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Putin’s last stand How to lose a war simply by starting one

70 points by mariuz 5y ago

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
throwaway290 5y ago
The sad thing is that this obviously manufactured reality, combined with a long history of oppression and betrayal, has eroded any national pride among a significant slice of population. For years we survived in a state of having emotionally given up on the country, state of mild cognitive dissonance, seeing those who genuinely cared labeled by the authorities as 'foreign agents'. To fight now is to fight against the system and against your fellow citizens, your friends and classmates imbued with nostalgia about the USSR by their parents. And what will this fight be for? Would you definitely see the Western system, that erodes the environment and feeds people microplastics in the name of maximising shareholder value, as the obvious "side of the light"[0]? Once you have been betrayed enough times, can you really go all in and believe that whoever rises to power thanks to your fight will act in your interests (maintaining freedom and democracy, not abusing power) thereafter? [0] I happen to believe that capitalism is fundamentally the best form of peaceful cooperation and abuses of it can be regulated, but I can't count the hours I spent in philosophical arguments making my point to lucid, independently thinking friends.
- Kinrany 5y ago
  > abuses of it can be regulated That's the whole problem, isn't it. Coming up with and installing regulations every time the system is abused is no easier than inventing and installing a new system of governance. When the system is sufficiently complex, you can't patch it.
  - throwaway290 5y ago
    The regulations are only necessary while there are rogue actors who are motivated to abuse the environment and others, exploring the limits of the law, following the letter but not the spirit, in order to secure themselves. These people often grew up in adverse conditions (mentally or physically) and are coping with the resulting mental issues. Elon Musk with his South African upbringing and history of extreme bullying is one example; there are many more less obvious ones. Once we improve the mental well-being of the population as a whole, there would be no incentive for one to ruin things for others for personal gain, and free market would be able to work as intended.
    - mach1ne 5y ago
      I'm guessing you're aware of this, but it's not so simple. There's no indication that after a baseline level of prosperity, greed and malice will simply disappear. While I agree that capitalism is the best system altogether which we have seen in action, I don't believe it is the best one. My hope is that in the long run, technological progress will eliminate scarcicity, and we will see some combination of capitalism and communism to realize utopia.
      - andrepd 5y ago
        Absolutely. "best so far" != "best there can ever be". Western liberal capitalism is heavily flawed, it's just marginally better than the alternatives currently in existance and therefore the best starting point to build an even better one.
        throwaway290 5y ago
        Applying abstract thinking from first principles, what kind of approach could theoretically be better?
      - throwaway290 5y ago
        I am aware it's not so simple, but I strongly believe that fundamentally greed and malice arise from mental issues and insecurities. There is no incentive for a healthy mind that is calm, confident, and knows that others are the same, to maximise own security at the expense of the society.
        mach1ne 5y ago
        Interesting. I hope you are right. I'm afraid I am a bit more cynical.
        frostwarrior 5y ago
        I disagree. Greed and malice are just consequences of an unfair society. The more the people know that rules don't apply to the powerful, then the more the people try to climb the social ladder to become the powerful. Ideally, on a fair system, you are respected because of your skills or your contributions to society. On an unfair one, you are respected because you have a higher hierarchy than them and nothing more. My concern with western people criticizing non-western and non-democratic countries is that, aside from some exceptions like South Korea, Costa Rica or Japan, unfair societies that adopted the western-style model of democratic government didn't become more fair in average. On the contrary, western societies got more unfair over time.
- Mizza 5y ago
  I don't see the alternative though, it's not like Putin is a hardcore Leninist. There's no real ideology there, he doesn't care for the people. What's the attraction? Maybe people don't like what is pejoratively called "globohomo", plenty of people in the West don't either, but having everything dictated by a mafia thug and his oil-rich cronies seems far, far worse. I don't get it.
  - throwaway290 5y ago
    Attraction to what? Putin? Did you misread my comment? > "globohomo" I do not know what that refers to.
    - ginko 5y ago
      It's a derogatory 4chan /pol/ term for supporters of globalization. IMF, World Economic Forum, Soros etc.
      - spacemanmatt 5y ago
        What a buncha dead-enders.
    - pixl97 5y ago
      global homogeneity. Of course being 4chan they associate it with homosexuality.
  - 0a3feeb 5y ago
    Aleksandr Dugin's work is the philosophical/ideological cover for whatever Putin's doing. The gist is to create a conservative Eurasian state/alliance to combat Western liberalism.
- ChemSpider 5y ago
  "that erodes the environment and feeds people microplastics"... yes, the "Tragedy of the commons". But the issue is, the environment in non-free societies (=> no free press) is in much worse shape.
  - throwaway290 5y ago
