French-Polish editorialist. Geoeconomics & anthropology. Let's make Poland 🇵🇱 the diamond of the West!

Iława (Rzeczpospolita)
Europe doesn't have "a problem". It has THREE problems: 3 European nations are suffering from a severe "post-imperial hangover". First, there is the United Kingdom, a nation that voted for Brexit to "take back control" only to realize it has completely forgotten how to drive. The British identity crisis is like watching a retired lion try to adopt a vegan diet. They traded imperial confidence for an HR department’s sensitivity training. The land of Churchill is now governed by a sprawling "nanny state" bureaucracy that is more terrified of offending someone on X than it is of actual decline. The British police, once the envy of the world, now seem to spend more resources investigating "non-crime hate incidents" and painting their patrol cars in rainbow colors than solving burglaries. It is a nation desperately clinging to the aesthetics of tradition—the Royals, the pomp, the tea—while its institutions have been hollowed out by a progressive rot that makes a California university campus look conservative. They want the swagger of the 19th century but are paralyzed by the emotional fragility of the 21st. Then there is France, the angry, chain-smoking aunt of Europe who refuses to admit she’s been unemployed for decades. France’s hangover manifests as a permanent state of insurrection masquerading as "civic engagement." Their identity is split between a delusional elite who still think Paris is the capital of the universe and a populace that expresses its "joie de vivre" by burning down bus stops every Thursday. The French suffer from a Napoleonic complex without a Napoleon; they demand the living standards of a conquering empire while working a 35-hour week and retiring at an age when most Americans are just hitting their stride. They preach "Republican values" and aggressive secularism, yet the state has lost control over vast swathes of its own suburbs. France is essentially a beautiful, open-air museum where the curators are on strike, the guards are afraid of the visitors, and the management is busy lecturing the rest of the world on "grandeur" while the electricity bill goes unpaid. Finally, we have Germany, the neurotic giant that has decided the only way to atone for its history is to commit slow-motion industrial suicide. Germany’s post-imperial hangover is a moral autoimmune disease: the country is so terrified of its own shadow that it has replaced national pride with aggressive self-flagellation and recycling regulations. Their identity is built on being the "Moral Superpower," which practically translates to shutting down their perfectly functional nuclear power plants to burn dirty coal, all while lecturing their neighbors on carbon footprints. It is a nation of engineers who have engineered a society that doesn't work. The German spirit, once defined by efficiency and discipline, has mutated into a paralyzed bureaucracy where filling out the correct form is more important than the outcome. They are so desperate to avoid being "threatening" that they’ve become essentially a large NGO with an army that has broomsticks for rifles, terrified that showing any backbone might be interpreted as a relapse.
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The socialists want taxes. Here's an idea: why won't we tax them for being socialists? They should be happy with that.
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Stanisław Żółkiewski was probably THE GREATEST general and conqueror of the Polish-Lithuanian 🇵🇱🇱🇹 Commonwealth. He is usually reduced to "the man who defeated the Russians 🇷🇺 at Kłuszyn and entered Moscow in 1610". THAT BADLY UNDERSTATES HIM. His military career lasted more than 40 years. He fought Germans, Swedes, Muscovites, Tatars, Ottomans, Wallachians, Cossacks and rebels; campaigned from the Baltic to Moldavia; mastered cavalry warfare, sieges, fortified camps, deception, diplomacy and operational manoeuvre; and died commanding an army at roughly 73 years old. Ten reasons his career deserves much more attention. Thread 🧵
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9. His Moscow settlement shows that Żółkiewski thought like a statesman, not merely a conqueror. The agreement of 27 August 1610 is remarkable when read closely. Władysław was to accept Orthodoxy. The Orthodox Church was to remain protected. Russians were not to be forcibly converted to Catholicism. Russian political and religious institutions were to be preserved. Żółkiewski even accepted restrictions on bringing Commonwealth troops into Moscow. His objective was therefore not simply military occupation. He was trying to construct a political settlement capable of surviving after the army moved on. The plan ultimately failed amid conflicting Polish and Russian objectives and Sigismund III's own dynastic policy. But Żółkiewski had understood the basic strategic problem correctly: conquering Moscow was easier than creating a settlement Russians themselves would accept. And the scale of his triumph was made physically visible on 29 October 1611, when Żółkiewski entered Warsaw and presented the deposed Tsar Vasily Shuisky and his brothers Dmitry and Ivan before Sigismund III and the assembled political elite. Few European commanders have ever brought a captured sovereign into their capital after having occupied his.
