Estonia | The Digital State

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Most state rely on paper bureaucracy to ensure that the state can function and provide services. Paper bureaucracy has been part and parcel of how we maintain states and corporations since the Chinese invented the first paper bureaucracy systems of management 3000 years ago.
But as you all probably know, bureaucracy kinda sucks. It costs a lot to maintain, and in the worst cases bureaucracy can turn a state into a labyrinthian monstrosity that can be near to impossible to navigate.
Estonia is a Baltic country that in recent years has been embarking on reform programs that are intended to change this. Estonia is a “Paperless state” meaning a state that has effectively removed all paper from it’s bureaucracy and replaced it with a digital state structure. In this short video I would like to introduce you to the digital state and argue for it.
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[@Kraut_the_Parrot]

Go to ground.news/kraut to to stay fully informed. Subscribe through my link for 40% off unlimited access or try it for less than $1 this month.

[@Dius765RS]

4:30 - I finished school at 16 in 1996 in the uk. We had weekly computer literacy all through my schooling, every person in my class could 'touch type' blind folded, before they left school...

[@Arrow14100]

The title should have been E-stonia | The Digital State

[@markusmeldre]

14:30 it should be mentioned that in estonia employers pay 33.8% of the employee's salary in taxes, which seemingly portrays a low tax rate (33+22=55%). For example if your pre tax pay is 1000 eur, you get 900 after tax and your employer has a total cost of 1338 eur (salary + social/employee tax) I guess it slightly deflates estonia's wages in rankings and whatnot

[@battlebossv9219]

Yeaaahhh but solar flair...

[@TheRezro]

TBH there is almost no communist remnants in Poland either. Poles just dissolved it slowly and organically.

[@KhAnubis]

e-Government? e-Voting? e-Marriage? Might as well call the country e-Stonia

[@Kraut_the_Parrot]

yo dude. I loved your latest video on the Egyptian language. keep it up!

[@SaikoEU]

This might be one of the best comments I've seen in this comment section.

[@miksceihners50]

Now the just have to legalize weed, and this joke will work even better lol

[@Adam-326]

@@miksceihners50e-Stonedia

[@malcolmapplet4313]

They used to call it E-stonia at the beginning of the internet boom (2000 +/-)

[@Stoneworks]

Estonia's government runs solely on patreon and kickstarter funds

[@balala7567]

hello funny minecraft guy

[@Stoneworks]

@@balala7567 Hello anonymous internet person

[@gorilmod9667]

Love your vids ;3

[@TheHoldOfficialChannel]

Stoney!

[@timothytumusiime2903]

​@@Stoneworks I have seen you in three separate comment sections You are idle this week And I LOVED the agriculture video

[@blackwingedangel3053]

As a German, what Estonia managed to do in 2007 sounds like a utopic vision to our ridiculous and extensive and ineffective bureaucracy. So Chapeau Estonians!

[@kfchampion6230]

But at the same time it gives us hope for the future, seeing how a country might develop if we play our cards right

[@doctor_alfa]

Their schools where more modern and digitalized in 2002 than our schools are now lol

[@robs9237]

It's great what Eatonia achieved, but only a tiny nation can do what they did. Larger countries could never do this.

[@ustralien]

@@robs9237 At what scale exactly would that fail and why?

[@lasker637]

You know wath i say Older people hinder everything in Germany and our politics even more so there want no change or invest in it i feal no reason to give any party a vote meanwile cdu,csu,spd,green,afd no one do something its so sad :D

[@RobVice]

As an Estonian, every time I travel somewhere I am just completely baffled how behind pretty much everyone is in digitalisation and just having things work properly

[@WaiGee_]

I know that feeling, whenever I travel I am constantly baffled that not every place accepts card payments. Or how when I had a job in London and had to access my documents, I just plugged my id card into a reader and my coworkers had no idea what it was or what I was doing. It was hilarious explaining our system to them and seeing the visible confusion on their faces.

[@ukuexealt544]

As an estonian I was completely baffeled, when I realized that in other countries people can't do a majority of things online that we can. I sincerly hope that you guys will also go more digital in the future! Very well made video :D

[@Dotalol123]

Yeah but if we Balkan states implemented this then how would politicians stay in power without the option to maintain bloated buirrocracy and offer employment in it if you vote for them? 🤔

[@awsumpchits]

@@Dotalol123 simple, they'll just 'edit' your e-vote. as they have.

[@LMB222]

Poland does. Travelling through it from Germany is like reading science fiction in the 1980's. There are no flying cars, but there are battery operated buses, and hydrogen as well.

[@tehexosus5674]

Estonian here: It's not really a 10 min filing your taxes, it's more like go to a website and push a button. And now you don't really need your ID-card for anything except maybe as a gun licence proof. Everything done through smartphone, strangely even signing digi-docs. So you don't even need an ID card reader which was annoying.

[@theorixlux]

Huh. What happens if someone steals your phone? How do you help prevent that?

[@tehexosus5674]

@@theorixlux the phone itself is useless without your smart ID codes. it's a verification thing. the sender like a bank shows you codes on a website, then your phone shows you the same code, you verify that codes match, you input your pin or puk codes and it's done.

[@markusmeldre]

@@theorixlux they need to know your ID card number plus if you lose your phone you're supposed to immediately deactivate your smartID. Kinda like with a bank card if you lose it, someone can still shop online so you're supposed to deactivate your card.

[@productividad-fv7ch]

​@@theorixlux Don't you have a password set up in your phone?

[@BrazilMentionedHueHue]

@@productividad-fv7ch Ok, but what if they take your phone when it is unlocked?

[@MaikuBoy1]

Tax declaration in Estonia is riddiculous. I thought I did something wrong because it only took me one login, and 5 button presses.

[@Carewolf]

Sound overcomplicated. In the Nordic countries taxes file themselves

[@under6075]

@@Carewolf so basically you set something up and the process becomes automatic?

[@Carewolf]

@@under6075 Well, first they had to simplify the tax code, so it didn't contain things that needed to be reported manually. Then when everything was stuff they got automatically from income statements, it could be made entirely automatic. Only people with their own companies need to file taxes.

[@under6075]

@@Carewolf oh ok

[@frosthammer917]

@@Carewolf As an estonian, that is basically true here as well. It does all of it for you, you just can check over it and it asks you if it has missed anything. If not, all you need to do is click "yes that is correct" like twice and you are done.

[@SteveAkaDarktimes]

Jesus christ the speed and pace of these innovations is ridiculous. and since they focused on making EVERYONE tech-literate in coding, they have the sheer manpower to code these things reliable with a 10 year headstart to every other country in the world. I'm Swiss, and I can do my taxes online, but digitalisation of literally anything else, especially citizen E-ID faces a monstrous slog of reactionary, ignorant pushback. I'm incredibly jealous. Estonians should be rightfully proud of their accomplishments.

[@truffaldiino4951]

Nope, we have sever IT workers shortage and have had one for the past 20 years. It is estimated that we could utilize somewhere between 10-30k IT professionals in our economy if they just were here. But they aren't and the immigration laws are so tight that only 1.3k immigrants are allowed each year and a lot of those go to other specialties as well.

[@GermanTopGameTV]

It helps that their state is small - the pushback against reforms is therefor managable. Bigger states take longer, have more hirarchical steps from street level to president, each step being a chance to hinder progress or introduce corruption. It's impressive what they achieved, but they also had the perfect conditions to do this.

[@oliverdowning1543]

Amazingly, people don't always trust the government to monitor all their actions in the way you'd need to have for this kind of system to be a benefit. Hard not to notice that they made the privacy and security changes to their country's digital systems *after* getting hacked by Russia. Sure, we still have all the same risks from the private sector who are far more corrupt and anti-democratic but that doesn't mean we double down.

[@zcatharsis]

@@truffaldiino4951 where are those open job postings for 10k+ positions? I have 10+ years of experience and landing a decent job is harder than ever.

[@EdinoRemerido]

cryber warfare, but ok

[@spectacles-dm]

Estonia has long been one of my personal favorite bureaucratic case studies. Just excellent execution of public policy on so many levels and an inspiring story all around. Great to see them getting some love. Great video, Kraut!

