend them.
Americans and Western Europeans have no idea what it means to come from a country where the government can’t maintain a monopoly on violence, and when you say stuff like this it comes across as complaining about “first world problems.”
What’s happening in South Africa is a phenomenon that happens around the third world. And it’s an enormous tax on half of the human population, even in relatively affluent countries like Mexico. Even in many of the countries that don’t suffer from internal destabilization by non-state actors, the solution has been dictators like Saddam Hussain in Iraq or El-Sisi in Egypt. It’s a subject that warrants thoughtful analysis and problem solving by people in the first world. We need you guys to think about how you overcame those problems so those lessons can be applied to countries that desperately need the help.
> We need you guys to think about how you overcame those problems so those lessons can be applied to countries that desperately need the help
We have studied this problem ad nauseum. The West knew the answer until about a century ago.
Europe became orderly through shame culture, executing criminals and destruction of clan culture.
El Salvador is a modern example.
The remedy is violent, unkind, and not communist so we get indefinite unbounded suffering instead.
As someone who was born in Russia and lived there in 1990s, I have quite a good idea of this arrangement. This was not mafia state yet. The mafia state is the modern Russia, where former organized crime groups became fully integrated into the government. Technically, the state retains the monopoly on violence. Practically, violence comes from influence of competing groups within the state. And yes, US is moving towards the same regime type. This is clearly visible to me, from my Russian experience, but I don't understand how to convey this to Americans.
What you’re describing is feudalism, which Russia has never been able to shake. Russia remained stubbornly feudalist while other European countries were developing modern states, and it remains that way. But feudalism, where the government relies on feudal lords to maintain power is distinct from what we’re talking about with organized crime. The argument that the U.S. is heading towards a feudalist state is still wrong, but a much more plausible argument than your original comparison to south africa.
Yes, most liberal or libertarian white people can’t look at a place like say Egypt and understand why a dictator like El-Sisi is genuinely popular. They don’t have the mental structures to even understand what they’re seeing in a society that’s so different from their own.
The government itself is the biggest criminal enterprise. I guess they are worried about being eclipsed.
https://archive.ph/1U5wB
> We detected unusual activity from your device or network.
> Reasons may include:
> Rapid taps or clicks
> JavaScript disabled or not working
> Automated (bot) activity on your network (IP X.X.X.X)
> Use of developer or inspection tools
I mean, I guess. I'm using Firefox, I have an adblocker, and I have tampermonkey installed? And turning off Javascript isn't a bad idea, either.
And then you realize that, ironically, LLMs and archive.today, both actual bots, can scrape the site just fine. The latter also serving you the content with no paywalls, ads, JavaScript, permalinks that 404 after a year, and all the other anti-features. It's almost as if news websites looked at the pains one has to go through to legally play a video game in 2026 and all unanimously went "I want this!".
And then a few years later when the site shuts down because nobody was willing to pay for the content that it would still be around if you and others had just ponied up the cost of one morning latte each month.
Well, sorry! Make the payment process and the website at least half as frictionless and private, and I'll be happy to pay!
I mean, I don't even have the option to pay - I can't access the site at all.
And there is nothing anyone can say to talk me out of adblockers - ad networks are a delivery system for malware and fraud.
You got further than I did:
>Please enable JS and disable any ad blocker
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This is quite an inflammatory comment that warrants more justification. Many countries have struggled with organized crime infiltration of government and have no connection to colonialism, and many colonies also had organized crime. You are implying at one that colonialism prevented this organized crime problem and would eliminate it and the harms of colonialism are lower than organized crime. Those might be defensible positions but you neither articulate them nor defend them.
[flagged]
Americans and Western Europeans have no idea what it means to come from a country where the government can’t maintain a monopoly on violence, and when you say stuff like this it comes across as complaining about “first world problems.”
What’s happening in South Africa is a phenomenon that happens around the third world. And it’s an enormous tax on half of the human population, even in relatively affluent countries like Mexico. Even in many of the countries that don’t suffer from internal destabilization by non-state actors, the solution has been dictators like Saddam Hussain in Iraq or El-Sisi in Egypt. It’s a subject that warrants thoughtful analysis and problem solving by people in the first world. We need you guys to think about how you overcame those problems so those lessons can be applied to countries that desperately need the help.
> We need you guys to think about how you overcame those problems so those lessons can be applied to countries that desperately need the help
We have studied this problem ad nauseum. The West knew the answer until about a century ago. Europe became orderly through shame culture, executing criminals and destruction of clan culture.
El Salvador is a modern example.
The remedy is violent, unkind, and not communist so we get indefinite unbounded suffering instead.
As someone who was born in Russia and lived there in 1990s, I have quite a good idea of this arrangement. This was not mafia state yet. The mafia state is the modern Russia, where former organized crime groups became fully integrated into the government. Technically, the state retains the monopoly on violence. Practically, violence comes from influence of competing groups within the state. And yes, US is moving towards the same regime type. This is clearly visible to me, from my Russian experience, but I don't understand how to convey this to Americans.
What you’re describing is feudalism, which Russia has never been able to shake. Russia remained stubbornly feudalist while other European countries were developing modern states, and it remains that way. But feudalism, where the government relies on feudal lords to maintain power is distinct from what we’re talking about with organized crime. The argument that the U.S. is heading towards a feudalist state is still wrong, but a much more plausible argument than your original comparison to south africa.
Oh please, have you never heard of the "Semibankirshchina"?
> Practically, violence comes from influence of competing groups within the state. And yes, US is moving towards the same regime type
The ideological and demographic makeup of certain internet communities makes them incapable of understanding what you mean by this.
Yes, most liberal or libertarian white people can’t look at a place like say Egypt and understand why a dictator like El-Sisi is genuinely popular. They don’t have the mental structures to even understand what they’re seeing in a society that’s so different from their own.
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Did you reply to the wrong post?
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For the 2024 tax year SARS expects about 9.2 million individual returns in total.
https://www.sars.gov.za/wp-content/uploads/2025taxstats/2025...