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The war on terror has killed millions of civilians, mostly women and children. Brown University lists excess deaths from the WoT at 4 or 5m. The USA has destabi

The war on terror has killed millions of civilians, mostly women and children. Brown University lists excess deaths from the WoT at 4 or 5m. The USA has destabilized many countries and performed coups. It invades and goes to war for its own geopolitical gains and regularly lies why. What you're praising is a horror. Being defenseless hoping an angry 800lbs gorilla will be kind to you must be the worst system imaginable. A balance of power both economic and arms is going to be the best way forward because now that gorilla knows it can't just do what it wants anymore.

Herring 1y ago
I'm not praising anything. Yes US foreign policy sucks. I'm pointing out historically a balance of power has been even worse. There are too many possible points of failure. Discuss with your favorite frontier LLM. Ideally idk I'd like a much stronger UN or something, with federal power over member states.
- lazide 1y ago
  Who would run such a UN? And why wouldn’t they be worse - and what would you be able to do about it, if they were? And don’t forget, regardless of the title, for anything to get done there inevitably is one man who is making decisions/breaking ties somewhere. I can’t think of anyone that the various factions could actually trust to do that without screwing over at least (or more!) half of them.
  - Herring 1y ago
    Who runs your local police force? What do you do if they suck? It's really not that hard to implement a good setup, but yeah the hard part is convincing multiple countries to give up a bit of sovereignty. Might take another world war.
    - lazide 1y ago
      If my local police force sucks, they impact me and the other local voters, so they tend to be somewhat easy to fix (as long as we can all agree they suck). Or at least I only have my fellow local idiots to blame. What happens when the person who chose them is in Beijing, and everyone in my entire country doesn’t want them there? But they still got a global majority? Typically that’s the kind of thing a lot of people die over.
      - Herring 1y ago
        Yeah multiply this situation x1M and you understand why a balance of power is unstable. To make a civilized society work, people can't pull out guns when they disagree. You sue, or you figure out how to communicate/negotiate, or you just live with it. Any of those are better than war, and a good setup will have plenty of avenues like that.
        lazide 1y ago
        I think we both have wildly different life experiences. The only way a real UN would work is with even more violence. The ‘under the boot forever’ type. The world would need a Qin to have even half a chance [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qin_Shi_Huang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qin_Shi_Huang]. Because what happens - when like the US is now discovering - the courts are useless? And you don’t even have your own guns to protect your rights?and what someone else has decided to do is your destruction?
        Herring 1y ago
        Did you ever find it weird that it's the pro-gun pro-rights republicans that are attacking the courts? Americans have some very weird thinking over guns. I think if they were taken away, they'd have to work harder at getting along with other people (esp women, minorities, china), and therefore get better at it. It's really not a coincidence that it's the pro-gun Americans who killed Roe v Wade. Their ancestors owned slaves. They love to say it's about "rights", but it's clearly not.
        1y ago

Herring 1y ago

I'm not praising anything. Yes US foreign policy sucks. I'm pointing out historically a balance of power has been even worse. There are too many possible points of failure. Discuss with your favorite frontier LLM. Ideally idk I'd like a much stronger UN or something, with federal power over member states.

lazide 1y ago
Who would run such a UN? And why wouldn’t they be worse - and what would you be able to do about it, if they were? And don’t forget, regardless of the title, for anything to get done there inevitably is one man who is making decisions/breaking ties somewhere. I can’t think of anyone that the various factions could actually trust to do that without screwing over at least (or more!) half of them.
- Herring 1y ago
  Who runs your local police force? What do you do if they suck? It's really not that hard to implement a good setup, but yeah the hard part is convincing multiple countries to give up a bit of sovereignty. Might take another world war.
  - lazide 1y ago
    If my local police force sucks, they impact me and the other local voters, so they tend to be somewhat easy to fix (as long as we can all agree they suck). Or at least I only have my fellow local idiots to blame. What happens when the person who chose them is in Beijing, and everyone in my entire country doesn’t want them there? But they still got a global majority? Typically that’s the kind of thing a lot of people die over.
    - Herring 1y ago
      Yeah multiply this situation x1M and you understand why a balance of power is unstable. To make a civilized society work, people can't pull out guns when they disagree. You sue, or you figure out how to communicate/negotiate, or you just live with it. Any of those are better than war, and a good setup will have plenty of avenues like that.
      - lazide 1y ago
        I think we both have wildly different life experiences. The only way a real UN would work is with even more violence. The ‘under the boot forever’ type. The world would need a Qin to have even half a chance [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qin_Shi_Huang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qin_Shi_Huang]. Because what happens - when like the US is now discovering - the courts are useless? And you don’t even have your own guns to protect your rights?and what someone else has decided to do is your destruction?
        Herring 1y ago
        Did you ever find it weird that it's the pro-gun pro-rights republicans that are attacking the courts? Americans have some very weird thinking over guns. I think if they were taken away, they'd have to work harder at getting along with other people (esp women, minorities, china), and therefore get better at it. It's really not a coincidence that it's the pro-gun Americans who killed Roe v Wade. Their ancestors owned slaves. They love to say it's about "rights", but it's clearly not.
        1y ago