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10. And he remained in command almost until the age of 73. Żółkiewski was not a general who produced one brilliant campaign and retired into legend. He became Grand Crown Hetman in 1618 and simultaneously Grand Crown Chancellor — combining the Commonwealth's highest military office with one of its highest offices of state. A year earlier, on 23 September 1617, he had negotiated the settlement at Busza with Iskender Pasha, temporarily preventing a full Polish-Ottoman war while the Commonwealth was still entangled in the Muscovite conflict. It was criticized at home, but strategically it bought time. Then, in 1620, at roughly 73 years of age, Żółkiewski personally led another Moldavian expedition. At Cecora his Commonwealth force numbered about 9,000, supplemented by perhaps 600–1,000 Moldavians. Ottoman-Tatar forces are estimated from around 20,000 upward, with much higher figures appearing in some accounts. The campaign failed. Yet even after defeat, Żółkiewski attempted to extract the army through Moldavia in a fortified marching formation. The retreat continued for days before discipline finally disintegrated near the Dniester. Żółkiewski was killed during the final collapse on 6–7 October 1620. His military life had begun by at least 1577. It ended in 1620. That is approximately 43 years of active campaigning. From Lubieszów to Byczyna. From Moldavia to Livonia. From Reval to Kłuszyn. From Kłuszyn to Moscow. From Moscow back to Cecora. Kłuszyn alone would have made Stanisław Żółkiewski famous. The rest of his career is what makes the case for placing him among the very greatest commanders Europe ever produced.
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TO JEST hetman Koniecpolski. Czyli jeden z największych polskich hetmanów. Chyba wiele pytań się tutaj nasuwa. Chcę napisać serię po angielsku na temat najwybitniejszych polskich wodzów. ALE JAK ja mam to zrobić??!
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Plagiaty, toczenie spraw sądowych o wpisy twitterowe, i masowe używanie botów...
Szykuje nam się Wielki Proces o prawdę i kłamstwo w polskim internecie, w szczególności na X. Kolega Wiech nam się troszkę wygłupił – nie wie na co się porwał – no więc chyba dostanie to na co zasłużył… Ciekawe co nam wyjdzie jak rzucimy na całą tę sprawę trochę więcej światła… Ale po kolei: To będzie długa saga – nie mam na to teraz specjalnie czasu, więc dziś tylko wstęp – stay tuned po więcej… Anatomia kłamstwa: Podstawowym zadaniem Złego jest przekonanie nas, że ono nie istnieje. I tak samo trolle i boty nas przede wszystkim przekonują, że ich nie ma, a najbardziej atakują i próbują to zatrzymać, gdy o nich piszemy i obnażamy ich istnienie. Tylko że my wiemy, że one istnieją – świadczą o tym liczby: w Polsce jest ponad 20 milionów kont "użytkowników" X-a (4-te miejsce na świecie) – czyli jasne jest, że duża większość to trolle i boty. No więc skoro one są, i są ich miliony, to co one robią – gdzie one są? Po co ktoś je zakłada? Ano po to żeby generować sztuczne "poparcie". Zobaczmy zatem kto takie ma? Gdy spytałem Groka o to "kto spośród dziennikarzy zbiera najwięcej interakcji na polskim X", to pierwszy z brzegu ranking jaki podał wygląda tak: ### Przykładowy ranking miesięczny (listopad 2025) – IMMonitoring Szczegółowe liczby interakcji (suma reakcji, komentarzy i udostępnień): (tylko posty z listopada) - @K_Stanowski → 858,6 tys. interakcji - @jakubwiech → 350,8 tys. - @PatrykSlowik → 302,8 tys. - @Bart_Wielinski → 284,8 tys. - @cezarykrysztopa → 244,2 tys. - @SzJadczak (Szymon Jadczak) → 236 tys. - @BogRymanowski → 232,7 tys. - @lkwarzecha → 212,6 tys. - @lis_tomasz → 191,9 tys. Czyli na pierwszym miejscu Stanowski – właściciel największych nowych mediów w ostatnim czasie, a na drugim miejscu jakiś śmieszny chłopak, lobbysta "zielonej transformacji", bez żadnego szczególnego dorobku ani wykształcenia, oprócz jakichś nagród od Siemensa i ogólnie od Niemców… Daleko przed Lisem, Rymanowskim, Warzechą itd… Hmmm, 🤔🧐 Ale pamiętajcie: BOTÓW I FARM TROLLI NIE MA! – to najbardziej musicie zapamiętać, a kto pisze inaczej, to musi czym prędzej PRZESTAĆ POSTOWAĆ! 👇🏻 No bo gdyby te boty i trolle jednak były, to co by one robiły? 🤔 Ale zamiast wytłumaczenia tego co wygląda bardzo podejrzanie, pomimo wielu próśb o sprostowanie jawnie przeprowadzanego wywodu, to tylko głupawe podśmiechujki, prowokacje, a potem już tylko atak i oszczerstwa – próba zemsty za obnażanie tego, cały czas się pytając czy coś się nie zgadza, żeby móc sprostować… (Czyli ja pokazuję, że chodzi o ustalenie prawdy, a oni chcą ją tylko kneblować… Czyli w każdym razie mamy jasność kto tu jest za poszukiwaniem prawdy, a kto za możliwością utrzymywania kłamstwa…) Skąd my znamy taki styl działania? Tu jeszcze nie będę go nazywał i określał – przyjdzie na to czas… Oj, brzydko to wygląda bardzo… Jak wiecie mi zależy na tym, żebyśmy nie dawali się oszukiwać – na pomyślności Polski i polskości – kraju moich dzieci – zatem zależy mi bardzo na uczciwości w naszej przestrzeni publicznej – bo od tego wszystko się zaczyna… To będzie długa saga – to tylko pierwszy odcinek, tak na szybko, bo nie mam teraz czasu się tym zajmować. Więc stay tuned – będzie ciekawie:) — A przy okazji: Jeśli któryś z trolli ma wyrzuty sumienia, nie chce pozostać po złej stronie historii, lub z innych powodów, i chciałby o tym procederze opowiedzieć, zaświadczyć, to niech da znać… Ktoś się w końcu zgłosi:) @gromotapl – zrób mi proszę jakieś sprytne "r a t i o" dla zasięgów i reklamy wśród kolegów trolli…:)
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NB: @jakubwiech toczył sprawy sądowe o wpisy twitterowe. To nie jest prosty kłamczuch i bezkręgowiec, tylko człowiek chory na głowę.
Jest! Mamy to! – list od Pani prawnik kol. Wiecha. Czyli oficjalnie dołączyłem do listy nękanych prawnikami za opisywanie kłamliwego procederu generowania sztucznego "poparcia" botami itp. Przypomnijmy: na moim profilu, w odpowiedzi na to, że k. Wiech mi się sam tam przypałętał razem z wielką ekipą bluzgających trolli – totalny ściek, który opisywałem – i to oni mają czelność teraz za to nękać mnie!! To są ludzie bez żadnej przyzwoitości, a jedynie używający prawniczej pały do zastraszania i kneblowania ludzi za uczciwe prezentowanie niewygodnych dla nich treści… No ale tu mają pecha, bo od czasu wysłania tego pisma cały ten proceder się pięknie publicznie potwierdził… Pani Zosia załączyła na kopercie swój numer telefonu – czy zanim to otworzę zadzwonić do niej i zapytać się czy wobec nowych niezbitych faktów chcą się z tego wycofać i przeprosić? Czy nie ma co? @rafalhubert, @MrMireaux i kto jeszcze ma z nią do czynienia – jaka to osoba? Co ciekawego o niej wiemy, o tym jak się zachowuje? 😉
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Daniel Foubert retweeted
Świetna wiadomość! Doskonały Autor, doskonały Wydawca i doskonały acz niedoceniany temat.