[@spicynoodles28]

As a Latvian I’m incredibly happy for our Estonians brothers. Hope Latvia follows in the same example 🇱🇻❤️🇪🇪

[@kairekilk930]

Nah we need cheap alcohol

[@balticpagan1495]

given all our troubles, we are mostly around 3 years behind Estonia in most of digital stuff (bessides E voting, that our goverment is afraid of) so honestly we are doing much better than most of europe. I just wish out goverment just spent less money on re-creating these sytems here, but just worked whit Estonia to impliment same systems they already have

[@ratoh1710]

Estonia also founded the Digital Nations group, which is an attempt to spread its digitalization ideals to other governments. There are currently 10 members, Estonia, Israel, Korea, New Zealand, and the UK are the founding members with Canada, Uruguay, Mexico, and Portugal joining in 2018 and Denmark joining in 2019. As a Dane, I have personally experienced the benefits of many of the initiatives that were described in this video. The vast majority of government interaction is entirely paperless, the only one I can think of that isn't is our elections are still paper. I am sure there are others but I can't think of them. The only reason I remembered that one is that I just got the electoral card yesterday in the mail.

[@Kraut_the_Parrot]

Damn... I must have overlooked this. Wish I had made it part of the video.

[@mystuff9999]

And as a German I am not surprised as well as frustrated we‘re not on that list 😢

[@Korfax124]

​@@mystuff9999 In your case you have to kill a whole god first... There must be a second zeitenwende! A digital zeitenwende!!

[@Korfax124]

@@Kraut_the_Parrot Estonia certainly have been more committed to paperlessness than us with schools teaching the basics of IT... I still remember our Prime Minister back in 2003 declaring that Denmark should - in his words - be a leading IT nation. I was excited to watch this one to see how far our European rival in this area had gotten and I'm impressed by their effort and a bit shocked that Denmark only joined the Digital Nations in 2019...

[@hunterhelfrich2094]

Canada has gotten notably better with the amount of work you can do digitally with taxes, social insurance etc, thanks Estonia

[@G3700L]

As a german Living in Estonia for about 14 year's now, the sheer difference between Estonia and Germany on this subject is astonishing and makes me honestly sad.

[@fakedungeonmaster5740]

Just wait until you find out about Greece

[@butylkapiva]

estonishing

[@Narekz]

Can't be worse than Germany

[@Decade_The_DragonPuppeteer]

@@butylkapiva Clever comment lol

[@zerefoex]

@@G3700L Kaja Kallas tuleb tappa!

[@llsamtapaill-oc9sh]

You would be surprised how much Estonia helped india figure things out. A lot of Estonian companies and ministers have actually helped a lot with digitization of India. Love them so much 💕

[@WaiGee_]

🇪🇪♥️🇮🇳

[@srajandikshit7590]

Never knew that Estonia was so vital in our DPI program. Much Love❤❤

[@nikhiljoshiPi]

Absolutely true. The UIDAI/Aadhar reform and the one nation one card are actually driven by Estonian ideas. One other thing is the localization of data for which we basically have conflicted with China, is also inspired by Estonia.

[@janarkolemees]

All the best to Bharat!

[@JmKrokY]

Cool

[@erik7999]

Estonia may be the smallest of us three, but they are doing a superb job at schooling us how a true modern state looks like. That's no small achievement. So proud of our little sister. 😎

[@WaiGee_]

We gotta compensate somehow c:

[@xxtheeunuchxx264]

When I went to the Netherlands to study a few years ago, I moved in with a Dutch guy and two Estonians. Already I was baffled by the life the Dutch were living, for example with their digital ID numbers that expedite many public services, and I remember getting clowned by my Dutch roommate for bringing cash money from home. As such, we were both surprised at how irritated our Estonian roommates were with Dutch institutions and bureaucracy. Again, to me it already felt as if I had travelled at least 10 years into the future. When we all went on vacation to Estonia together the veil finally lifted, and us two westerners experienced how advanced this country was in comparison to ours. I distinctly remember how one of the Estonian guys logged into the public healthcare service to retrieve some documents, the equivalents of which I knew I'd have to plow through several centimetres of paperwork to find in my physical folders back home. If there was any doubt, yes I am from Germany, and my employers use fax daily

[@dwarf2155]

We also have digitalised healthcare records in finland

[@dwarf2155]

And taxes here file themselves if you dont have your own business

[@RavignonCh]

iPad Kidocracy

[@PakBallandSami]

Classic ravignon

[@erth-d3s]

lol

[@OackishWaves]

When are you going to post part 2 of part III?

[@starmaker75]

Man, that an cursed thought. Again this what happens when play too munch geopolitics video games.

[@radish_irrational]

IPad Pedocracy ?

[@MrMainA]

I am a simple Lithuanian. I see Estonia, I like the video.

[@LilStraggler]

Cute.

[@mentiquebakabila4254]

I’m in between you and them

[@Decade_The_DragonPuppeteer]

I love this comment :D

[@salem_seagull]

aww thats wholesome!

[@kontomurr]

I'm a simple Estonian, I see a Lithuanian, I like

[@sandermesila4904]

The tax rate was increased to 22% in 2024. This is because of some poor management during the corona crisis. And while the tax rate has been flat, then the state loves to play with excise taxes, especially fuel. Hence goods can be relatively costly at times. Education is also something that is constantly being praised, although the salaries of teachers are at times criminal, and there is a noticable shortage of teachers in the country. Many teachers we have are also from soviet times, so some of them have strange ways of teaching. But, overall I love my country. Took me 2 minutes to order a new European Health Insurance card for example. Edit: my mistake, VAT was increased, not income tax. Income tax is still 20%.

[@GreatRetro]

The main reason tax % increased from 20 to 22% is cause ruZian invasion of Ukraine!!! So now we have to spend on Millitary more and cheap russian resources is morally wrong to buy at this point!!! Also we are helping Ukraine and Ukrainian refugees!!! So, yeah... a little torbulence. I hope that in future tax % might come back to 20! ^_^

[@tvtndr]

Wrong. VAT was increased from 20% to 22%, not income tax.

[@Demopans5990]

@@GreatRetro Though even at 30%, the rates would only then be roughly comparable to the US tax rate. That is a lot of defence spending. Probably needed when there is that one ex that is clingy in all the wrong ways

[@elagrion]

No country is perfect.

[@danielsurvivor1372]

​@@GreatRetro Yep, y'all stay awesome bros, hopefully left wing and right wing libertarians will one day realise Estonia already figured out how to make a perfect compromise between left and right wing libertarian policies 😊

[@prtl204]

my friend says "and we're supposed to be a digital state" when he can't pay the public transportation fee via mobile :D

[@plipplop1234]

but we can. i just use my swed mobile app.

[@simonsaysno]

Yes, the income tax in Estonia is 20%, HOWEVER, employers must pay a social tax of 33% on employee's gross earnings.

[@tankart3645]

Social tax or in other countries known also as employers tax exist nearly in every country, most of all countries in Europe. And usually are seen more as a tax on employers than employees in political circles, and does not really effect individuals, as it’s usually not talked about or taken into account when an employer talks about the wage with employee. Why there is so much talk about the social tax in Estonia, and why many Estonians belive that Estonia is the only country in the world that has it, or that Estonia has a high tax burden, is because of politics. The populist party EKRE heavily brought it up, even manipulating statistics to show on their social media channels to make it seems like Estonia had a high tax rate. They did this to go up against Reform party who wanted to raise income tax from 20% to 22%. And within the very Libeterian Estonian society it was very effective method to get votes or least be on the TV enough to stay relevant. TD:LR basically; Estonia still has a very low tax rate (and for the quality of services the state offers, it’s very effective. Something that only could be achieved thanks to the E-state)

[@simonsaysno]

​@@tankart3645 Thanks for the textwall, but in the real world that is a significant tax. It's irrelevant that it is "seen more as a tax on employers than employees", as someone has to pay it at the end of the day. At 20% income + 33% social you are getting into Scandinavian territory for a country with worse social services. Here in Norway a salary of $200,000 (example used to trigger the maximum rate) get a total tax burden of 47.1%, of which 39.6% is income and 7.5% is employer. I don't know anyone who consider Norway a tax haven....

[@RealRanton]

It's like the opposite of Germany 😂

[@Gloopling]

Holy shit, Ranton!! I your vids bro!!

[@danielsurvivor1372]

Good ending 😊

[@003mohamud]

the best game reviewer

[@aleksander3647]

rantoni mu lemmik makaroni

[@elisterr]

But you know what makes your comparison with Germany funny? When Estonia got back its independence and threw away all the Soviet laws... We literally did a copy-paste-translate from West-Germanys laws and just removed those things that have nothing to do with Estonia. So, in general. This is what Germany should have become. :D And it isnt difficult to do it today either. But, you need digital literacy.

[@The_Libationist]

Always good to see a Post Soviet success story, let us all hope it can stay a success story

[@hestan723]

"I own article 5 for home defense as the founding fathers intended"

[@acat1812]

If an unpopular government strangling the people and a facade of technology is a success story, then sure. To me, an estonian, the current happenings can be explained with one sentence that usually describes Russian history. That sentence is "And then things got worse."

