Tuuktuuk

How is it a nightmare that I'm allowed to say "I'm not consenting to this shit"?!

Now they're planning to revoke that right. Nightmare gone?

Like what gets done?
Depends on whether the police like what needs to get done or not. If they like it, it gets done.

A relatively recent small anecdote:
They forbade using spikes in your winter tyres on one throughfare street in the centre of Helsinki. The police said that so many people will be breaking that rule that they cannot fine all of them, so they will refuse to go enforce the restriction. And after they had gone public with that, the signs were removed as meaningless.

I've had two cases where a car has hit me. In the other case I was in my thoughts and accidentally stood in a wrong place waiting for the light to turn green. I was technically on the roadway – it just wasn't very clear that that's a road. A van intentionally crashed into me with a relatively slow speed and I called the emergency number. He fled the scene, but had to later come to an interrogation because I had seen the number plate. The police then said that I have a possibility to withdraw my demands, and if I don't they will also fine me for having gone against the red lights. They don't have enough resources and didn't want to bother with this case, so they made sure it'll get closed. I was young and very badly out of money, so I let the thing be and allowed them to close the case.

Here's a photo from the spot. The place where I was standing is marked with a blue cross, the car came from the direction shown by the red arrow:

Then there was another case, where a car saw me about to cross a street and put the pedal to the metal in order to get past the crossing before I get there, speeding through an intersection at a ridiculous speed. As the car sped very close to me, I decided to hit its back window with an open hand to tell that "that was not okay". The driver stopped his car in middle of the street, stepped out and shouted "Who are you to touch MY car?!" and then tried to grab my throat, leaving some bruises that I then got documented by a doctor (or nurse, or whatever he was technically). The man had said that I had ran across the street crossing, endangering the traffic, and the police told me we can close the case or they can open a case against me as well. I allowed them to close the case.

Here's the spot where that happened; the car was coming from the direction of the crane, towards the direction where this picture is made from, and I was crossing the nearest crossing in the picture from right to left:

The police is so extremely under-resourced in Finland that I can absolutely understand they are kind of desperate. If they want to have time to investigate murders and other really serious crime, they have to leave something else undone. Or otherwise murderers can just run free. And because they need to choose things to ignore to save their resources, they tend to ignore things that are done by people that they assume don't agree with their political views.

Those things with the two traffic incidents would have folded out differently if I hadn't been an under 30-year-old guy with a long hair and if the the drivers hadn't been middle-aged men in both cases. The police felt like those people were their peers and symphatised with them, so they wanted me to shut up. They also really sympathise with people who drive cars and typically dislike bicyclers. Of course, in the end, that depends on the individual. Each policeman has their own values and chooses what to ignore based on what they find important.

Here's how Finland fares regarding policemen per 100 000 inhabitants:

and here's the same for Germany:

...oh, apparently Germany has cut its police force a LOT. Last time I checked, their number was far over 400.

...and then came Valmet with its Dm6.

And nobody paid anything for the intellectual property. The history of these railbuses is fascinating in how it's a chain of betrayals.

Those trains were blatantly copied by another Swedish company, and then that one was again blatantly copied by a Finnish company, leading to the models Dm6 and Dm7: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VR_Class_Dm7

Zero royalties paid!

The US instituted a mandatory draft to fight that war.

But that was an offensive war, and most countries don't do those.

Finland was much much safer before.

Depends on how you define "to be safe". The Russia had declared that its goal is to return the borders of the Russian empire. That sounded a bit scary, but we shrugged it off, because it would require a war and that would hurt the Russia so much that such a war would be idiocy and therefore will not happen.

In case you don't know where the borders of the Russian Empire were, they included for example these:

• Finland
• Estonia
• Latvia
• Lithuania
• half of Poland
• Ukraine
• Moldova

The Russia has declared that it wants to make all of those countries part of the Russian Federation.

So, we were not in danger, because the Russia would not be stupid enough to begin a war in Ukraine or in Finland, as it was clear that it would hurt the Russia's economy more than it could ever be of use to it. The Finnish defence doctrine was based on the concept of credible defence. We were told in school that "they can attack us and they could most likely even take over all of Finland, but our army is able to incur such big losses to them that they will not want to do that."
But then, it turned out that the Russia does not care about losses.