    You don't need to tell me that. I'm just saying it's not an obvious thing to many (thinking) people.
    - sandworm101 5y ago
      Nothing in politics is ever obvious. That is why we should shun leaders who rely on gut insticts, "common sense" and napkin math. The real world is messy. Answers are hard. Ideology must always remain an ideal, not a howto guidebook.
      - throwaway290 5y ago
        It's not obvious in itself, that's why I have a barrage of supporting arguments. However, it takes time to understand and adopt this viewpoint, especially if many people around you are conditioned to believe in the opposite and consider capitalism as evil or evil-adjacent.
      - cmurf 5y ago
        Dare we forget anytime soon the ~75 million fools who voted for a fool with autocratic tendencies, who's still giving Putin's ego lap dances this week. There's a pile of fools at Fox News being Putin apologists. Out of all the harm done by billionaires, Rupert Murdoch has been a worse menace to America than any of Putin's oligarchs. So yeah, it certainly remains very messy in the U.S. too.
- robinsoh 5y ago
  > I happen to believe that capitalism is fundamentally the best form of peaceful cooperation and abuses of it can be regulated I would not be so confident of that claim. I believe you're assessing that based on capitalism from the perspective of the predator states that exploit victim states. If there were no victim states, then capitalism would not work as well as it has for the predator states. Is everyone in the world better off with the current version of capitalism and the 'global order'? Steven Pinker may say yes but I'm not that convinced. The more I read about his research and some of the flaws like bias in the Yanomami analysis, the less I am convinced that things are better overall for everyone.
  - darkerside 5y ago
    Are you talking about sweat shops in third world countries, some of which (not all) people choose to work at because they are such an economic improvement over any other jobs available to them? Sorry to make an assumption about your argument, but you honestly didn't supply much.
    - pydry 5y ago
      People also choose to sell organs and prostitute themselves in desperate economic circumstances. Are Johns and organ harvesters providing economic improvement or are they exploiting economic suffering?
      - roenxi 5y ago
        > People also choose to sell organs... I haven't heard of any systemic selling of organs; my understanding was the go-to for organs was illegally harvested ones out of certain authoritarian states. Where is this semi-voluntary sale of organs happening?
        orwin 5y ago
        India, SEA countries mostly, but i've heard of cases in SA AND in europe too. It is not systemic however, opportunistic at best?
- grishka 5y ago
  Capitalism isn't bad, but there must be constant pressure from market competition for it to work for the benefit of the society at large. What we see now with companies like Apple (wrt app store) and Facebook is that the US government protects their monopolistic status and doesn't let people compete with them. You can't build a Facebook app that's better than the official one because Facebook would sue you, and there unfortunately are laws that would protect them. In a saner legal system, Facebook would've been laughed out of the court building with this case. 99% of my friends consider the current Russian government completely dysfunctional and in dire need of replacement. And we would totally accept the Western values. USSR was a mistake and there needs to be a clean break from that ideology, no continuity.
  - zwkrt 5y ago
    This is a nice tech bubble way of framing it but the oil, plastic, logging, chemical, and agricultural industries will be the ones that get us in the end, and heavy market competition would only make it happen faster.
  - sandworm101 5y ago
    90+% of americans think thier government is disfunctional. Russia is no great outlier there. The better question is what will those people put in its place the day after the revolution. Few have a reasonable answer beyond some other person they think is somehow above reproach.
    - grishka 5y ago
      Russians' patience is maddening really. Soviet generations would accept anything the government throws at them and say thanks. They view the government like the weather: you have to just accept it but don't you dare try to change or even understand anything about it. Many Soviet people have no idea who runs their city district for example. They don't know that they can have the government serve them and be accountable to them, so it naturally evolves away from serving them, instead serving its own interests. Like territorial expansion for its own sake. Americans, from what I see, are quite different. There's actually fierce competition both on elections and when controversial bills are discussed. There are representatives that do legit represent people's interests (but also some that do not). US government has its own share of problems ("lobbying" aka legalized bribery being one), but it's still better than the dictatorship we have.
- virgilp 5y ago
  > And what will this fight be for? For your honour. So that you do not become a citizen of North Korea; so that you do not take part in <this>. Honour systems developed independently in many chaotic/violent societies - not irrationally, but because they are _good_ systems, perhaps the only way to protect yourself from fates worse than death. Kamil Galeev explains it fairly well here: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1498692916511924232.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1498692916511924232.html
  - throwaway290 5y ago