[@andrestamm3395]

@@acat1812 and then a russian paid propaganda spreader commented. Boohoo you don't get to change the government overnight without elections. That's how democracy works. Bet you, as a russian, haven't heard of that tho.

[@gonzalomeadearanda5751]

take a shot for every time Kraut says "digital"

[@Kraut_the_Parrot]

I think that is a bad idea.

[@rotmistrzjanm8776]

​@@Kraut_the_ParrotWindows will start making screenshots every 3 seconds so soon it won't be much work~~

[@Blackstaralpha]

@@Kraut_the_Parrot nAh I diid annd sna iwas fiiiinnee1!! *hick*

[@heinrichkrull2523]

A shot of water

[@Baumstumpf.]

​@@Blackstaralpha this comment reads how west-austrians speak XD NaAAa i hUn Gar iT aMAl so viEL gsOfFn Same energy ^^

[@Frang14998]

I'm from Estonia, so many mistakes in this video, or inaccuracies. Yes they may have introduced this or that in 2007 or 2005 but in reality it became usable for the majority of people like +5 years later. So add +5 years to practically everything here. One good example is the e-bus ticket. I was in primary school and still using paper tickets that you would punch holes into in 2011 (not 2004 like the video suggests). Also our income tax or VAT is 22% now, they raised it 01. january 2024. So this is wrong also. Furthermore this chalk blackboard - smartboard thing. Like 1 or 2 classrooms had this smartboard and that was in like 2009 when i first saw such a thing, so to claim that in 2002 we had smart boards in every school or something is just so damn ridiculous, and I was in a big city school. Small city schools saw those things in like 2017+. Yes now it is like the video suggests (2024) But in 2002? Chalk board was the most top technology we knew and would be for 7 years to come for sure. So all in all maybe factually this video is correct, in reality this video is very very far from reality when you are realistic. Nothing happened overnight. So mostly I'd say that if you were to look at this video, add +5 or +7 years to everything starting from introduction year and you'd get something that actually reflects reality. Anyway, thanks for the video, it was interesting to watch still.

[@Smuusik]

Underrated comment. Can confirm. Progress was made, but it took time for it to spread and become everyday.

[@steivsilm]

@@Smuusik excatly. I remember that lawyers etc started to use digital signature very fast, I guess within few years everyone used it, but to go in to masses it took some years. I started my business in 2006 and remember that 2008 and 2009 I had to send my yearly report to state in paper form and the not anymore. It is easy, it works. Personal taxes take minute or two - usually depend how long you want to check the numbers you see. With bus tickets - I think you can still buy paper tickets if you want to! But in 2004-5 I am sure that you could buy ticket with mobile phone. I did it. Later became the cards you need to validate, although the public transport in Tallinn is free for peolple living in Tallinn for more than 10 years.

[@Growered]

VAT is being raised again to 24% :)

[@Anti_Septikum]

Tulevikus panevad 50 protsendi peale

[@SorinSilaghi]

I don't know if you realize how far behind everyone else is. I get your point but most other countries haven't even introduced most of these.

[@Troggedemic]

As a Dane, I always thought we were trailblazing when it comes to digitalisation. But I guess we’re just the runner-up trying to compete, and Estonia is the Usain Bolt of digitalisation. We did a lot of digitalization in the 80’ies, which has slowed us down today, as programs have become inoperable due to their age and the specific requirements to maintain them. I think that’s what gave Estonia the edge, they started more from scratch in a maturing digital market, where we had legacy systems from a time where artisanal coders made government systems in code languages that are functionally extinct today.

[@Carewolf]

I still works much better in Denmark than in Estonia. Taxes for instance are simpler in Denmark, and we never made the mistake of e-voting like Estonia did.

[@bhq700]

@@Carewolf e-voting was a success wym?

[@Carewolf]

@@bhq700 No.

[@bhq700]

@@Carewolf Literally nobody agrees with you here

[@Carewolf]

@@bhq700 Where?, in Russia. Estonia have had to update the voting system multiple times as it has proven massesively insecure multiple times. The estonian government itself deems it to have been a mistake, though they sure THIS time they got it right.

[@frediethefish]

As a Californian, I cannot express the level of distress I experience whenever I hear someone saying that we should be copied.

[@tavi_knight]

Literally…

[@dicknawson]

Check the living standards and income of these places compared to California and it starts to make sense …

[@dylankersten3383]

I actually think California is a mini failed state, and Texas also sucks, though most in the South do

[@eruno_]

Europeans drool at Silicon valley and can you blame them? That area generates more wealth than most of European economies.

[@catc8927]

I mean, copy our good points (tech innovation, environmental policy leading edge in the U.S., etc.), but definitely don’t copy our crappy home-building / NIMBYism unless you also want a serious housing cost and homelessness crisis.

[@Shepe61]

As an American I am flabbergasted, and in awe. I wish this could happen in the US, but the mention of a state with this ease of use will send TurboTax agents to your door.

[@cco53587]

That’s before their dark money groups begin flooding the airwaves and media talking heads with talking points about this being Orwellian and “muh freedoms” so that this doesn’t get through Congress or any state capitols.

[@reillycurran8508]

Don't forget how making voting accessible from smart phones would give the boomers a collective heart attack. The sheer accessibility to younger folks that alone would generate would shift American politics SIGNIFICANTLY to the left, and the old guard would immediately and very loudly be crying foul. Think of what happened after RCV enabled a democrat to win Alaska's congress seat, several states immediately not only denounced RCV, they made it illegal for any municipality to adopt it for their own elections.

[@kboyle3092]

It should also be mentioned that King County, WA alone is more populous than the entirety of Estonia. To me it seems possible to digitize everyone in Washington state alone but the whole country? Maybe next decade lol

[@thereallocke8065]

Or the evangelicals will freak out about the mark or the beast

[@Shepe61]

100%, and those tech bro libertarians would be mad it wasn’t privately owned and controlled by AI

[@haldir108]

The german paper obsession is real. Earlier this summer, a train conductor seemed mildly befuddled when i held up a QR code on my phone, when he asked for my ticket. I saw other passengers showing their printed tickets to him.

[@mystuff9999]

Hu, weird. Where was that? Not that the level of Germany‘s digitalization is not embarrassing but I‘ve been using the QR code thing since at least 2010 and even back then I can’t remember it ever being an issue 🤔

[@kotzpenner]

@@mystuff9999I started using the QR code from my university by 2018, in the beginning some conductors were still a bit confused (you have to adjust lighting etc)

[@spittylama]

Back in those days it still said on the ticket that it’s only valid if printed out. However most of the time people were pragmatic about it. If the code was scannable, no problem there

[@haldir108]

@@mystuff9999 From hambürg to ösnabruick.

[@ThunderTheBlackShadowKitty]

American here, nobody here uses QR codes. Thats just weird. Printed ticket is easier to read and thus understand.

[@BigGuyLev]

As a Hungarian, I'm really happy that you made this video! As our common language family, it's like we are cousins that have been seperated by history and geography. When the Soviet Union fell Estonia started out of an arguably worse situation than Hungary but now, they're beating us in every metric by far. Gdp/capita, life expectancy, fertility rate, they've got euro, good democratic institutions, they're staunch members of NATO and the European Union. It's so wild to me and I envy the estonians for successfully building a modern liberal democracy. I think what should've been also mentioned in the video is Estonia's educational system. It's super strong, highly focused on business and ofc tech. As a Hungarian and with out ,,illiberal democracy" by Orbán our educational systen is in shambles and we've become so so much dependent on foreign capital. Wish we could copy the Estonian model and create an effective state system, with good education that encourages the creation of our own businesses. I'm confident we could become a great country in a few decades for many reasons, but it breaks my heart that instead our leaders have built completely in the other direction and have totally embraced the authoritarian style of ruling, fueled solely by corruption. It's also interesting how in Hungary we often hear that we're going catch up to Austria. We hear that since the 19th century and now Orbán wants to do that by 2030. It's painfully dumb and we should embrace what we're good in. Or at least look for positive examples in the former Eastern Bloc, like Estonia.

[@martinkoitmae6655]

Love you Hungarian friends. You are a part of our Ugric family!

[@BigGuyLev]

@@martinkoitmae6655 Love you too Ugric bros:D Happy for you having such a cool country!

[@morgantrevino4881]

As an American, a military veteran no less, I’ve seen exactly how much money any given government office has saved in just paper after the introduction of form fillable PDFs. If the whole US government could eliminate just physical paper. Probably 100s of Millions of Dollars over 10-20 years.

[@ZontarDow]

And that's before the attritioned bureaucratic posts from it.

[@tacitus7698]

As a German, this video hurts.