Chyba mam powód do chwalenia się. Po kilku latach pracy nad tekstem (bez AI 😆) podsumowanie 30 lat relacji bilateralnych 🇵🇱🇸🇰. Smaczki i ciekawostki na bieżąco, a tymczasem dziękuję @OMPksiazki i zapraszam do lektury. ksiegarniaomp.pl/niewykorzys…
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Daniel Foubert retweeted
U.S. - China state dinner, what really happened 🤣
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Daniel Foubert retweeted
Eighty-seven years ago today, Warsaw endured one of the darkest days of the German invasion of Poland. From morning until night, the Luftwaffe subjected the besieged Polish capital to a massive aerial assault, while German artillery continued to pound the city. High-explosive and incendiary bombs fell across Warsaw as homes, hospitals, churches and entire neighborhoods burned. Thousands of civilians were killed during the bombardment. The people of Warsaw had already been resisting for more than three weeks. They were exhausted, defeated, surrounded, and increasingly short of food, water and ammunition, yet Polish soldiers and civilians continued their defense. September 25 became remembered as “Bloody Monday” - a devastating attempt to break Warsaw through overwhelming bombardment and destruction, yet the city continued to resist and Warsaw would not formally surrender until September 28.
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Why I Write. The reach. The repost. The moment when the argument lands in the right mind at the right time and something shifts. Yes – all of that matters. Musk reposts. Milei reposts. A US Senator asks whether Poland is saving Western Civilization. These things matter. I will not pretend they don’t. But also because I cannot not write it. Because I care. Because I find it important in a way that precedes the audience and would survive its absence. And for my children – as an act of transmission, yes, but also as a contribution to the world they will inherit. The two motives are not in tension. They are the same motive at different scales. I came to this from four directions simultaneously – which is perhaps why the lens is what it is. Warsaw first. I am Polish, which means I understand from the inside what the managed reality produces when it runs without constraint. My civilization was processed by both totalitarianisms. We lost Warsaw, rebuilt stone by stone from memory. We spent decades inside the Systemic Lie – the managed reality that corrupts categories of thought, that teaches people to perform beliefs they don’t hold, that produces the closed face and the careful answer and the smile that doesn’t come easily to strangers. We got out. And then I watched the West begin to build, from the inside, the thing we had just escaped. Not the same – subtler, slower, better dressed. But recognizable. The Polish wound produces a specific kind of clarity. You cannot gaslight someone who has been educated in the system you are trying to gaslight them with. Paris second. I walked past the Café de Flore every morning on my way to ENA – the café where the ideas were made that would eventually capture the institutions that would eventually produce the managed reality this series has spent months naming. I studied at the École Polytechnique, at the Sorbonne, at ENA itself – the institution that produced the entire French administrative class that runs the European project Spinelli designed in a prison cell in 1941. The French formation gave me the depth, the philosophical framework, the ability to trace the argument back to its roots. It also gave me the ability to recognize the fumeux – the pretentious obscurantism that depth produces when it loses contact with reality. The French tradition at its best produced Tocqueville and Bastiat and Montesquieu. At its worst it produced what came out of the Parisian cafés. I learned both from the inside. London third. Twelve years. Goldman Sachs, derivatives trading, the Anglo-Saxon formation that completes the picture. If Warsaw gave me the wound and Paris gave me the depth, London gave me the precision – the insistence on evidence, on the argument that can be tested against reality rather than merely admired for its elegance. The financial markets are the most ruthless epistemological environment available: you are right or you are wrong and the price tells you which. Twelve years of that produces a specific intolerance for managed reality – because in the markets, the managed reality eventually meets the actual reality, and the actual reality always wins. And then close to twenty years among the Polish liberty-minded, conservative milieu – which I simply perceive as honest patriots with understanding. Not ideologues. Not partisans. And when I say conservative, I mean something specific: conserving our particular brand of liberty, not institutions that limit it. People who have lived through enough history to know what matters and what doesn’t, who have the specific clarity that comes from having paid for their convictions rather than merely performed them. People for whom zakłamanie is not an abstract concept but a lived experience, who recognize the Systemic Lie immediately because they spent decades inside it and decades more watching it reassemble itself in new clothes. This formation is hardest to explain to the Western mind – because it looks, from the outside, like conservatism, which the Western mind has been trained to dismiss. From the inside it is something simpler and more serious: people who know what civilization costs, who have paid the price, and who are not willing to watch it be given away by people who have never had to. Four formations. Four wounds. Four ways of seeing the same thing from different angles – and discovering that the angles converge. The Polish wound names the Systemic Lie from the inside. The French depth traces its intellectual genealogy. The Anglo-Saxon precision tests it against evidence. The Polish liberty milieu keeps it grounded in the real rather than the theoretical. I write in the format that reaches people – not the academic paper, not the policy brief, not the book that takes three years and reaches three thousand people. The post. The specific argument in the specific format that the person scrolling at midnight, anywhere in our civilization, can absorb, recognize, and pass forward. This format reaches millions wherever they are – in Argentina, in America, in Britain, in every country where the preference falsification is ending and the cascade is beginning. Hayek called them the secondhand dealers in ideas. I have made my peace with being one. It is the most useful thing I can be right now. The series has become a canon – over one hundred and fifty pieces covering the full architecture of Western civilization, from the Parthenon to the positive program, from Homer to Gramsci, from the Sistine Chapel to the modern art banana taped to the wall. It was not designed to be a canon. It grew into one because the civilizational argument turns out to be a single argument seen from many angles – and each angle illuminates the others. I write for the person at midnight who feels, without being able to name it, that something is wrong – that the civilization they inhabit is being dismantled by mechanisms they can sense but not identify. I write to give them the vocabulary. Because you cannot fight what you cannot name. Because the person who can name it is slightly less alone – and slightly more dangerous to the system that depends on the silence of the people who see. And for my children. So that they inherit a vocabulary as well as a world. So that the series is itself an act of transmission – the parent passing forward not just values but the framework that makes the values legible. Poland has always written for the West as well as for itself. Za wolność naszą i waszą – for your freedom and ours – is not just a military motto. It is a civilizational posture. The wound that produces the clarity. The clarity that produces the vocabulary. The vocabulary that produces the series. The series that reaches the people who need it. This is why I write. Tell the truth. Have courage. And build.
Is Poland Saving Western Civilization? 🇵🇱🏛️🗽 A US Senator asked the question. It deserves a serious answer. The short answer is: we are trying. We have done it before. We know what it costs. The longer answer requires understanding why the view from Warsaw is the clearest available – and why the diagnosis of what is happening to the West keeps coming from the East. 1. Poland has been at the intersection of the two great totalitarianisms of the twentieth century. Not as an observer – as the primary victim. The Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939 was not an alliance between opposites. It was a cooperation between variants of the same system – two collectivisms dividing between them the country that stood in the way. We lost six million people. We lost Warsaw, rebuilt stone by stone from memory. We lost forty-five years to Soviet occupation. And then, in 1989, we did something nobody thought possible: we got out. Not through revolution – through the slow, patient, organized accumulation of resistance that the system could not finally contain. The word for what we learned in that process is zakłamanie – the systematic societal lie that the system requires to function. We know it from the inside. We know its smell, its texture, its specific weight in a room. When we see it operating in Western institutions, we recognize it immediately. The West is still learning the vocabulary. We have been living inside it. 2. This is not the first time Poland has stood at the hinge of Western history. Vienna 1683 – Sobieski rode down the hill with the Polish Winged Hussars cavalry when the Ottoman army was at the gates of Europe and everyone else was calculating the cost of resistance. He didn’t calculate. He rode. 1920 – the Battle of Warsaw stopped the Red Army from reaching Western Europe. Lord D’Abernon called it the eighteenth decisive battle of world history. If Warsaw had fallen, the revolution would have probably reached Germany, France, the West – before it had produced the antidotes. The course of the twentieth century would have been different. It didn’t fall. 1980 – Solidarity cracked the Iron Curtain when cracking it seemed impossible. 1989 – Poland again – the Round Table agreement that began the democratic domino effect across Eastern Europe started in Warsaw. The pattern is not coincidence. It is geography, history, and the specific formation that comes from being the country that cannot afford to be wrong about power. 