    My honour is supposed to compel me to quit software, go back and start a bloody fight with my fellow citizens (on whose side the tanks and the truth, for all they know, are)? For a country I have no pride in, to facilitate the next dictator to trample on our blood up the throne if we succeed, while you watch with popcorn from your office?
    - virgilp 5y ago
      Not you, personally; those who choose (or are compelled) to stay .
      - throwaway290 5y ago
        Some people may be compelled. I will look at them in awe.
- bsedlm 5y ago
  Byung-Chul Han seems to share your opinion about capistalism there's a quote along the lines of "capitalism is not a political question it is a force of nature which must be tamed" [1] [1] https://apposition.substack.com/p/the-burnout-society https://apposition.substack.com/p/the-burnout-society I think that when a cooperative relationship is reduced market-trade (money in exchange for goods by well defined contract laws) it's at its minimum. for example, one may trade with a rival or somebody whom one deeply dislikes, hence you just give them the money and they give you your goods or services and that is it. no pleasantries no nothing, bare minimum. The point is that this is a degraded form of cooperative relation. If things degrade even more that ceases to be cooperative and becomes enmity.
ordu 5y ago
Yeah, I rejected all these lies being a Russian, I thought it was for stupid people, but for a couple of years I started to notice that sometimes roles reversed. Just like the meme "In Soviet Russia..." We are not doing constructive things, while explaining failures by lies, no. We are constructing lies, without any thought of real constructive things. It was funny. But then Putin invaded Ukraine and there are no more fun. They are really believed their own lies. In hindsight it was predictable: the reversal of roles is a sign of systemic failure, of priorities of system shifting from reality to lies. And I had thought that it would end in a lot of fun, some spectacular failure of the whole system. But I didn't thought that others can be hurt, not on this scale at least. I thought about Russians only and we deserve some spectacular failure, to stop thinking imperial thoughts, to stop believing bullshit. I'm so sorry it turned so bad for Ukrainians. THOU SHALL NOT KILL. CLAY OF MY CLAY. SHAME. SORROW. I dig into rational reasoning and I like long lists of fallacies, but I never have read anything like what Putin is doing. In some sense it reminds me of "Cobra Effect" and "Goodhart's law": when you measure success based on a hindsight plausibility of lies telling about success or failure, then there will be no more successes, just lies about them. They were thinking only about what is can be stowed by propaganda. And anything that could be is fine. But "Goodhart's law" doesn't catch the scale of a stupidity, it doesn't catch the idea of creating an informational bubble, the very alternative reality, and then willingly going to live there. I think we need to invent new fallacy and call it "Putin's fallacy". Or maybe "Putin's idiocy" would be better.
stemc43 5y ago
- objclxt 5y ago
  > meduza is considered a foreign agent in Russia. I would take it's words with grain of salt Given the Russian government has labeled numerous foreign journalists, news organisations, and even Nobel peace prize winners as foreign agents, I'm not sure it's Meduza's word we should be taking with a grain of salt. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-58840084 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-58840084
  - throwawaylinux 5y ago
  - actuator 5y ago
    Obama, the same person who bombed kids with drones is a Nobel peace prize winner[1], so I wouldn't go around brandishing that as a status symbol. There is definitely an element of not understanding a place and talking about it in Western media in a negative manner. Be it even China or India. Not that I disagree with your broader point. [1] https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2017-01-17/obamas-covert-drone-war-in-numbers-ten-times-more-strikes-than-bush https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2017-01-17/oba...
    - yuppie_scum 5y ago
      He got the peace prize before he did the droning. Frankly I think he could have won it without the droning.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- MrRiddle 5y ago
  Thanks!
- throwaway290 5y ago
raesene9 5y ago
Manufactured realities believed by large groups of people are definitely a thing at the moment, and not just in Russia. Another example is in the USA where, reportedly, 40% of people don't believe Biden won the 2020 election despite the vast number of lawsuits and recounts that have occurred (source for the 40% number https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jan/05/america-biden-election-2020-poll-victory https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jan/05/america-bide...)
- philovivero 5y ago
  So, what's a charitable interpretation of that? For five straight years, we were bombarded with how awful it is that someone could be so extreme and racist, then we elected a card-carrying KKK member into office? Seems implausible. That 40% of people spent decades being given the false choice between big-government shill D and big government shill R. They finally were given a real alternative, so they trusted him. He told them that 2020 was a manufactured win by a big government shill D, just like the last 15 elections. Why wouldn't they believe him? You ask them to trust the experts. Well, he supplied a lot of experts to back him up. You ask them to trust YOUR experts. If you bothered to ask them, they'd ask you to trust theirs. Normally the way we fix these things is have discussions and try to understand each other. That, apparently, is no longer on the table. Instead we get veiled "the other guys are idiots." Not helping.
