barbos
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Yes, I admit that the West was trying to occupy and destroy Russia.
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How should west respond to potential (likely) Russian invasion of Ukraine?
- Thread starter Harry Bosch
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barbos
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I told you why.
TomC
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You might claim that, but that's all you ever do.
Russian oligarchs invading Ukraine is right out there in front of God and everybody.
Everyone who opens their eyes
Tom
bilby
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There are two orthogonal axes here.
Socialism/Capitalism and Totalitarianism/Democracy
None of the four extremes make for a pleasant life for everyone; Maximising how pleasant things are, and for how large a fraction of society, requires a balance on both axes.
And each activity in society requires a different balance. Food production and distribution doesn't have the same optimum balance as transport infrastructure, for example; Neither has the same balance as defence; healthcare; law and order; etc.; etc.
The OECD nations have in common a similar set of balances; And are differentiated by both their choice of those balances, and the hypothetical optima given the cultural expectations of their people.
Basically, nice places to live have governments that tend to try to move things towards their nation's optima, and to resist moving them away from those optima; And one of the most important ways that governments can achieve this is decentralisation of power - having a lot of people with varied agendas making decisions is usually a good thing; Putting one person, or a group of people with a shared agenda, in a position to make decisions (while disempowering anyone else) is generally a bad thing.
Of course, there are some circumstances where a quick decision is more valuable than an optimal one; Such cases require a President, Pope, Prime Minister, First Secretary, or other dictator who can just make decisions. But crucially, such crises are more common in dictatorships, where decisions are inevitably suboptimal.
And Presidents, Popes, PMs and First Secretaries tend to want to accumulate as much power to themselves as possible - they are self selected for that desire for power - so to break away from (or avoid collapse into) dictatorship requires strong separation of powers, and a longstanding commitment from at least one powerful branch of government to the maintaining of that separation - a task which itself requires the power to impose that commitment on any wannabe dictator (and all holders of executive power tend to be wannabe dictators).
Russia (in its tsarist past, socialist recent past, or feudalist/neo-tsarist present), has never had a tradition of widely distributed power.
People are frequently derisive of consensus driven "government by committee", and its central shortcoming - difficulty in making timely decisions - is well known. But in a reasonably pleasant society, most decisions that cannot garner consensus support are decisions that shouldn't be made. Change is necessary, but if only a tiny group (or a single dictator) sees a specific change as desirable, it's probably harmful.
A government that struggles to get anything done is a good thing. Certainly, such governments rarely decide to invade their neighbours.
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I just heard Russia has more than a million citizens who live in homes without running water. Seems to me the money spent on the Ukraine fiasco could be much better spent to help the people of Russia.
Where is there socialist tyranny now?
I've been in countries that should be similar except for political alignment. Invariably the Russia-aligned was way behind.
Disagree. Russia is a kleptocracy, not capitalist.
bilby
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Isn't that just another kleptocracy where the privileged live like kings and the rest of the country starves?
barbos
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Yeah sure, I can see them all with AK-74s and God in front of them.
Mostly in China for now. And it scares the shit out of US.
barbos
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Not anymore. And don't forget that you are not really that better in that regard and were much worse in the beginning.
barbos
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Only a million? I think it is more than that.
And quick googling finds that:
US should stop financing their Ukraine fiasco indeed.
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bilby
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Sure. Just like all the other tyrannies in history. The defining feature is the tyranny; The socialism is fairly irrelevant, except as an ongoing excuse for the tyranny.
China transitioned from socialism to capitalism, and yet hasn't changed her status as tyrannical one iota.
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Elixir
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Well… they certainly have shithole logic going for them.
“You need to improve your infrastructure because you only have a tenth of the rate of dirt floor homes with no running water as we have here in glorious mother Russia!”
barbos
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barbos
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By the way, in terms of raw sewage, I read and can concur that all sewage in Russia and USSR was/is treated before dumped into rivers/oceans. In US I understand it's usual to dump raw sewage into ocean. In Latin America most of the sewage is not treated at all. And then there is India 
Tyranny, yes. Socialist, no. It's in name only, every member of the "communist" party I know is a stock investor. (Although, in one case I think "gambler" might be a better term than "investor".)
Look at how your army performed. Widespread diversion of maintenance funds. That's kleptocracy at work.
The "fiasco" is the best military deal the US has ever gotten.
You are spending about 10x as much of your economy on the war as we are, and we are pretty much just sending stuff that's approaching it's expiry date anyway--much of what we are spending on "Ukraine" would have been spent anyways over the coming years. Even if we didn't give a hoot about Ukraine it would be in our interest to arm them. Meanwhile, you're bleeding your modern stuff and devastating your military for many, many years to come.
Elixir
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… which Putin invented for the express purpose of turning it into a shithole on a par with Muther Russia.