Russia is now bombing Ukraine

[chenGOD]

3 hours ago, Sensitive Outsider said:

just thinking out loud and its definitely on the whataboutary spectrum.... 

But would it be fair to say that if Russia was a more capitalist country and its people had more of a choice in all its actions and its right to consume...knowledge, news and Kallax shelves.

That thousands of people would not now be dead in Ukraine.

That a 1m+ people would not be displaced.

That Europe's largest nuclear power plant would not be on fire.

That the Russian police wouldn't have to lock up nursery aged children..

..and so on and so forth...

 

I'm no capitalist - more of a realist - This sad episode in history is going to push more people towards capitalist, EU, NATO ideology and ways of living for better or for worse. As human nature always lets us down when we try to do it any other way.

Putin is just another in a long line of practical examples. Everything else as others have said is just rhetoric and is never going to be actionable to coin a phrase...

Russia is crony capitalist to the hilt - i think what you mean is (and forgive me if my interpretation is wrong) - if Russia wasn't governed by a corrupt-as-fuck dictator, and had a more regulated form of capitalism that allowed the wealth from Russian natural resources to be distributed more equitably while still maintaining capitalist innovative spirit, would we be in this situation?

[ignatius]

On 3/1/2022 at 8:59 AM, maxwellsq said:

ok , sorry for emotional post but today was a complete shit . out of words , im in city of Kharkiv , just see the news . every couple days it becomes way worse , now they are striking civilian buildings , wtf . can't get out of the city , somebody mentioned that I need to get out - its more dangerous now than sitting at home . fucking miracle that almost all city have electricity and water , hope that will last. its a full on city siege . we are praying that international community will pressure russians to stop this.

probably not a priority to update watmm. as this thread goes round and round i'm hoping you're safe.

the news here and online of course is crazy and disheartening. 

[timmy otoole]

thought more would of been made of this dude.....pretty brave

 

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-stock-market-moscow-exchange-b2028216.html

[ignatius]

4 minutes ago, timmy otoole said:

thought more would of been made of this dude.....pretty brave

 

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-stock-market-moscow-exchange-b2028216.html

*would've

saw that the other day along w/the entire staff of the tv network that resigned while streaming and played "swan lake" which has a special significance.

Quote

This is in reference to the fall of the Soviet Union.

Russia at the time was heavily into propaganda even more so then now. However they could control every TV station within the country, minus a few outliers along borders with other nations.

So you had nonstop State run Soviet TV being broadcast constantly.

Well when political turmoil/unrest/shit occurred. All state ran television, meaning all television, would play a recording of Swan lake until it was sorted out by the bastards behind the curtain. Sometimes it was for like an hour, and other times it was for literal days nonstop on loop.

 

meanwhile the last few independent news organizations were taken off line for reporting the truth or the russian invasion. 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/russia-silences-what-remained-of-independent-local-media-11646250623

Edited March 4, 2022 by ignatius

[apriorion]

1 hour ago, ignatius said:

saw that the other day along w/the entire staff of the tv network that resigned while streaming and played "swan lake" which has a special significance.

 

 

Whoa, that is pretty cool. 

Edited March 4, 2022 by apriorion

[zlemflolia]

3 hours ago, chenGOD said:

Russia is crony capitalist to the hilt - i think what you mean is (and forgive me if my interpretation is wrong) - if Russia wasn't governed by a corrupt-as-fuck dictator, and had a more regulated form of capitalism that allowed the wealth from Russian natural resources to be distributed more equitably while still maintaining capitalist innovative spirit, would we be in this situation?

capitalist innovative spirit...

Edited March 4, 2022 by ilqx hermolia xpli

[chenGOD]

11 minutes ago, ilqx hermolia xpli said:

capitalist innovative spirit...

yes comrade. specialization and competition leads to more innovation. Not saying none happens under communism, but there is less incentive to innovate under a "true" communist system.

[zlemflolia]

17 minutes ago, chenGOD said:

yes comrade. specialization and competition leads to more innovation. Not saying none happens under communism, but there is less incentive to innovate under a "true" communist system.

specialization has nothing to do with capitalist innovative spirit.  and competition leads to the same thing being done multiple times and anti-competitive actions taking place to prevent others from succeeding.  competition in fact leads to monopoly, which leads to imperialism, which leads to NATO, which leads to NATO encirclement of Russia with nukes, which leads to Ukraine being invaded by Putin to likely try to solidify Ukraine as a neutral buffer state between NATO and Russia out of Russia's national security interests

Edited March 4, 2022 by ilqx hermolia xpli

[chenGOD]

32 minutes ago, ilqx hermolia xpli said:

specialization has nothing to do with capitalist innovative spirit.