3. The wound produces the clarity. This is the key mechanism. Poland has been processed by both totalitarianisms – has lived inside the systematic lie, has learned what it costs to name it and what it costs not to, has developed the cultural antibodies that the West is now discovering it needs and does not have. The smile that doesn’t come easily. The directness that sounds harsh to ears trained on managed reality. The instinct to name what is happening before the naming becomes dangerous – because we have lived in the world where it becomes dangerous, and we know how fast that transition occurs. The West looks at Eastern Europe and sees countries that haven’t quite caught up. Eastern Europe looks at the West and sees countries that are catching down – toward something we recognize, something we spent decades trying to escape, something we would very much prefer not to return to. 4. The vocabulary is the contribution. Zakłamanie – systemic societal lying, the managed reality that corrupts categories of thought. Obłuda – performative hypocrisy, the mask of falsehood worn so long it becomes the face. The Systemic Lie – not individual dishonesty but the institutionalized replacement of truth with the appearance of truth across every surface simultaneously. These are not theoretical concepts. They are survival tools, developed by a civilization that needed them to survive. When this series uses them to describe what is happening in Brussels, in Paris, in the captured universities and the content moderation departments and the fact-checking organizations – it is not importing foreign concepts. It is returning concepts to the civilization that produced the conditions requiring them, with the precision that comes from having had to use them in earnest. 5. The series you are reading is one answer to the Senator’s question. Not the only answer. The most important answer is Poland itself: the country that has maintained its civilizational vitality while Western Europe collapses, that has built a functioning economy while its neighbors stagnate, that has maintained its identity while the managed reality tries to dissolve it, that has said no to the mechanisms of the long march with a clarity that comes from knowing exactly what those mechanisms lead to. Poland is not perfect. No country is. But it is one of the few places in the Western world where the question "what are we for?" has a clear answer – and where that answer is transmitted, generation to generation, in the family, the church, the school, the culture, with the urgency of people who know what happens when the transmission fails. 6. Musk reposts. Milei reposts. A US Senator asks the question. European politicians stay silent. This distribution of attention is itself diagnostic. The people who are fighting the managed reality recognize the vocabulary because they need it. The people who are maintaining it stay silent because they recognize it for what it is – a threat to the system that produced them and that they are producing in turn. The silence of European institutions is not ignorance. It is acknowledgment. They know what is being said. They know it is true. They know that engaging with it on its own terms would require admitting things that the system cannot admit and remain the system. 7. Is Poland saving Western civilization? The question assumes that saving is something one country does for another. It is not. It is something a civilization does for itself – through the specific people and places that have maintained the clearest view of what the civilization is, what threatens it, and what it costs to defend it. Poland is one of those places. The wound is real. The clarity it produces is real. The vocabulary it generates is being used, right now, by people on every continent who are trying to name what is happening to their countries and find the courage to say so. There is a Polish motto that captures this precisely – one that has accompanied every Polish fight for freedom since the nineteenth century: Za wolność naszą i waszą. For your freedom and ours. It was the motto of the Polish officers who fought in the uprisings against the partitioning powers and in every war where Poles went to fight for someone else’s freedom because they understood, instinctively, that freedom is indivisible – that the freedom lost in Warsaw is eventually lost in Paris, and the freedom defended in Vienna is eventually defended everywhere. The Winged Hussars rode down the hill at Vienna in 1683 not because Vienna was Poland – but because the civilization was one thing, and what threatened it threatened everything. Za wolność naszą i waszą. The motto is more durable than any alliance. It is the specific Polish understanding that you cannot defend your own freedom while remaining indifferent to someone else’s. Tell the truth. Have courage. And build. We learned this the hard way. We are passing it forward. That is what civilizations do when they intend to survive. Za wolność naszą i waszą used to be the motto of our fight. It still is. 🇵🇱🗽
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Incredibly stupid. The boss of the French socialist party proposes a tax on AI because it will allow employers to fire people. These people are SICK.
Il faut un dividende IA ! Dans une entreprise où il y a dix comptables, demain, avec l’IA, il n’y en aura peut-être plus qu’un seul. Ce sont neuf salaires économisés, mais surtout neuf cotisations sociales en moins pour financer les retraites, l’éducation et la santé, et neuf personnes au chômage prises en charge par notre système de solidarité. Il faut donc qu’une partie des gains de productivité liés à l’IA bénéficie à la collectivité, avec un dividende IA, pour éviter de fragiliser progressivement notre propre modèle social.
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