  - PartiallyTyped 5y ago
    What alternative? The same alternative that cut taxes for his rich friends [1], and hiked the taxes for the same people that voted for him [2-3]? [1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/oct/09/trump-tax-cuts-helped-billionaires-pay-less https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/oct/09/trump-tax-c... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/31/opinion/republicans-biden-taxes.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/31/opinion/republicans-biden... [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/11/16/senate-tax-bill-cuts-taxes-of-wealthy-and-hikes-taxes-of-families-earning-under-75000-over-a-decade/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/11/16/senat... > The law they passed initially lowered taxes for most Americans, but it built in automatic, stepped tax increases every two years that begin in 2021 and that by 2027 would affect nearly everyone but people at the top of the economic hierarchy. All taxpayer income groups with incomes of $75,000 and under — that’s about 65 percent of taxpayers — will face a higher tax rate in 2027 than in 2019.
w_t_payne 5y ago
I can't imagine how tough life will get in Russia as a result
- jb1991 5y ago
  Not sure what that link is, but it does not load for me.
- dgellow 5y ago
  Yeah, things will be really bad. That’s how fascists regime go, everybody suffer immensely in the process.
throwaway828491 5y ago
Territorial expansion is part of Russian nationalism. Putin may get away with this, because nationalists support this cause. On the left it's Soviet nostalgia, on the right Imperial White Russia. There is people on left [1] and right within Russia who views this as western war against Russia. They view Ukraine as part of Russia, and thus west is waging war on Russia. Danger is, if Putin can portray this as west vs Russia, he could start enlisting people from far-left and far-right. That army would be quiet different in it's morale than the first dumbfound army he sent which thought they were going to exercises. There are more areas, such as parts of Kazakhstan which could be targets, Russian ambassador has already warned them to not stage exercises with NATO. [2] [1]: https://twitter.com/s_udaltsov/status/1499476989278887951 https://twitter.com/s_udaltsov/status/1499476989278887951 [2]: https://thediplomat.com/2022/02/russian-ambassador-to-kazakhstan-says-us-nato-steppe-eagle-exercise-will-no-longer-fly/ https://thediplomat.com/2022/02/russian-ambassador-to-kazakh...
- pm90 5y ago
  Internet trolls don’t make good soldiers.
  - throwaway828492 5y ago
    This is not about internet trolls, read about Sergei Udaltsov [1] for instance. He was once seen as charismatic leader of somewhat sane part of leftists in Russia. If he is now willing to think this is war between west and Russia then it will be huge trouble. His influence cannot be overestimated, if man like him starts to agitate to join Russian military to fight west, we don't know what we will see. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Udaltsov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Udaltsov
- throwaway599281 5y ago
  > They view Ukraine as part of Russia And it is. So is Transcarpathia (Zakarpattia Oblast) part of Hungary, and other parts or Ukraine that should belong to Romania and even some to Poland. Their current borders are an accident that should have long been solved diplomatically, but alas here we are. >Danger is, if Putin can portray this as west vs Russia, he could start enlisting people from far-left and far-right. The danger was these maneuvers that even in the Bush era, people recognized they would be deemed unacceptable by Russia. And the whole handling of the relations with Ukraine since the events of 2014. This situation is far more complex than "Kremlin man bad". Unfortunately the people who will pay for these are not diplomats or the big interests that played this situation as a game, it will be the average Ukrainian who see their country torn apart, and in a lesser extent the average Russian, severely affected by sanctions.
dgellow 5y ago
> This “reality” had seemed so crudely constructed that it was impossible to imagine anyone in charge (especially those who created it) to believe it seriously. As it turns out, however, somebody does believe it. His name is Vladimir Putin. I may be incorrect but I feel that’s what Adam Curtis is trying to describe with his documentaries. I’m thinking of “HyperNormalization”, “Century of the self”, and “Can’t get you out of my head”. For the past few month as I tried to follow Russia-Ukraine developments I found myself thinking about Curtis work a lot.
netmonk 5y ago
cause the West is clean from manufacturing reality ? LOL For 2 years the Western was under a massive and unprecedented fake reality with a massive fake pandemia narrative, and dramatic consequences leading to major loss of freedom of mouvement, major economical losses and lot of preventable death. But for thoses who surender to this fake narrative they are fully compliant with mass medai narrative about Russia. Western world is going down to third world status but still try to lead the world with senile president, unelected influencers leading all kind of lobbying institution representing privates interests. But Russia is living in a fake reality. Dude When you born with a penis the reality is that you are a Male. Whatever is your nevrosis and fake reality you try to build inside your brain. If you cannot see that Western world is under heavy fake reality you are insane. And the most radical and subversive thing you can do today to fight this issue is to enter a church. And all -1 this post will get will be a livivg proof of how right i am :) Fake reality is when you cancel what hurts you !