Entirely wrong. Please read all of Wealth of Nations (to find out how much space Smith devoted to division of labour)  Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (to see how Schumpeter ties innovation to capitalism and entrepreneurship, as well as how this will lead to socialism) as well as this short article on long economic waves: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1816829 (you can easily find on the high seas).

Competition leads to variation, and well-regulated competition leads to enhanced markets with multiple players. Note that the US (and Canada) is not a well-regulated marketplace. Corporatism, which exists in all sorts of fascist states, may well lead to imperialism, but corporatism is antithetical to capitalism.

Your observations on Russia's invasion of the Ukraine are interesting.

[zlemflolia]

22 minutes ago, chenGOD said:

Entirely wrong. Please read all of Wealth of Nations (to find out how much space Smith devoted to division of labour)  Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (to see how Schumpeter ties innovation to capitalism and entrepreneurship, as well as how this will lead to socialism) as well as this short article on long economic waves: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1816829 (you can easily find on the high seas).

Competition leads to variation, and well-regulated competition leads to enhanced markets with multiple players. Note that the US (and Canada) is not a well-regulated marketplace. Corporatism, which exists in all sorts of fascist states, may well lead to imperialism, but corporatism is antithetical to capitalism.

Your observations on Russia's invasion of the Ukraine are interesting.

you think there isn't specialization of labor under other economic systems than capitalism?  i spoke wrong to say it has nothing to do with capitalism.  what i meant is it is not -unique- to capitalism.  soviet union definitely had specialization

ok, so the gold standard for capitalism, the global vanguard of capitalism, is not real capitalism somehow, right.  such idealism.  the real world does not match your ideal views of capitalism so it's not real capitalism.  capitalism inevitably results in the formation of -a- united states.  if the whole world was like your ideal capitalism, i assume some nordic european countries, guess what, they would start competing on who is going to form the US imperialist version first, this is very basic

Edited March 4, 2022 by ilqx hermolia xpli

[zazen]

18 minutes ago, chenGOD said:

Note that the US (and Canada) is not a well-regulated marketplace.

Well thats the thing isn't it. Communism may sound great to some people but in practice devolves into something messy. Similarly 'perfect markets' in Capitalism are impossible to achieve, because its in the interest of all the players to exploit any externalities that they can, and break rules where they can get away with it, and skirt as close to monopoly as possible, and perform regulatory capture of the government in order to boost corporate welfare and so on. So you end up ruled by giant corporations which are kindof like immortal superpowered toddlers in their moral outlook.

I'm down with Chomskys analysis of that - all the CEOs may talk about their love of free markets but behind the scenes they're lobbying for whatever welfare they can get from the government.

THAT SAID ... if we're going to live in a world with one dominant superpower I'd rather it be the USA than China. BUT we do need to hold the powerful to account.

OK I've solved the capitalism debate we dont need to talk about it anymore in this thread

[ghsotword]

1 hour ago, ilqx hermolia xpli said:

specialization has nothing to do with capitalist innovative spirit.  and competition leads to the same thing being done multiple times and anti-competitive actions taking place to prevent others from succeeding.  competition in fact leads to monopoly, which leads to imperialism, which leads to NATO, which leads to NATO encirclement of Russia with nukes, which leads to Ukraine being invaded by Putin to likely try to solidify Ukraine as a neutral buffer state between NATO and Russia out of Russia's national security interests

A key thing that you seem to have got wrong is that when the post-Soviet Eastern European countries joined NATO, the initiative for joining NATO came from these Eastern European countries themselves. They had seen the atrocities Russia is capable of and wanted to be guarded from Russia. They were right in their assessment that Russia still poses a threat to them. Look at what's happened to the former Eastern Bloc countries that are not in NATO: Belarus has been turned into a slave of Moscow and Ukraine is getting massacred for refusing to be a slave of Moscow. Also, the Eastern European countries that joined NATO did this solely for defensive purposes, none of them have any interest in attacking Russia to conquer its territory.
Putin is trying to spin history as if NATO were an imperialist nazi organisation that's forced itself upon Eastern European countries against their will and is aiming to start a war to conquer Russia next. Putin's version of recent history is entirely bullshit, it's quite fucked up if you as a Western world guy believe his propaganda

Edited March 4, 2022 by ghsotword

[ignatius]

 

 

[zazen]

140 million people blocked from Facebook. I wonder what effect that will have on the population. Seems they're unlikely to just shrug?

edit after reading subsequent posts: Ah I see, more like only 7million users....

Edited March 4, 2022 by zazen
too wrong to not edit

[zkom]

15 minutes ago, zazen said:

140 million people blocked from Facebook. I wonder what effect that will have on the population. Seems they're unlikely to just shrug?

Facebook is by far not the most popular social media platform in Russia. Instead they use VKontakte. It has around 83% user base of Russian social media users. Facebook is around the 6th popular with something like 7.5 million users.

