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> Most importantly, it defeated the USSR I just hurt my eyes from rolling them _so hard._ The USSR collapsed because it was a wildly inefficient system that w

> Most importantly, it defeated the USSR I just hurt my eyes from rolling them _so hard._ The USSR collapsed because it was a wildly inefficient system that was unable to provide goods and services to its people. In order to believe your wild statement you have to believe a lot of huge implausibilities, like the idea that the USSR would not have spent money on their military if not for the Americans, which would literally make them the ONLY empire in history to do that. Particularly hard to believe is the idea that if Reagan hadn't spent trillions on thoroughly useless weapons, the USSR would have magically flourished. > Ronald Reagan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reagan_administration_scandals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reagan_administration_scandals Americans just love their wildly incompetent and corrupt Presidents, don't they?

dash2 5y ago
It is not at all implausible that competition with the US made the USSR spend more on arms. The reason empires throughout history spend money on arms, as you rightly say, is to compete with their neighbours. The US upped the ante. I'm not arguing either for or against Reagan. I merely point out that he was right about the USSR.
- pmoriarty 5y ago
  The USSR suffered a bloody revolution at the turn of the 20th Century which upended its social order. Then tens of millions of its people dies in WW2 and the country was devastated, tens of millions more died of famine or were killed, imprisoned, and/or enslaved by a totalitarian regime which terrorized its people. Much of its intelligencia (the creative lifeblood of any society) were themselves oppressed or exiled. None of this had anything to do with the United States, but it did contribute greatly to just how broken the USSR was by the time it collapsed. The collapse wasn't only about this, but it certainly wasn't simply a defeat by the US either.

dash2 5y ago

It is not at all implausible that competition with the US made the USSR spend more on arms. The reason empires throughout history spend money on arms, as you rightly say, is to compete with their neighbours. The US upped the ante. I'm not arguing either for or against Reagan. I merely point out that he was right about the USSR.

pmoriarty 5y ago
The USSR suffered a bloody revolution at the turn of the 20th Century which upended its social order. Then tens of millions of its people dies in WW2 and the country was devastated, tens of millions more died of famine or were killed, imprisoned, and/or enslaved by a totalitarian regime which terrorized its people. Much of its intelligencia (the creative lifeblood of any society) were themselves oppressed or exiled. None of this had anything to do with the United States, but it did contribute greatly to just how broken the USSR was by the time it collapsed. The collapse wasn't only about this, but it certainly wasn't simply a defeat by the US either.