70 points by mariuz 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

The sad thing is that this obviously manufactured reality, combined with a long history of oppression and betrayal, has eroded any national pride among a significant slice of population. For years we survived in a state of having emotionally given up on the country, state of mild cognitive dissonance, seeing those who genuinely cared labeled by the authorities as 'foreign agents'. To fight now is to fight against the system and against your fellow citizens, your friends and classmates imbued with nostalgia about the USSR by their parents. And what will this fight be for? Would you definitely see the Western system, that erodes the environment and feeds people microplastics in the name of maximising shareholder value, as the obvious "side of the light"[0]? Once you have been betrayed enough times, can you really go all in and believe that whoever rises to power thanks to your fight will act in your interests (maintaining freedom and democracy, not abusing power) thereafter? [0] I happen to believe that capitalism is fundamentally the best form of peaceful cooperation and abuses of it can be regulated, but I can't count the hours I spent in philosophical arguments making my point to lucid, independently thinking friends.

Kinrany 5y ago
> abuses of it can be regulated That's the whole problem, isn't it. Coming up with and installing regulations every time the system is abused is no easier than inventing and installing a new system of governance. When the system is sufficiently complex, you can't patch it.
- throwaway290 5y ago
  The regulations are only necessary while there are rogue actors who are motivated to abuse the environment and others, exploring the limits of the law, following the letter but not the spirit, in order to secure themselves. These people often grew up in adverse conditions (mentally or physically) and are coping with the resulting mental issues. Elon Musk with his South African upbringing and history of extreme bullying is one example; there are many more less obvious ones. Once we improve the mental well-being of the population as a whole, there would be no incentive for one to ruin things for others for personal gain, and free market would be able to work as intended.
  - mach1ne 5y ago
    I'm guessing you're aware of this, but it's not so simple. There's no indication that after a baseline level of prosperity, greed and malice will simply disappear. While I agree that capitalism is the best system altogether which we have seen in action, I don't believe it is the best one. My hope is that in the long run, technological progress will eliminate scarcicity, and we will see some combination of capitalism and communism to realize utopia.
    - andrepd 5y ago
      Absolutely. "best so far" != "best there can ever be". Western liberal capitalism is heavily flawed, it's just marginally better than the alternatives currently in existance and therefore the best starting point to build an even better one.
      - throwaway290 5y ago
        Applying abstract thinking from first principles, what kind of approach could theoretically be better?
    - throwaway290 5y ago
      I am aware it's not so simple, but I strongly believe that fundamentally greed and malice arise from mental issues and insecurities. There is no incentive for a healthy mind that is calm, confident, and knows that others are the same, to maximise own security at the expense of the society.
      - mach1ne 5y ago
        Interesting. I hope you are right. I'm afraid I am a bit more cynical.
      - frostwarrior 5y ago
        I disagree. Greed and malice are just consequences of an unfair society. The more the people know that rules don't apply to the powerful, then the more the people try to climb the social ladder to become the powerful. Ideally, on a fair system, you are respected because of your skills or your contributions to society. On an unfair one, you are respected because you have a higher hierarchy than them and nothing more. My concern with western people criticizing non-western and non-democratic countries is that, aside from some exceptions like South Korea, Costa Rica or Japan, unfair societies that adopted the western-style model of democratic government didn't become more fair in average. On the contrary, western societies got more unfair over time.
Mizza 5y ago
I don't see the alternative though, it's not like Putin is a hardcore Leninist. There's no real ideology there, he doesn't care for the people. What's the attraction? Maybe people don't like what is pejoratively called "globohomo", plenty of people in the West don't either, but having everything dictated by a mafia thug and his oil-rich cronies seems far, far worse. I don't get it.
- throwaway290 5y ago
  Attraction to what? Putin? Did you misread my comment? > "globohomo" I do not know what that refers to.
  - ginko 5y ago
    It's a derogatory 4chan /pol/ term for supporters of globalization. IMF, World Economic Forum, Soros etc.
    - spacemanmatt 5y ago
      What a buncha dead-enders.
  - pixl97 5y ago
    global homogeneity. Of course being 4chan they associate it with homosexuality.
- 0a3feeb 5y ago
  Aleksandr Dugin's work is the philosophical/ideological cover for whatever Putin's doing. The gist is to create a conservative Eurasian state/alliance to combat Western liberalism.
ChemSpider 5y ago
"that erodes the environment and feeds people microplastics"... yes, the "Tragedy of the commons". But the issue is, the environment in non-free societies (=> no free press) is in much worse shape.
- throwaway290 5y ago
  You don't need to tell me that. I'm just saying it's not an obvious thing to many (thinking) people.
  - sandworm101 5y ago
    Nothing in politics is ever obvious. That is why we should shun leaders who rely on gut insticts, "common sense" and napkin math. The real world is messy. Answers are hard. Ideology must always remain an ideal, not a howto guidebook.
    - throwaway290 5y ago
      It's not obvious in itself, that's why I have a barrage of supporting arguments. However, it takes time to understand and adopt this viewpoint, especially if many people around you are conditioned to believe in the opposite and consider capitalism as evil or evil-adjacent.
    - cmurf 5y ago