[@carlstein9278]

I feel you....

[@shanenicole9552]

PAPER FOR THE PAPER GOD!!!!!

[@invalid8774]

Well, we are the country where everything gets an asterisk and every edge case needs to be preserved and nobody wants to change themselves while everybody wants everything to get better. Germany - the country of people who want their cake and eat it too.

[@balinthehater8205]

​@@shanenicole9552 So that's where the Amazon rainforest went?

[@kaiserchan4683]

As an American half of my country believes voting by mail ballot is a globalist scam much less the efficiency of voting by Internet app😵‍💫

[@rkt7414]

Regarding tech literacy more broadly, I think we take for granted how many kids now are completely computer illiterate due to doing everything on mobile devices.

[@leanderbarreto980]

Mobile devices are computers

[@bread8176]

@@leanderbarreto980 That doesn't mean their users are "tech literate"

[@axnoro]

We have trained a generation of people to only use their phones for social media attention seeking. God help us all.

[@normantas3940]

The amount of kinds who play minecraft and can't host their own server is insane >.>

[@rkt7414]

@@leanderbarreto980 Mobile devices are computers that function on their own without at all requiring familiarity with any of the internal processes or even basic programs. A staggering number of children do not know how to 𝘴𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘢 𝘧𝘪𝘭𝘦 on their computer.

[@A.C_B.]

Coming from Germany, this is incredible. Tech literacy, level of digitalisation and digital infrastructure is horrible over here. The speed and efficiency with which Estonia implemented these reforms is amazing

[@gae_wead_dad_6914]

It's ironic, considering most Baltic people wouldn't even mind being annexed by Germany What we basically took was an idealized version of yourself and said "Hmm... we wanna be that"

[@martinkoitmae6655]

Honestly I was shocked to learn how behind Germany is regarding this stuff

[@A.C_B.]

@@martinkoitmae6655 was kind of hoping that the current government would adress this, it was literally the main thing the FDP campaigned around, but sadly they got hit with 3 century level crises at ones, so.... welp I guess.

[@megantee9356]

Also to let you know, as someone from Singapore, yeah it's true we basically digitalized a good deal of the stuff nowadays, and even taxes are pretty much digital and they're trying to auto it in general, even medical bills are digital nowadays. But also how they pretty much built the digital ID and access to services and created an entirely local payment service just so that no one is really relying upon visa or master for large transfers. Honestly Estonia came first it was really only recently mostly in the early COVID years where I really saw this digitalization speed up massively. Heck, I even used the digital ID in my phone to enter places sometimes rather than the actual card.

[@ayushchattoraj2182]

@@megantee9356 they've also put our college degrees on a blockchain because that's an actually decent usecase - you need to be able to see who issued it, it needs to be public, and you need to be absolutely sure it has not been tampered with. It's ridiculous just how ubiquitous and useful Singpass and Paynow have become. Purchasing a house, getting married, notarising documents, literally all of it happened online.

[@KKJKJH]

yay Estonia got mentioned! all 1.3 million estonians assemble!!!!!

[@Decade_The_DragonPuppeteer]

*Appears out of thin air* ESTONIA MENTIONED :0

[@sillyvappy]

tere tere vanakere

[@TheSpearkan]

A bit of a warning I could add to digitalisation is who you go to to to build the software that runs the digital apparatus of state. When COVID hit the British government, when they weren't partying in Downing Street, they tried to create an app to help the people self-report as part of its Track and Trace system. The problem was the first iteration was subcontracted to a US conpany that was so dysfunctional it was abandoned before using an established system made by Google and Apple, companies notorious for mismanagement of personal data. The whole thing ended up costing £35 million for the app alone. This is important as how a state goes through the process is just as important as whether it does lest it risk opening up vulnerabilities, end up glitchy or cause massive cost overruns.

[@williamturner6478]

Or the sub-postmaster scandal (for people not in the UK, our Royal Mail bought a dodgy digital accounting system off Fujitsu, that didn't work properly and kept making money vanish. Several hundred of the people who ran post offices were charged with fraud and imprisoned. Royal Mail knew the while time the system didn't work but pushed for prosecutions anyway to stop it going public. It's all coming out in an inquiry now and most convictions have been overturned). Stuff like this really shakes public trust in such a way where even if the government implemented digital reforms properly, nobody would want anything to do with them. I reckon countries only have one chance to do reforms like these.

[@NederlandsTransatlanticus]

The two Dutch COVID apps were quite dysfunctional as well. We're pretty good at IT stuff, except when it comes to the government. Our government really hates the concept of institutional reform. We like to stack rules upon rules to the point we've annual budget surpluses, because too much bureaucracy hinders allocated budgets to be executed and where some government instances are begging to be spared, because too much rules and bureaucracy.

[@balinthehater8205]

​@@williamturner6478damn, how long were they in jail for that crap? That is just not right.

[@allesarfint]

@@balinthehater8205 Some people even commited unalive because of the whole thing

[@Trump2024asw]

I'd recommend America at least use it's military an intelligence agencies to build that.

[@savabout6487]

Greece is already in the process of digitizing historic records. In trying to get my citizenship I was shocked to find that all my family's paper documents, like my grand parents baptismal certificate, were already electronically uploaded.

[@techtutorvideos]

Σκοπεύω κι εγώ να αποκτήσω ελληνική υπηκοότητα (είμαι αμερικάνος). Πώς σου ήταν η διαδικασία;

[@savabout6487]

@@techtutorvideos I'm american too. All I can say is good luck. I've been working on it for 7 years. You really need to know someone in the consulate office, I have all my documents. My grand parents original greek passports from when greek was a kingdom, baptismal and marriage certifications etc.. doest matter because. The people there have no accountability. They don't return calls; they give you the runaround. I called the Chicago consulate cause I live in MI, they told me to call Boston, because that was where I was born. Boston sent me back to Chicago because I now lived in MI. This took me months. Because I was constantly sent to voice mail and didn't have my calls returned. They seemed to only work 3 hours a day and took every church feast day off. I recently got married, and my father-in-law has connections in Houston, so we will see.

[@ΣτελιοςΠεππας]

I have a friend who does that for a living (now, at least). The company he works at provides digital services to the private sector and the government. The main service they provide to the government is the digitization of old paper records.

[@ΣτελιοςΠεππας]

​@@techtutorvideosNo offense but... Why?

[@treyshaffer]

I don't think I've ever seen a KZbin video that makes me more optimistic than this one. The Invisible State that Estonia is going for is seriously inspiring, and I hope that it serves as an example for the rest of us to follow. The fact that they've lowered taxes due to the decreased cost of bureaucracy is actually mind-blowing -- almost too good to be true.

[@starmaker75]

I think in hard times like this, we should praises stuff like this and celebrate the small victories.

[@Whatshisname346]

It is a great country. The strides Estonia have made in terms of governance, anti-corruption and improvement of the quality of life are amazing.

[@MrCalls1]

Well it is. They didn’t digitise the state then reduce taxes. They just set a 20% flat rate for all taxes at independence as a (good?) gimic to get foreign investment after independence. It wasn’t related to administrative burden for Estonia, although it was sold as easy to deal with for corporations that pay the 20% corporate income tax and 20% vat rate. I’m actually gonna do a little bit of digging on this claim of lower administrative burden. The fixed maintenance cost on hardware/servers and software integrations can quickly add up, I wouldn’t be surprised if that entirely counteracted any labour cost savings, frankly it could easily exceed. I’m not arguing against it, I’ve been familiar with the Estonian E-system for a long time, but kraut is the first place I’ve ever found this claim made, which marks it as suspicious to me.

[@treyshaffer]

@@MrCalls1 Interesting, I'd love to see what you find on the topic

[@danielsurvivor1372]

Perfect Unity between two moderates, left wing libertarian moderates and right wing libertarian moderates, *sigh* , if only such peaceful cooperation existed more in Europe and US, I'm so tired of my side libertarian and left wing one's just fighting each other over culture war or debating who's more authoritarian instead of trying to emulate both left and right wing policies that improved Estonia 😢

[@RiftIsTaken]

I'm an estonian, I see a video about Estonia, I click.

[@luchain771]

People hate it when their lovers break up with them via text messages. Imagine being divorced the same way and never facing then again.

[@Kraut_the_Parrot]

Aitäh vaatamast. 🙂

[@Brandenburg-Poznan]

No problem Kraut

[@kasparkannel3108]

oi kurat

[@martinleopard193]

Love to see some attention given to our little corner of the world! Aitäh!

[@maaacproductions4901]

Aitäh!