[Soloman Tump]

5 minutes ago, zkom said:

Facebook is by far not the most popular social media platform in Russia. Instead they use VKontakte. It has around 83% user base of Russian social media users. Facebook is around the 6th popular with something like 7.5 million users.

In that case, this is an interesting news article from 2 weeks ago, foreshadowing today's events

https://thebell.io/en/kremlin-push-to-increase-control-over-the-internet/

[zkom]

14 minutes ago, Soloman Tump said:

In that case, this is an interesting news article from 2 weeks ago, foreshadowing today's events

https://thebell.io/en/kremlin-push-to-increase-control-over-the-internet/

It's getting crazy. There are some new laws now that you get 15 years prison sentence for spreading "false information" about the situation in Ukraine. Western press is leaving the country.

That's stricter than during USSR or what's in China currently. Russia is basically turning into North Korea at this rate.

[cichlisuite]

1 hour ago, zazen said:

... BUT we do need to hold the powerful to account.

well that's the thing, isn't it. I very much agree with what you wrote, but at the same time, I'm surprised you managed to exclude this particular observation... namely, when you mentioned the capital's monopoly. I will ask you this: how powerful do you feel, as an individual or as a member of a hypothetical interest group, to hold the powerful to account? Do you feel equal in parity against the powerful capitalist when it comes to exercising your human/worker/environmental/societal/political rights?

[Dragon]

1 hour ago, chenGOD said:

Entirely wrong. Please read all of Wealth of Nations (to find out how much space Smith devoted to division of labour)  Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (to see how Schumpeter ties innovation to capitalism and entrepreneurship, as well as how this will lead to socialism) as well as this short article on long economic waves: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1816829 (you can easily find on the high seas).

Competition leads to variation, and well-regulated competition leads to enhanced markets with multiple players. Note that the US (and Canada) is not a well-regulated marketplace. Corporatism, which exists in all sorts of fascist states, may well lead to imperialism, but corporatism is antithetical to capitalism.

Your observations on Russia's invasion of the Ukraine are interesting.

this post is spectacular, classic chenGOD. please keep me up to date with your opinions

[zazen]

11 minutes ago, cichlisuite said:

 ... how powerful do you feel, as an individual or as a member of a hypothetical interest group, to hold the powerful to account? ...

Its true I can't do much*! You are saying, I think, that people must organise to have any power.

When I spoke of 'holding the powerful to account' I was thinking of criticism really ... and trying to head off the argument of 'why criticise the usa when there are much worse countries'. They deserve scrutiny because they are powerful, even if we accept there are worse state actors around.

* In a small way I think every pound or dollar that a person spends is like a little vote. And also where their money comes from. So I try to spend my money and obtain my money in ethical ways. But that itself is a sortof luxury that not everyone can afford.

** Also I live in the UK where the political spectrum is somewhat to the left of the USA. We have some checks and balances against capitalism here. Although you have to fight to keep them from eroding.

[ignatius]

41 minutes ago, zkom said:

It's getting crazy. There are some new laws now that you get 15 years prison sentence for spreading "false information" about the situation in Ukraine. Western press is leaving the country.

That's stricter than during USSR or what's in China currently. Russia is basically turning into North Korea at this rate.

some russians predicting russia will be like north korea soonish. fully cut off from the world (except for gas exports it seems). but certainly imports/exports/all forms of media etc will be squished as will freedom of movement to some degree. 

time will tell.. what a drag. 

btw here's trump on speaker phone talking to retired golfer john daly. really can't wait for trump to disappear already. 

 

[may be rude]

russia may be about to collapse

 

i would agree with @usagi that america and nato should not engage militarily. that may be what putin and his military want. 

[zazen]

5 minutes ago, trying to be less rude said:

russia may be about to collapse

Yes I'm seeing chatter about that. Worried that it might be wishful thinking. There has been a clear theme though since the start that Russia were doing badly on the ground and somehow unable to get air superiority

 

[ignatius]

idk.. seems like russia sent in a lot of canon fodder in the first wave but that'll change. macron said "the worst is yet to come" after he spoke w/putin for 90 minutes just the other day. 

some docs popped up yesterday that apparently are russian plans for occupation, trials, public executions etc... in Ukraine. 

seems impossible to really know what's going on in russia's inner circles but protests seem a positive development. 

i expect NATO will walk the fine line of support/material assistance without engaging directly.  i hope the smart people in the room are getting it right. 

[usagi]

1 hour ago, trying to be less rude said:

russia may be about to collapse

 

i would agree with @usagi that america and nato should not engage militarily. that may be what putin and his military want. 

I didn't say anything about who should or shouldn't intervene, dickhead.