      Dare we forget anytime soon the ~75 million fools who voted for a fool with autocratic tendencies, who's still giving Putin's ego lap dances this week. There's a pile of fools at Fox News being Putin apologists. Out of all the harm done by billionaires, Rupert Murdoch has been a worse menace to America than any of Putin's oligarchs. So yeah, it certainly remains very messy in the U.S. too.
robinsoh 5y ago
> I happen to believe that capitalism is fundamentally the best form of peaceful cooperation and abuses of it can be regulated I would not be so confident of that claim. I believe you're assessing that based on capitalism from the perspective of the predator states that exploit victim states. If there were no victim states, then capitalism would not work as well as it has for the predator states. Is everyone in the world better off with the current version of capitalism and the 'global order'? Steven Pinker may say yes but I'm not that convinced. The more I read about his research and some of the flaws like bias in the Yanomami analysis, the less I am convinced that things are better overall for everyone.
- darkerside 5y ago
  Are you talking about sweat shops in third world countries, some of which (not all) people choose to work at because they are such an economic improvement over any other jobs available to them? Sorry to make an assumption about your argument, but you honestly didn't supply much.
  - pydry 5y ago
    People also choose to sell organs and prostitute themselves in desperate economic circumstances. Are Johns and organ harvesters providing economic improvement or are they exploiting economic suffering?
    - roenxi 5y ago
      > People also choose to sell organs... I haven't heard of any systemic selling of organs; my understanding was the go-to for organs was illegally harvested ones out of certain authoritarian states. Where is this semi-voluntary sale of organs happening?
      - orwin 5y ago
        India, SEA countries mostly, but i've heard of cases in SA AND in europe too. It is not systemic however, opportunistic at best?
grishka 5y ago
Capitalism isn't bad, but there must be constant pressure from market competition for it to work for the benefit of the society at large. What we see now with companies like Apple (wrt app store) and Facebook is that the US government protects their monopolistic status and doesn't let people compete with them. You can't build a Facebook app that's better than the official one because Facebook would sue you, and there unfortunately are laws that would protect them. In a saner legal system, Facebook would've been laughed out of the court building with this case. 99% of my friends consider the current Russian government completely dysfunctional and in dire need of replacement. And we would totally accept the Western values. USSR was a mistake and there needs to be a clean break from that ideology, no continuity.
- zwkrt 5y ago
  This is a nice tech bubble way of framing it but the oil, plastic, logging, chemical, and agricultural industries will be the ones that get us in the end, and heavy market competition would only make it happen faster.
- sandworm101 5y ago
  90+% of americans think thier government is disfunctional. Russia is no great outlier there. The better question is what will those people put in its place the day after the revolution. Few have a reasonable answer beyond some other person they think is somehow above reproach.
  - grishka 5y ago
    Russians' patience is maddening really. Soviet generations would accept anything the government throws at them and say thanks. They view the government like the weather: you have to just accept it but don't you dare try to change or even understand anything about it. Many Soviet people have no idea who runs their city district for example. They don't know that they can have the government serve them and be accountable to them, so it naturally evolves away from serving them, instead serving its own interests. Like territorial expansion for its own sake. Americans, from what I see, are quite different. There's actually fierce competition both on elections and when controversial bills are discussed. There are representatives that do legit represent people's interests (but also some that do not). US government has its own share of problems ("lobbying" aka legalized bribery being one), but it's still better than the dictatorship we have.
virgilp 5y ago
> And what will this fight be for? For your honour. So that you do not become a citizen of North Korea; so that you do not take part in <this>. Honour systems developed independently in many chaotic/violent societies - not irrationally, but because they are _good_ systems, perhaps the only way to protect yourself from fates worse than death. Kamil Galeev explains it fairly well here: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1498692916511924232.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1498692916511924232.html
- throwaway290 5y ago
  My honour is supposed to compel me to quit software, go back and start a bloody fight with my fellow citizens (on whose side the tanks and the truth, for all they know, are)? For a country I have no pride in, to facilitate the next dictator to trample on our blood up the throne if we succeed, while you watch with popcorn from your office?
  - virgilp 5y ago
    Not you, personally; those who choose (or are compelled) to stay .
    - throwaway290 5y ago
      Some people may be compelled. I will look at them in awe.
bsedlm 5y ago
Byung-Chul Han seems to share your opinion about capistalism there's a quote along the lines of "capitalism is not a political question it is a force of nature which must be tamed" [1] [1] https://apposition.substack.com/p/the-burnout-society https://apposition.substack.com/p/the-burnout-society I think that when a cooperative relationship is reduced market-trade (money in exchange for goods by well defined contract laws) it's at its minimum. for example, one may trade with a rival or somebody whom one deeply dislikes, hence you just give them the money and they give you your goods or services and that is it. no pleasantries no nothing, bare minimum. The point is that this is a degraded form of cooperative relation. If things degrade even more that ceases to be cooperative and becomes enmity.