[@eksiarvamus]

You got the Estonian flag wrong at 9:49 ;)

[@kosmicheskiprah]

It is also worth mentioning that Estonia has one of the lowest debt of its Nominal GDP in the world, around 18-19% and the lowest in EU. Well done Estonia you should be an example to all of us.

[@giadf9747]

I jumped out of my skin when I found out the 🇪🇪 gov debt is this low 😱

[@dannyzero692]

Estonia went from crappy backwater Soviet republic to a cyberpunk state in a quarter of a lifetime is still wild to me

[@eksiarvamus]

*Soviet-occupied republic, not "Soviet republic" - do not legitimize Soviet rule, OK?

[@SuperIronicTBH]

To be honest Estonia and Latvia historically were quite rich, not the case for Lithuania which was the largest by far, but the poorest.

[@youssef0508]

@@SuperIronicTBH you mean the german land lords were rich , the native serf population was dirt poor, idont know where i heard it , but whene the russians invaded it they were so shock by how disgusting and poor the serfs were

[@SuperIronicTBH]

@@youssef0508 I absolutely agree that the native serfs were poor (pretty sure it was true for most of the Europe though), but I highly doubt that they were poorer than in Russia.

[@Pazuzu4All]

Cyberpunk implies that Estonia is a corporate hellscape. I didn't get that vibe from the video.

[@haranstoff]

Love Estonia from Lithuania, thanks for letting us copy your homework!

[@WorstCommenter2008]

yeah as someone who went to many schools in estonia this.... blackboard stuff with touch screens or computers was really not a thing. Maybe in Tallinn the capital but in Tartu, Voru, Parnu, Saku etc (my mother moved a lot.. like every 1-2 years), I saw none of this. Computers in every classroom? I wish. We had a computer room sure, but being taught anything of value? No. The most "technical" we ever got was being taught how to use excel/word and even then the teachers were so bad at teaching this stuff it was more up to you learning this stuff yourself and you were "stupid" if you didn't know how to set up some nonsense in excel. To this day I dont know how to use excel and I dont want to learn to use it. There were very few classes which had a computer, and that was what the teacher had and even then they almost never used it for teaching. So on paper they said they did all this "cool stuff", in reality no... no they did not. I finished school back in 2012 and I was born in 1993... during that entire time I never saw these fancy things you mentioned so it has to be a Tallinn rich people thing and screw the rest of the country thing if they actually did do it.

[@hdgo611]

its more popular now, my village school has an tablet for every student and all of the below 5th grade backboards are digitalised

[@Lithuanian_NAFO_lad]

It took time to spread. Its not like it would happen in a snap of our fingers. As an example, me, who lives in buckwile, Northern Lithuania, all clases got a digital board. And computers. That happened in around the mid 2010's (maybe 2015? I cant remember that well, since I was focused on my biology and chemistry grades, rather than a computer).

[@im_not_political2026]

American here and I DID A PAPER ABOUT THIS IN UNIVERSITY!! Yes, their digital policy is remarkable, and well worth replicating in my own country or in any other nation for that matter.

[@DFM761]

Also an American who did a paper on this. God we could benefit so much from this. Our geography is so large that managing it digitally rather than physically would save so much money. Estonia's entire annual budget is less than the California Department of Motor Vehicles

[@WaiGee_]

But also to make this work you'd need to start issuing ID cards to citizens, something a lot of Americans are heavily against. Despite the downsides being few and benefit many

[@angelantayhua3096]

@@WaiGee_ sadly true. I hate the ignorance this country holds with a passion.

[@CeoMacNCheese]

Although there is an issue with mass digitalization, without the proper protections the entire nation can be crippled with attacks on the servers, yeah its convenient for the average person. But not convenient when someone DDoS's the entire server, so its really a hit or miss system dependent off of the governments ability to effectively protect the servers, especially in such a massive nation like the US.

[@suur_kenet]

If you have researched about estonia then you should know that almost half of the populus don't trust the e-voting system and believe that the last elections were rigged at least on some level.

[@reinisrudzitis8254]

Estonia is Bestonia. Nuf said🇪🇪

[@bobbyy-gc2vt]

Luv Estonia, Luv technology, Luv cumputers, 'ate Russians not raycist just dont loike em

[@reinisrudzitis8254]

@@bobbyy-gc2vt And I love Ollie and 5MIINUST🎶 (And Russians are a whole other beast entirely. Their society is F'ed-up to put it gently. (And I'm not seeing anything changing there for the next 10 years, sadly))

[@rustix3]

Estonia is Beastonia

[@darctian]

mr breastonia give me money

[@reinisrudzitis8254]

@@darctian MrBeast's next video: So I made a country for all my subscribers

[@andrew_wow6892]

Shoutout to that one government issued Estonian video game that cost a couple thousands that looked like something made only with Unity assets where you could go into a metro. You know, in Estonia

[@Pibola64]

It's one of our cringiest stains, but no government is absolutely perfect and that game was made under very dubious circumstances as well. I say cringiest because you can find the troll face in it.

[@shimomcdragon5566]

that game was funded by the corrupt pro-ruzzia centrist political party, that's why it was so shit

[@Croz89]

Government issued video games have a history of being money pits that produce terrible games. You should see what Iran came up with!

[@orgla]

If I'm not mistaken, the fact that the game was so bad was mostly a result of corruption. Edgar Savisaar, the former head of the Centre Party, was the man who came up with the idea. He is also infamous for corruption in Estonia. Attempts to get money from Russia, request a very big amount of money from the government to change some street signs, etc.

[@seneca983]

"video game that cost a couple thousands" Do you mean that it only cost a couple of thousand € to produce? If that's the case, then it's at worst a very minor mistake. Even if its useless the cost was insignificant.

[@shcdemolisher]

I lived in estonia from 2004-5, even though I was young, my parents remember everything. The mere fact that you could book a plane ticket by calling a number on a tv, plus the banking system being so advanced seemed like it was a dream made real. It was crazy how much they really invested in computers with maximized potential that at the time the US was so backwards in comparison when we returned. Seriously! It felt like we were in the future!

[@blackhaulmike]

You are always very nice when mentioning Czech Republic. Seeing our state from the inside brings about a lot of pessimism so having that outside perspective of "you are doing ok" is very uplifting.

[@Valsentials]

Estonia Nordic by 2100

[@eksiarvamus]

It's already a Nordic country.

[@siondafydd]

E Nordic

[@kasparkannel3108]

nordics are cringe, no thank you

[@markusmeldre]

estonia is so chronically online they are e-Nordic

[@dudebussylmao3062]

Bruh we are gonna have the Estonia World Order by 2100

[@GoldenBeholden]

I thought we were doing pretty good in the Netherlands in this regard -- you can do most things with your digital ID, and the government has a plethora of websites all following the same style guide to make it easy to get official information regarding any topic of state. However, after looking it up, we only got our digital ID six full years after Estonia. I had no idea, that's truly impressive.

[@alfonsstekebrugge8049]

The Dutch are still among the vanguard though. Estonia made a brave choice, but they could do this as Estonia had a very simple bureaucracy. Without that prerequisite it's just impossible to just jam it out as quickly as they did. There are also enormous downsides to this simplicity. Flat tax rate means the inequality in Estonia is skyrocketing as it means the rich pay way less tax (they get money from assets). Lots of people in Estonia are at risk of poverty and the options to deal with it are fairly limitied without increasing the bureaucracy etc.

[@irnehhenri]

A big mistake the Dutch govt has made is deciding to leave cryptographic ID to the private sector, instead of just issuing cryptographic keys together with your ID card... except they now demand over 200€ for such a basic service. The Dutch DigiD cannot directly be used to sign documents (because it does not assign a unique cryptographic key to you) and as a result most NL businesses seem to accept "JPG of your signature pasted in a PDF" as a valid e-signature 😕

[@JustALVGuy]

Wait. Fax machines are still used in half the businesses in Germany?!

[@shittymcrvids3119]

yup, we suffer daily

[@alfonsstekebrugge8049]

It's worse, they print out most e-mails that have something official in it and put those in folders they store in cabinets. It's wild.

[@gunnarherzog5538]

I helped on the backend in my local city for the European Parliament election. Part of my duties included processing the vote-by-mail applications. Whilst the processing was surprisingly streamlined by German standards, we still allowed applications to be submitted by fax machines... and there were definetly a few submitted that way.

[@martinkoitmae6655]

Shocking

[@lordalbertt]

As an estonian i dont know if its normal but when my mom needed my ID for a bank thing, and i was home she was at the bank she literally pulled out the phone, facetimed me and got me to show my id to the banker.

[@mihkelarold541]

Thanks! Greetings from Estonia! The tax declaration for me this year was more like 30seconds and most of it was just checking my contect information. I do love the convenience of our tiny country.

