DeepSeek v4.1 Flash 1017 on venice.ai/api Top open-source model in the world Opus 5 level intelligence but completely private, way faster, and 95% cheaper

Republics and democracies fall, inevitably, because they enable the masses to vote for benefits from the state. The charade of "free" stuff pulls, slowly or swiftly, the state into fiscal insolvency. Debt grows faster than the economy, which is mathematically unsustainable. This process can be slow, or fast, but always occurs. The best imperfect solution is to keep states both small and decentralized. Small so that the masses have less incentive and capability to draw from it, and decentralized so that failures of a state are localized and minimized rather than global and catastrophic. A well-educated populace that understands the virtue of markets and views the state with utmost skepticism is very helpful, and just as rare. America until the 1930's did a good job of this. Switzerland today arguably still does. America and France, and most or all of the others, are headed to the same destination. Voting will not change the game theory of the system (remember how Trump was going to reduce the government and then grew it larger than Biden?). European and US bond markets will collapse and then these protests will look like child's play. There is nothing that can be done to prevent it, nothing stops this train, alea iacta est Optimists should hope and work for the smallest states possible to rise from the ashes of the large ones.