ordu 5y ago

Yeah, I rejected all these lies being a Russian, I thought it was for stupid people, but for a couple of years I started to notice that sometimes roles reversed. Just like the meme "In Soviet Russia..." We are not doing constructive things, while explaining failures by lies, no. We are constructing lies, without any thought of real constructive things. It was funny. But then Putin invaded Ukraine and there are no more fun. They are really believed their own lies. In hindsight it was predictable: the reversal of roles is a sign of systemic failure, of priorities of system shifting from reality to lies. And I had thought that it would end in a lot of fun, some spectacular failure of the whole system. But I didn't thought that others can be hurt, not on this scale at least. I thought about Russians only and we deserve some spectacular failure, to stop thinking imperial thoughts, to stop believing bullshit. I'm so sorry it turned so bad for Ukrainians. THOU SHALL NOT KILL. CLAY OF MY CLAY. SHAME. SORROW. I dig into rational reasoning and I like long lists of fallacies, but I never have read anything like what Putin is doing. In some sense it reminds me of "Cobra Effect" and "Goodhart's law": when you measure success based on a hindsight plausibility of lies telling about success or failure, then there will be no more successes, just lies about them. They were thinking only about what is can be stowed by propaganda. And anything that could be is fine. But "Goodhart's law" doesn't catch the scale of a stupidity, it doesn't catch the idea of creating an informational bubble, the very alternative reality, and then willingly going to live there. I think we need to invent new fallacy and call it "Putin's fallacy". Or maybe "Putin's idiocy" would be better.

stemc43 5y ago

objclxt 5y ago
> meduza is considered a foreign agent in Russia. I would take it's words with grain of salt Given the Russian government has labeled numerous foreign journalists, news organisations, and even Nobel peace prize winners as foreign agents, I'm not sure it's Meduza's word we should be taking with a grain of salt. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-58840084 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-58840084
- throwawaylinux 5y ago
- actuator 5y ago
  Obama, the same person who bombed kids with drones is a Nobel peace prize winner[1], so I wouldn't go around brandishing that as a status symbol. There is definitely an element of not understanding a place and talking about it in Western media in a negative manner. Be it even China or India. Not that I disagree with your broader point. [1] https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2017-01-17/obamas-covert-drone-war-in-numbers-ten-times-more-strikes-than-bush https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2017-01-17/oba...
  - yuppie_scum 5y ago
    He got the peace prize before he did the droning. Frankly I think he could have won it without the droning.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
MrRiddle 5y ago
Thanks!
throwaway290 5y ago

raesene9 5y ago

Manufactured realities believed by large groups of people are definitely a thing at the moment, and not just in Russia. Another example is in the USA where, reportedly, 40% of people don't believe Biden won the 2020 election despite the vast number of lawsuits and recounts that have occurred (source for the 40% number https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jan/05/america-biden-election-2020-poll-victory https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jan/05/america-bide...)

philovivero 5y ago
So, what's a charitable interpretation of that? For five straight years, we were bombarded with how awful it is that someone could be so extreme and racist, then we elected a card-carrying KKK member into office? Seems implausible. That 40% of people spent decades being given the false choice between big-government shill D and big government shill R. They finally were given a real alternative, so they trusted him. He told them that 2020 was a manufactured win by a big government shill D, just like the last 15 elections. Why wouldn't they believe him? You ask them to trust the experts. Well, he supplied a lot of experts to back him up. You ask them to trust YOUR experts. If you bothered to ask them, they'd ask you to trust theirs. Normally the way we fix these things is have discussions and try to understand each other. That, apparently, is no longer on the table. Instead we get veiled "the other guys are idiots." Not helping.
- PartiallyTyped 5y ago
  What alternative? The same alternative that cut taxes for his rich friends [1], and hiked the taxes for the same people that voted for him [2-3]? [1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/oct/09/trump-tax-cuts-helped-billionaires-pay-less https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/oct/09/trump-tax-c... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/31/opinion/republicans-biden-taxes.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/31/opinion/republicans-biden... [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/11/16/senate-tax-bill-cuts-taxes-of-wealthy-and-hikes-taxes-of-families-earning-under-75000-over-a-decade/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/11/16/senat... > The law they passed initially lowered taxes for most Americans, but it built in automatic, stepped tax increases every two years that begin in 2021 and that by 2027 would affect nearly everyone but people at the top of the economic hierarchy. All taxpayer income groups with incomes of $75,000 and under — that’s about 65 percent of taxpayers — will face a higher tax rate in 2027 than in 2019.