[@Tusiriakest]

In Portugal, we have been digitalising a lot of our bureaucracy using Estonia as a role model.

[@Peaky17]

Yes, but there's still a long way to go, both in improving our government websites and pushing for deeper cooperation with Estonia. I'm a Software Engineer and I didn't start coding until Uni, my high school didn't even offer any tech related subject. I hear that is changing now, but we need more programming in our school curriculum and that universal public transport card is still a wild dream.

[@Tusiriakest]

@@Peaky17 true. But i) nowadays, kids learn programming earlier in school; ii) most things can be made online, namely your taxes, and are fairly easy to do (I usually do my IRS in like 2 minutes); iii) most government websites are being improved. The tax site is quite easy to use, so ease the health site to schedule appointments and see your prescriptions, even the IRN (registrations) website is quite simple and easy. But sure, a lot has to be done

[@weird-guy]

Some of our systems are good others are a mess, it’s a mixed bag, also a lot of requirements are still needed to be done on paper, about learning programming in my school we could choose in 7th it or arts I choosed arts so idk if they were learn it in it, I learned a bit of web development only because I went to vocational school still not enough to be usufull , it was on dream weaver and we learned to do nothing more, I think the problem with our education is they don’t tell how can you use the skills you are learning in the future, it classes most people fooled around even the teachers didn’t take teaching seriously, nowadays I don’t know how it works

[@martinkoitmae6655]

The fact that Estonia is a role model in this topic makes me proud

[@kevincronk7981]

I am an American, and Europeans claiming that they should be like Texas or California is crazy, I don't even want America to be like Texas or California.

[@NK-fe3md]

America is exceptional, it’s not worth while comparing us to the eu

[@starmaker75]

Yeah speaking as a Oregonian when I hear that section where they some in outside USA wanted to be more like calforima or Texas I went: ah yes, they wanted tent cities, wealth gap, full of crap elites , crappy laws and law enforcement, and techbros, yes that something that desirable. There a reason why many politicians in USA use calforima and Texas as a Boogeyman. Again spain suffer from Californication.

[@highbread817]

@NK-fe3md America is exceptional mostly in the ability to produce and generate profits The inside of it is a much more divided experience, there's a lot in the USA that's trash like the amount of homeless fentanyl users wandering the streets, the amount of crime, the terrible/terribly expensive healthcare. We may not be as inefficient as Europe but there's a lot I'd trade a portion of the profits for Nvm the unsustainable government spending and debt that funds American exceptionalism and current corporate profits

[@peppermintturkey1]

What European are you seeing that wants to become like Texas? We have oil, and I suppose Austin is sort of becoming a new tech hub but that is irrespective of anything the state has done. The only reason to compare California and Texas is in contrast

[@kevincronk7981]

@@peppermintturkey1 did you watch the video? Kraut said some Europeans want to be more like Texas and California

[@khonjel_singh]

Holee shit! 2000-2020 is literally a masterclass on how a country (preferably mine) should slowly digitise herself.

[@ChuckThree]

America too has successfully digitalized… but mostly just in memes and TikTok dances 😅

[@danielsurvivor1372]

​@@ChuckThree It's joever bros 😔😞😭

[@Vienic2]

@@danielsurvivor1372americabros… it’s so abe-over… 😭😭😭

[@billcipher1212]

22:43 german here. youre 100% right. everytime i see a company talk about becoming more digital in a job listing or whatever i get confused for a second and then i remember how much we germans seem to love paper

[@dkaloger5720]

Greetings from Greece .I was kinda a skeptic initially and thought that these are nice to have things that wouldn’t actually help economic growth , so I went to check gdp growth statistics . I was impressed , Estonia has managed higher gdp growth than any other European country I looked at (higher than Poland , Germany,the other baltics,Sweden ,Czechia), even the US . Now this is partly due to catching up but still impressive. In fact now it has the highest per capita gdp of any post soviet country , even though it started worse off .I think it would have been nice to mention it in the video .

[@BirdEgg123]

Finland has most of these features of a digital state as well. We actually have the option to choose whether we want paper or digital form for 90% of interactions with the state. It does often feel invisible.

[@hachmanno]

As a german working in the bureaucracy, having to print out emails so the papertrail is complete, this video makes me so jealous

[@shittymcrvids3119]

*cries in öffentlicher Dienst*

[@Alexander-t97l]

Germany has bigger population at 83 million to build up massive IT infrastructure compared to countries with smaller population like Estonia and Finland.

[@cy_ge]

@@Alexander-t97l and a vastly bigger budget and workforce, so it should be possible

[@weird-guy]

Not even my country is that cr@zy and we are known for high burocracy, but i hear that Germany gives you nightmares 😂

[@XDRosenheim]

@@Alexander-t97l All the more reason to do it.

[@carlstein9278]

as a german this makes me cry, because we will never have this. estonias system is just beautiful. if germany ever gets to this it will just not work and we will go back to fax within a month... D: edit: seriously it is incredible how hard this hits... when i went on parental leave it was a complete nightmare. i had to provide about 30 pages of nonsense, including my last 12 pay slips.. during all of this i thought "god damn this should just be a single click!" turns out i could be... this hurts so much guys..

[@freespiritedd]

Yeah, seems like Germany needs major reforms.

[@carlstein9278]

First and foremost we need to stop electing the handful of same parties that profit from not changing anything. There are forward thinking parties out there, that are not shy taking lessons from "eastern Europeans" Go Volt!

[@shcdemolisher]

Yeah I agree that Faxing does need to go away, we got way better alternatives now. In fact I had to get one for my parents, and all of the ones I saw on amazon didn't look appealing. They looked so old and ugly, like 90's/early 2000's office body frames kept around but with different internals. It's humiliating to having to rely on this when it's well past the millennium, we should be making better infrastructure that doesn't rely on old stuff like this. (Granted I'm speaking this as an american, so I sympathize with the slowness to change)

[@DerivativeDan24]

@@shcdemolisher wait, that wasn't a joke? Germans still fax things?

[@kotzpenner]

@@DerivativeDan24a fax is considered a secure way of transporting data from place to place or between departments. You’d be shocked. The machine isn’t used sparingly, no, but all the time, to the point there are queues and timetables.

[@theromaniantanker9895]

I used the ideas in this video for my economics class. The professor wanted to know if we should cut social security, medicare, and medicare or raise taxes. Estonia shows us that there is another way to do things.

[@michaellamas1497]

Awesome, I was doing research on e governance and came across estonia as an example but couldn’t find any commentary on this, thank you so much

[@purplepotatoes9255]

I think its also worth mentioning that estonia is cood and can therefore make snowmen, which is something other european state scould also take note of, i think, and copy. Being cold.

[@theorixlux]

I concur!

[@jakebhenry2228]

God, as an American I am envious; takes like 3 hours to do tax forms here and I’ve seen that paperwork: misplaced, mismatched, something to do with finances reaches the office of education. JUST DIGITALIZE THE THING DAMNIT, what a brilliant solution

[@shcdemolisher]

Yeah!! Sadly it would require so much overhualing that many people in the economy or businesses would get pissed since they profit off of old outdated methods. Damn lobbyists.

[@UnKnownv5]

"Make my slavery more convenient dammit!"

[@Darkwatersea]

I am in the US I did my taxes through a link on the IRS website. Was free, relatively simple, and took maybe 20 minutes.

[@under6075]

@@Darkwatersea really?

[@weird-guy]

In my country if it’s the automatic one is like 3 clicks 😂

[@pauly260]

As an American, it’s refreshing to see a country that embraces the future instead of panning for a romanticized past that never existed. Hats off to Estonia !

[@shcdemolisher]

Yeah I lived there and it felt like the future!

[@Just_some_guy_1]

In Estonia's case, there's no past to romanticize. Their history in a nut shell - serfs under someone's rule.

[@ArcticFFox]

Sadly, as someone who lives here I can say that this is not as popular of a sentiment as it could be. The conservatives are still all huffy about "wHAT IF APPLE HACKS OUR SYSTEMS AND GIVES ALL OUR INFO TO RUSSIA" and try and say that we've become too out of touch and don't know what a piece of paper looks like. That's also on top of other systems being beyond broken.

[@The_whales]

@@Just_some_guy_1 could that also include Latvia and even Lithuania is a certain extent?

[@Just_some_guy_1]

@@The_whales Latvia is just Estonia in a different accent. From 12th century onwards their history, or lack of, is the same. Lithuania has an actual history though, and it is romanticize.

