I fully agree with this move by the EU and do rather often approve their commonsense pro-consumer legislation.

As a small-government conservative, I believe it's one of the main remits of government to counter monopoly behavior. ... At the same time, I recognize that the EU isn't nearly democratic enough, and does unfortunately stray into overregulation / wealth-farming from "naughty capitalists" who dare to be successful/don't kowtow to the EU.

NEITHER the US model nor the EU models are great.

Not really.
Here is the report, finding it really didn't take a lot of chasing.
https://drive.google.com/file/...

I recommend you read https://www.nationalreview.com... as well. Putnam is clearly uncomfortable with his findings (credit to him for still honestly publishing the data; not sure that would happen in 2026), and so makes some leaps unsupported by what he presents, as in
"it's a short-term effect"...based on absolutely nothing in the report.
"we will find new ways to boost social solidarity." that's ideology and faith, not data.
He talks about the 'benefits outweighing the disadvantages' again, failing to prove anything about the benefits.

And yes, to your point all my data is American data. Absolutely agree that different scales apply to different contexts, nationalities, etc (Reference here Geert Hofstede's seminal work on cultural alignments and differences in such issues).

I find it curious and unsurprising in 2026 that my post - which was intended to be challenging - has been modded to -1 Troll. This is the case for nearly any unpopular political stance on Slashdot today.

"the best places to live in the world, in terms of health, happiness, and quality of life"
Are those our metrics now? Are they yours?

Men are happier than women.
Conservatives are happier than liberals.
People of faith are happier than those without.
If are seeking to make people happier, I'm surprised that you of all people would be advocating conservatism and faith.

Oh, also, actual data shows diverse neighborhoods are UNhappier, consistently. (in case you need the link: "The Downside of Diversity" https://www.nytimes.com/2007/0... )
What precisely are you going to advocate with that info?

Come on. US educational spending is VERY high on both an absolute and per capita basis, as has already been pointed out to you, and US education has been in decline since at least the 1960s. Arch-conservative (/s) Richard Feynman wrote in his autobiography about how shit our textbooks were when he was on the Arch-conservative (/s) California commission to help choose them. FWIW, I recommend reading this bit regardless of your political persuasion. I do have one quibble with it (personally, I think being able to move between at least base 2, 10, and 16 is actually quite useful, but Feynman was a physicist and not a sysadmin so her gets a pass) but it's illustrative of just how terrible our educational system is, and it is NOT a problem of money.

As far as PBS goes, if you want to know why it was defunded, start here. One of NPR's editors (yes, I know NPR and PBS are separate things), Uri Berliner, claimed that in the quarter century he worked there that it had completely lost diversity of thought, and that was a bad thing. The result is he resigned due to overwhelming hostility from his colleagues. When your Sarah Lawrence/Columbia educated editor, son of the woman who was the founding chair of Sarah Lawrence's Women's Studies department, grandson of jews murdered in Auschwitz, is ringing alarm bells and the response is to force him out... maybe you should be wondering if maybe he had a good point.

Note: I am not at all happy that CPB was defunded. As you noted, they do (or, I guess, did) a lot of great work. But the people steering the ship invited this outcome.

It's even worse than that. The doctrine flies in the face of the wording of 42 USC 1983, which provides:

The court that created qualified immunity decided that the plain wording "the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws" really meant "rights, privileges, or immunities" that some court had clearly and specifically established in case law.

While this example is ridiculous, let's say the court had previously found "anally raping a prisoner with a nightstick while high on cocaine" to be a deprivation, "anally raping a prisoner with a nigthstick while sober" might not be so clearly established and cause the case to be dismissed. This is further compounded by the dismissals that make establishing that in case law a near impossibility.

The "good" news here, such as it is, is qualified immunity only applies to civil suits against the officers specifically. It does not protect them from criminal liability (that's the prosecutor's job *rimshot*) and it does not protect their employer from being sued for the actions of its employee.

It's been difficult to not look at the last half decade and not let my inner conspiracy theorist run wild. The massive supply shortages that persisted through Covid (and now the AI bubble) would make wonderful cover for some kind of EOTWAWKI scenario where governments build arks or whatever.