So, we found out two things:

• the Russia is really interested in acting to its declarations. They are not just empty words as we had assumed
• the Russia does not care about losses – therefore the doctrine of credible defence does not protect from the Russia

You can say that we were not in danger because we didn't know that we are in danger. And in some way that's true. But, once we found out that we are in danger, then, well, we were.
Since the doctrine of credible defence went down the drain, meaning that Finland effectively did not have a defence that is able to protect it, what else than joining NATO do you suggest we should have done to gain a level of defence capability able to keep the Russia out of Finland? Name one other option that we had.

Your idea that the Russia has a right to defend itself by preemptively taking over Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, half of Poland, Ukraine, and Moldova is, well... It would be impolite saying what it makes you look like.

EDIT: And of course this is relevant: In January 2022 the support for joining NATO was around 35 %. No "let's join NATO" propaganda had been made at all, but in May 2022 the support for joining NATO was around 80 %. The only thing that caused this was that people around Finland saw that what we had been taught about the Russia in our schools was crap. It was part of the school curriculum to make sure every Finn knows that the Russia is not going to attack us, with an explanation of why not. And it seemed to make sense. And everyone had that in their heads. And then... We saw what the Russia is doing in Ukraine, and it was clear from that alone that shit, we are fucked! That meant, 80 % of the people decided they wanted a new kind of safety against the Russia.
Maybe you can say that they told that in our schools for about 40 years just so that in 2025 Finland could join NATO. But... Well, you know.
In May 2022 you could go to any bar to talk with random people and it would be clear that the assumption was "we are joining NATO. There is no other option." There was no real dialogue about it, because basically everybody was of the same opinion. For the abovementioned reasons.

It's lower than their inflation. They'd need an even higher interest rate in order to curb inflation.

I don't think we could implement your suggestion. Our wartime maximum strength is about 700 000 soldiers and our population is around 5 600 000. That means, in wartime, one out of 8 inhabitants will be in different forms of military service. There's no way we could pay an adequate salary for that many soldiers. And, that number is still a third less than how many soldiers Ukraine has, and Ukraine is just barely able to keep the Russia from advancing.

I'm not sure why you're taking Vietnam war as an example, as it's an offensive war and for example Finland has no plans to do anything like that.

Our military -- numbers are public.

Yes, but the speed at which one can recruit soldiers in an emergency is not public.

maintaining offensive and diminishment operations

This is irrelevant, because most countries do not have any offensive operations to maintain in the first place.

You may not know what the phrase "proxy war" means, because in this context it's rather insulting. And I do not think you meant to insult me or others. But do tell, why and how would Finland wage an offensive war?

Yeah, this is getting a bit off topic, but you're making wild claims that would really need some clarification.

At the same time, the earlier interest rate of 21 % was considered too low, because a higher rate would have been needed to curb inflation.

Sounds good. Now they have had to choose between rock and a hard place, and chose to let the inflation increase so that companies could at least kind of keep existing in the short term. A sensible decision, but painful, because it means killing the economy in the longer term.

You could directly vote against being sent to die. You might not care about a ski hill funding request.

Uh, people choose when they are 18 whether they want to go to civil service or army. If they choose army, they will obviously be drafted if the Russia ever attacks, unless they have later had themselves removed from the drafting lists. To make a decision on how many soldiers we'll need for the defence is actually an extremely good example of what kind of decisions absolutely cannot be made by a broad public vote. You need a military person relaying secret strategical information to the Ministers of Parliament. It cannot be relayed to all 5.6 million people without compromising the information. If such an amount of people knows about our military strategy, so does the Russia.

So, at least for that kind of decisions something else must be at place. Maybe there could be a restricted set of representatives that are allowed to vote in case we are attacked and you could then choose which one of those will handle your vote in this precise case – before they have talked with the military specialists.

To paraphrase a section of what was already said above:

Once you can make AND, OR and NOT gates, you can do everything. Everything any computer does is done with those three.

In Minecraft you can build AND, NOT, and OR gates.

There is no concept of a parliament majority leader being able to block a proposal from being voted on.

I didn't get what this is referring to. Is it some Canadian or US-American concept? I'd be happy if you could elaborate a bit!

You can change your delegation after disappointment with vote on an issue, and can choose to not delegate your vote on a mandatory military draft proposal.

I am already able to change my delegation after disappointment. Luckily I've never had to exercise that right. Also, another thing that flew far over my head: why is an exception specifically regarding mandatory military drafting important?