[@nikhil518]

As an Indian I'm really thankful to the Estonians who were great help in the digitization of India. Thanks to the digitization, I don't need to carry cash anywhere, I simply pay using UPI on my mobile. I hope humanity helps and grows together. 🤞🏼

[@colecleveland8179]

SFO sent me. Great video man, I think the most I really ever knew about Estonia was through a couple of youtubers speaking about their home off-handedly. Keep up the great work man!

[@moop9366]

Das Video drucke ich mir direkt aus, um es Montag zwischen 10:30 und 12:00 beim Bürgeramt einzureichen!

[@Kraut_the_Parrot]

LMFAO Ich hab jetzt Flaschbacks von der Zeit in der ich in Deutschland gelebt habe.

[@xczc100]

I love Estonia! I visited once and I will come back for sure. Greetings from Poland!

[@martinkoitmae6655]

❤️

[@starmaker75]

One said I do know about Estonia is that it flag is cool. Seriously the white, blue, and white works well.

[@martinleopard193]

You can actually see the flag in nature during winter. Blue sky, black trees and white ground. There are many cool photos of that. I do recommend

[@balinthehater8205]

White, blue, white? Those aren't the colours of the Estonian flag.

[@hedgeknight3194]

As a Brazillian, who can acess most social services through a unified website, has a digital ID through his driver’s license, voting id or work card (maybe only we have this), has a unified digital payment method issued by the Central bank, fills his income taxes on a comouter since who knows when, has a digital signature for digital documents and can even file a police report for certain crimes directly from his phone, I cherish all advancements made by our estonian friends!

[@Ninjaeule97]

The 20% tax rate is a bit misleading. In reality, you will pay 55.4% (20% income tax, 33% social tax, 1.6% unemployment insurance, and 0.8% employer’s unemployment insurance) so it's closer to the European average than what Americans pay. Although they have to fund their pension and health insurance from their income as well, so it's difficult to compare.

[@tankart3645]

Social tax or otherwise known as also employers tax in other countries, is very common. It’s only in Estonia though where it is talked about so publicly, mostly because of political reasons. In Sweden for exemple if you earn more than 50 000 kr a month, you will be paying 55% and on top of that the 30% of employers tax. But because that tax comes before you get your wage, it’s not seen by the public or politicians as a tax on the wage but rather a tax on the employer, thus called employers tax. TD:LR ; Estonia still has a very low tax rate compared to most other OECD / developed countries, except for few oil states.

[@eruno_]

X-Road system used in Estonian public sector is truly fascinating.

[@littleblock2639]

We have a lot of that digital stuff in Ukraine too! Passport in a phone that is fully official, registering a business digitally, elements of e-healthcare, and more recently, a way to update information in your military document through a phone app (it's also supposed to get the status of an official document soon). Although Estonia seems to be leaps ahead of Ukraine, I think we're catching up rather quickly.

[@steivsilm]

when Ukaine wins the war it will be definetly one of the most quickly advancing tech countries in the world.

[@catlover12045]

I think the biggest problem with this video, is that it does not talk about why digitization in other countries seems to be so non existent. If Estonia did it, and it is so beneficial and good, then why doesn't every European country do the same? The problem is that digitization is very expensive. Estonia has put a lot of money into it's digital infrastructure. In 2024 Estonia will spend a little bit more then 100 million euros on only developing AI. That's a huge amount, considering the Estonian budget is 16 billion euros. That would be like if Germany spend 3 billion on AI or if the US spent 12 billion on AI. Only on AI things. These are huge short term investments that brings only potential long term value. I would like a source on the claim that our digital state potentially cut our taxes by half. Estonia's tax to GDP ratio is 33% in 2021, while Americas is 27%. While Estonia's taxes are smaller compared to other European countries, their are not that extortionary. For example Switzerland has a smaller tax to GDP ratio. Also the first bit of the video is kinda nonsense. Estonian state institutions are built on the institutions of the first Estonian republic. In 1991 we didn't invent a new constitutions, or ideas of how to run a government, we simple modified the ones that were in use from 1917-1939. The comment about our ALL of our political class and parties being in favor of building new institutions and not keeping our USSR is false. A major player at the the time, and also today, Keskerakond (centre party), wanted to keep some of our USSR political institutions. months before the 1992 election they actually reverted some market reforms, because they felt that there were to many shortages that the markets couldn't handle.

[@Just_some_guy_1]

Your making excuses. It's not the price tag, it's corruption. When you have dozens of bloated institutions crying for money like a chick for a worm, nothing ever gets done.

[@agentorange9867]

Ukraine is a war-torn poverty-struck wasteland since 2014, when the entire world betrayed it, and they were actively digitalizing since then, and are succefully digitalizing now......during a full scale invasion. Those are all excuses of long useless money-bleeding institutions, thats it, they are redundant.

[@steivsilm]

basically you just need a political decision to do it and public to supprt it. Other things are excuses because in the end it will save a lot of money for your country. As it always is - the hardest part is to start doing things.

[@michaelpapadopoulos6054]

Thank you for mentioning Greece! We have recently embarked on the journey of digitalising our state. It's been amazing so far but we still have a long way to go.

[@MediumDSpeaks]

There is a massive issue with unregulated online casinos opening in the US calling themselves "sweepstakes casinos" though they are clearly and obviously just casinos casinos, and they're all based in Estonia so you don't have a chance if you try to sue them or if the US wises up and tries to do something about them. And because everything is digital you can see that in less than a year of existing many of them have reported 50m+ euros of revenue! That one im thinking of is a casino opened in April 2023 and by the time they filed 2023 taxes in Estonia they had already gotten in 54m dollars and who knows how much they paid out. Absolutely insane!

[@deinemudda1049]

Its laughable how many small businesses in Germany still have cashless payment. Every tourist who thinks they can pay with their credit card for a bus ticket onboard is at real risk of emberrasing themselves for example.

[@eksiarvamus]

Yeah and the locals are like "Wtf, are you poor?" while foreigners simply don't carry around cash with them.

[@WaiGee_]

Yeah I remember that being an issue when visiting a few years ago, I was so used to Estonia letting you pay with card literally anywhere that it didn't even dawn on me that other countries aren't the same

[@GreatRetro]

@@WaiGee_ today I just pay with ApplePay everywhere. wor few years now I don't carry my wallet at all. No depit cards, no ID cards, no cash... only my phone! ^_^

[@srajandikshit7590]

​@@WaiGee_ I am used to pay by Mobile itself. I hardly carry cash or card around. We have UPI in India which works by just scanning a qr payment code.

[@Avarua59]

You mean 'still don't have'?

[@murpledurple]

I love me some Estonia-praising, but I think this video is too over the top in highlighting the benefits and ignoring the issues of our (or any) e-government. Mainly the bit at 8:59, which makes it sound like we got hit by one cyber attack and then just turned on the "no hack" feature to solve the system reliability and data privacy concerns. When in reality we have a major data leak like once a year (sometimes in the public sector, sometimes in the private sector where it's popular to use the data-heavy national ID-cards for loyalty programmes and logins) - just last month we had a medical data leak which affected almost half the population. But my personal favorite example is from a few years back when for unknown reasons a random guy in Tallinn hacked the police database to download the names, ID numbers and passport photos of a quarter of the country. There are also some theoretical issues like online voting making it technically possible to commit large-scale election fraud with limited means and nearly no evidence (I don't believe this is the case in Estonia and we have some rudimentary safeguards, but there's a reason Russia has fully embraced this part of e-government and many other "guided democracies" are interested in the concept). At the end of the day every system is as strong as it's weakest link. And the bigger the system, the more you have all kinds of links there. Pooling massive amounts of sensitive data into just a handful of servers accessed by tens of thousands of people is a recipe for disaster. Especially if those servers aren't just back-ups but they make up the actual running of the state. You could argue that we're constantly one successful Russian hybrid warfare operation away from complete legal/medical/taxation/etc chaos that would take months to clear up and result in billions of euros of damage. We've done a lot to minimize that risk but is our e-government absolutely impenetrable? Probably not. Also, I think the relation between paperless bureaucracy and efficient state apparatus is true in certain cases but Estonia's relatively low population density and below-EU-average incomes make us a bad example for this point. Best proof of that is the fact that the famous 20% income tax will be raised to 22% from next year. We also have a higher VAT than Germany or Austria. I'm not denying most of the other benefits mentioned in the video, just some thoughts for context. Great to get a 23min video about us, though. And great to see Eastory mentioned!

[@medjed2511]

Indeed, it is an important concern. There was recently a leak in the Finnish healthcare system too- this isn't a rare occurrence anymore. I hadn't yet heard about the man hacking the police.. I suppose the information ought to be stored separately while still being accessible to those with clearance. That way hackers don't get everything at once.