w_t_payne 5y ago

I can't imagine how tough life will get in Russia as a result

jb1991 5y ago
Not sure what that link is, but it does not load for me.
dgellow 5y ago
Yeah, things will be really bad. That’s how fascists regime go, everybody suffer immensely in the process.

throwaway828491 5y ago

Territorial expansion is part of Russian nationalism. Putin may get away with this, because nationalists support this cause. On the left it's Soviet nostalgia, on the right Imperial White Russia. There is people on left [1] and right within Russia who views this as western war against Russia. They view Ukraine as part of Russia, and thus west is waging war on Russia. Danger is, if Putin can portray this as west vs Russia, he could start enlisting people from far-left and far-right. That army would be quiet different in it's morale than the first dumbfound army he sent which thought they were going to exercises. There are more areas, such as parts of Kazakhstan which could be targets, Russian ambassador has already warned them to not stage exercises with NATO. [2] [1]: https://twitter.com/s_udaltsov/status/1499476989278887951 https://twitter.com/s_udaltsov/status/1499476989278887951 [2]: https://thediplomat.com/2022/02/russian-ambassador-to-kazakhstan-says-us-nato-steppe-eagle-exercise-will-no-longer-fly/ https://thediplomat.com/2022/02/russian-ambassador-to-kazakh...

pm90 5y ago
Internet trolls don’t make good soldiers.
- throwaway828492 5y ago
  This is not about internet trolls, read about Sergei Udaltsov [1] for instance. He was once seen as charismatic leader of somewhat sane part of leftists in Russia. If he is now willing to think this is war between west and Russia then it will be huge trouble. His influence cannot be overestimated, if man like him starts to agitate to join Russian military to fight west, we don't know what we will see. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Udaltsov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Udaltsov
throwaway599281 5y ago
> They view Ukraine as part of Russia And it is. So is Transcarpathia (Zakarpattia Oblast) part of Hungary, and other parts or Ukraine that should belong to Romania and even some to Poland. Their current borders are an accident that should have long been solved diplomatically, but alas here we are. >Danger is, if Putin can portray this as west vs Russia, he could start enlisting people from far-left and far-right. The danger was these maneuvers that even in the Bush era, people recognized they would be deemed unacceptable by Russia. And the whole handling of the relations with Ukraine since the events of 2014. This situation is far more complex than "Kremlin man bad". Unfortunately the people who will pay for these are not diplomats or the big interests that played this situation as a game, it will be the average Ukrainian who see their country torn apart, and in a lesser extent the average Russian, severely affected by sanctions.

dgellow 5y ago

> This “reality” had seemed so crudely constructed that it was impossible to imagine anyone in charge (especially those who created it) to believe it seriously. As it turns out, however, somebody does believe it. His name is Vladimir Putin. I may be incorrect but I feel that’s what Adam Curtis is trying to describe with his documentaries. I’m thinking of “HyperNormalization”, “Century of the self”, and “Can’t get you out of my head”. For the past few month as I tried to follow Russia-Ukraine developments I found myself thinking about Curtis work a lot.

netmonk 5y ago

cause the West is clean from manufacturing reality ? LOL For 2 years the Western was under a massive and unprecedented fake reality with a massive fake pandemia narrative, and dramatic consequences leading to major loss of freedom of mouvement, major economical losses and lot of preventable death. But for thoses who surender to this fake narrative they are fully compliant with mass medai narrative about Russia. Western world is going down to third world status but still try to lead the world with senile president, unelected influencers leading all kind of lobbying institution representing privates interests. But Russia is living in a fake reality. Dude When you born with a penis the reality is that you are a Male. Whatever is your nevrosis and fake reality you try to build inside your brain. If you cannot see that Western world is under heavy fake reality you are insane. And the most radical and subversive thing you can do today to fight this issue is to enter a church. And all -1 this post will get will be a livivg proof of how right i am :) Fake reality is when you cancel what hurts you !