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Joined 17 days ago
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Cake day: October 16th, 2025

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  • In Taiwan, these people are called 民主二代 (second generation of democracy), oftentimes in a derogatory way, referring to a generation that came of age after Taiwan’s democratization, sometimes seen as taking democracy for granted.

    I kinda half don’t blame them, they suffer from the same issues that most liberal democracies face now:

    • horribly low pay and worker protections, in your first year working, expect to barely have 3 holiday days offered to you
    • never being able to buy property in Taiwan (Taiwanese property market is insane and I could talk at lengths about it)

    In this context, Taiwanese politics is a hugely partisan-tribal affair with a lot of drama. A lot of people become apathetic and just go “you can’t eat democracy” (a dig at parties that keep pushing this as their campaign slogan rather than talking about kitchen-table political issues (housing, affordability, high cost of raising kids).





  • That’s a reasonable way to think about it, but what “should” happen and what “does” happen are different.

    It seems like historically, state visits happen at the White House, which to me makes a lot of sense given the logistics of hosting foreign entourage.

    The US is a world power, part of being a world power is being able to project that power, including through aesthetics, compare the aesthetics of a state visit in the Kremlin and Great Hall of the People vs. hosting in a temporary tent on a lawn.