[@giuseppeagresta1425]

Exactly what I was thinking too All around, I think it's safe to say that Estonia's digitalization of its bureaucracy deserves praise and should be held as a benchmark from which to take inspiration from by many other countries (Germany, as many are saying already, but Italy too...), but not everything is going as smoothly as it sounds The thing I found most concerning is the electronic vote, for example; that really could prove detrimental, because of the risks you mentioned

[@frosthammer917]

@@giuseppeagresta1425 Estonia has generally managed to keep their systems very up to date security wise, and for its size its definitely a digital security powerhouse(even the NATO HQ for cyber security is in Estonia) but that doesn't mean it is risk-less or that there aren't constant attempts by Russia to attack it. I don't think there has been many successful attacks other than a few DDOS attacks in recent years but it is something you need to constantly keep on top off and in bigger or less digitalization focused countries it would definitely become a much bigger issue.

[@MarteenHobbu]

all gangsta till we get half the legal system leaked by chinese hakers

[@helentsernobrovkin2098]

Estonian here, Thank you for this comment! Our system Is definitely still quite faulty and FAR from perfect if you ask me

[@rickvrieling]

The Netherlands has a surprising amount of digital state infrastructure. This video reminded me that I still needed to do my taxes and I could go and do them during the ad. But I wish our goverment had the vision and drive to do what Estonia has already done. What The Netherlands already has has shown how convenient and efficient these things can be. And also shown how badly it's needed. I worked for a ministry two years ago and had to go to their headquaters one city over for paperwork that cost me 10 minutes there and about 2 - 2.5 hours of travel.

[@jcsv12345]

I signed in thinking "Kraut better have a new video!1!" Never disappointed 🙂

[@skudrinskis]

I'm a simple Latvian, I see a baltic country, I click

[@bottasheimfe5750]

fucking hell I've only gotten to the list of reforms up to 2006 and I'm already wishing I was Estonian cause holy fuck these people lucked out HARD

[@cadebradbury9334]

Yeah, everything in the UK takes for ever, barely works and somehow costs a fortune, manages to hit none of the 3 goals. There are major differences, noticeable sheer size, between the UK and Estonia but that doesn't stop me from being jealous

[@venmis137]

No, they just got so unlucky in the past that the pendulum had to swing in the other direction to restore balance.

[@WaiGee_]

Hey, when you get exploited and abused for centuries you won't have much legacy systems to upkeep so it's relatively easy to tear everything down and do it proper. Being so unlucky it ends up being a benefit in the future

[@balinthehater8205]

​@@venmis137Now to wait for the pendulum to do a backswing ...

[@medjed2511]

​@@venmis137Yup, and well said! :D

[@deuteriumletsplay3394]

As a German, this Video made me go green and blue from Envy. And the fact that we are still not investing into digitalization is almost turning me mad. Thank you for your work.

[@laserdonut4632]

I believe it's not even a problem of insufficient funding, but rather of misguided incentives and a system that rewards fraud and corruption. Each year billions of euros are spent and thousands of work hours are wasted on bullshit digitization projects that are instantly abandoned after 'completion'. I used to work in a small firm that profited off government funding for "digitization research" without ever producing any functional product or solution. The state is spending tax money on thousands of projects that are dead on arrival.

[@taptiotrevizo9415]

Is Kraut just gonna make episodes on every single european state before the Dutch?

[@getalper]

Dutchistan can wait

[@treyshaffer]

he can just post a screenshot of some stoners on bicycles and that basically summarizes all you need to know

[@h4xorzist]

You already got all the public infrastructure channels.

[@remenir97]

@@getalperthe Flodder Cabinet can wait.

[@Thanksforaskingme]

He should do a video on how the Dutch despite losing to the Nazis within 8 hours had the nerve to invade Indonesia after WW2

[@vertigostalker]

As someone who’s stayed in Singapore for a while, them working with Estonia towards digitalization probably explains the sudden transition over the past few years to having everything on your phone….

[@giannisa134]

Greece is also in the process of digitizing the state. The most important problems we face is that instead of starting with institutions from scratch, we digitize the beureaucracy which means that the gains from the transition are smaller. Also many people do not trust the state and are suspicious of such changes fearing a digital tyranny. Here is an example of how things can go wrong. Last year Greece made it possible for people living permanently abroad to vote. However there was a scandal where the list of people registered was leaked to a EU parliament candidate for the ruling party. This was uncovered when many people who have registered, received messages from this candidate about the upcoming elections. Keep in mind that this is the party that is spearheading the digital transition. Many people here assume that a digital transformation is a panacea but it still has lots of problems that the non digital state has as well.

[@xanthespace5141]

Perhaps unrelated, I'm writing this before watching the video, but this digitalization of state stuff - while sounds very good and convenient, can have its issues. Here in Russia we've also had some of this digitalization stuff. Paying taxes, getting doctors' appointments and interacting with the government agencies to get paperwork via a single app, it all made life so much more convenient. But it also allows for easier surveillance by the state. Those services' accounts tied to IDs, tied to phone numbers (which are tied to IDs), there's more and more CCTV everywhere, with apparently expanding facial recognition capabilites. Private services such as banks, food delivery and taxi, also all tied (to phone numbers, and thus identities). All overseen by the intelligence services. All the databases are being combined into one quick one for the military to conscript people easier, etc. The anti-vaxxers during the COVID pandemic were complaining about the vaccine certificates being required, and you could have them on your phone, right - they complained about the country being turned into a surveillance state over *that* and other ideas pondered by the government (like digital IDs or whatever it was, I'm forgetting...been a while). And I've read comments before about general concerns over digitalization. Ironically, the conspiracy theorists and detractors ended up being proven right in this case. Modern tech is very, *very* convenient for authoritarian regimes, makes it easier for them to entrench their control while keeping a lot of people satisfied over conveniences in life. Good luck and have fun trying to stay off the grid. Good for Estonia for their successes on all these fronts tbh.

[@eksiarvamus]

Russia is a genocidal nation.

[@Broken_Mesh]

I'll be straight with you. Surveillance is inevitable; it's already happening. Chances are, most of us have had our messages scanned by the FBI and are in multiple government databases. What I really don't want is to live in a country that watches my every move without giving me the perks of E-Governance.

[@HeroinYoda]

This title reminded me of the failure of the german Federal Ministry of Family Affairs. They were supposed to implement the Kindergrundsicherung; a policy to give parents a fixed amount of money, with some on top depending on the parent's income. The implementaion keeps getting delayed because the FDP attempts to change the policy to add lots of digitalisation stuff to counteract the expected pressure on buerocracy. The greens are trying to expand the ministries and establish new locations for them, lifting the pressure as well as creating new jobs. There's also been terrible commucations between the parties, so both are expecting totally different amounts of money to flow into the project. Thanks for reading my rant.

[@reddimus11]

It’s interesting that we live in a day and age where some KZbinrs have more subscribers than the population of entire countries.

[@shittymcrvids3119]

Well I've been to the Vatican and I have more than 825 subs on other platforms lol

[@somenameidk5278]

Only 4 countries (China, India, USA, Indonesia) have more inhabitants than MrBeast has subscribers.

[@realhawaii5o]

10:00 E-Residency isn't for foreigners that come to live in Estonia. In fact it is specifically for foreigners who do not intend to move to Estonia as a residency does not grant the right to move to the country. Indeed EU foreigners simply acquired a normal Estonian ID card and foreigners from other countries can apply to a permanent residency card which also allows access to all the digital services. Indeed as an EU Foreigner I am even able to vote online for EU parliament and municipal elections in Estonia.

[@LMB222]

I've been in Poland for two months, and it's almost as good. No need for the personal ID, credit cards - there's a smartphone-only payment system that avoids Visa and MC, no need to carry car papers, no paper tickets, prescriptions and so on.

[@katie09796]

As an American, this wild to see. Like Estonia is so far advanced, it’s almost unfair

[@froozigiusz]

Being used to your flag-correct way of presenting Polandball throughout your videos, suddenly seeing the classic version at 22:24 really took me off guard.

[@Kraut_the_Parrot]

old habits die hard

[@MALITH666]

Maybe it was the easter egg.

[@BC465]

Estonia is among the pioneers for electronic invoicing and billing in Europe, along with Poland and Latvia. It's awesome seeing how much the Baltic nations have been embracing and implementing digital technology/digital economy measures.

[@sounds_wellingston]

As a Belarusian living in the country and dreaming of finally making a biometric pastor before the events of 2020, I have only three feelings for Estonia with their electronic bureaucracy - Respect, admiration and “Say Whaat?!” I hope you will dedicate the following videos to the history of Belarus because not many people in Europe pay attention to it. Maybe? To my horror, I do not live in the “free” part of Europe.