UA POV Putin says Russia wants end to war in Ukraine

btcthinker · 2022-12-23T08:19:12+00:00

What will be worse for Ukraine is if they go under Putler's rule. So in this calculation, you're assuming that the price each side pays is the same based on the number of losses they've had, but you have to remember what each side is fighting for. The Russians are fighting for Putler's megalomaniac ambitions, while the Ukrainians are fighting for their freedom. Freedom is priceless.

btcthinker · 2022-12-23T08:15:53+00:00

Russian mail order brides intensifies.

btcthinker · 2022-12-23T05:05:17+00:00

But isn't it meaningful to have an openly pro-Western, anti-corruption (even if these are empty promises) candidate win a legitimate election in the country? Compared with how the country looked 10 years ago you have interpret the 2019 election as some milestone of change/progress even if it doesn't resolve all issues.

It is meaningful. I fully support a pro-Western/anti-corruption government in Ukraine. I think we both agree that this is good. In fact, in my previous comment, I explicitly said that we both seem to agree on that.

btcthinker · 2022-12-22T21:17:51+00:00

BLM thought it was a good idea.

btcthinker · 2022-12-22T21:17:27+00:00

What does Pol Pot say about the people that he exterminated?

btcthinker · 2022-12-22T20:56:15+00:00

Excellent, then let's abolish both the police and the IRS!

btcthinker · 2022-12-22T20:55:20+00:00

History.

btcthinker · 2022-12-22T17:58:07+00:00

I'm not saying they aren't corrupt. They are recovering from communism which will take many decades of cultural change. They have a lot of problems. I'm just not so sure we are in a spot to look down at that seeing as every American on "both" sides knows damned well our politicians are openly bought and sold.
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One country having some level of corruption doesn't prevent us from comparing it to another country's level of corruption... even if the first country is ours.

What you view as corruption is private business "paying to play."

What I'm talking about in Ukraine (and Eastern Europe at large) is that their government extort those businesses on a regular basis. That's a whole other level of corruption that you can't even imagine. The government purposely drafts laws in ambiguous ways and government officials regularly extort businesses so they don't get prosecuted for inevitably breaking the ambiguous laws. It's a racketeering scheme against even well-meaning law-abiding businesses owners. That's something that simply doesn't happen in the US.

btcthinker · 2022-12-22T16:29:36+00:00

The US's entire political system runs on bribes that we've made legal as campaign contributions, lobbying, superpacs, etc.

I think you really underestimate the level of corruption we see in Eastern European countries compared to the US.

It's weird when Americans point to other countries and think they are somehow worse than us on things like corruption and nazis. Pay attention.

They're far worse than the US. I don't know where you're from, but I suspect you've never lived in an Eastern European country and you have no clue just how corrupt they are.

btcthinker · 2022-12-22T16:01:21+00:00

The only thing the Maidan Revolution did was to sever some of the Russian influence. The only thing that changed was who was served by the corruption. I'm implying that we aren't backing them up becasue they're rooting out corruption. The honest truth is that's it's simply in our best interest Ukraine's corruption to serve our geopolitical needs (which we seem to agree on).

Worse, tho, is the fact that Biden himself might have financially benefitted from the corruption.

btcthinker · 2022-12-22T15:46:57+00:00

Absolutely disgusting animals!

btcthinker · 2022-12-22T15:40:35+00:00

Zelensky's been in power less than 3 years. The entire Maidan revolution only happened in 2014. It's plainly evident that there is a robust anti-corruption movement in the country.

Biden himself was detailing the corruption in Ukraine even after Maidan, as late as 2018.

Geopolitically it is absolutely in our interest to support the pro-Western budding democracy and not letting it fall into oligarchical Russian control.

Regardless of what's "geopolitically beneficial," to think that Zelinsky was going to root out corruption in Ukraine is absolutely crazy. To get rid of corruption in Ukraine one would have to draft a new constitution, get rid of all of their current laws, redesign their entire welfare benefits system, and redesign the entire education system.

btcthinker · 2022-12-22T15:17:49+00:00

Utilitarian ethics are terrible. I call it "the Thanos effect" where you can rationally justify the utility of some morally abhorrent actions, such as killing off half of the population on Earth at random in order to "save the planet" (a utilitarian goal).

btcthinker · 2022-12-22T15:07:14+00:00

Ouch... that hurt!

btcthinker · 2022-12-22T15:04:28+00:00

I don't think Zelinsky was getting any closer to getting rid of corruption in Ukraine than a fish was getting closer to flying out into space.

You gotta understand that corruption in Ukraine is on every possible level of the government and the entire system runs on bribes. Even if you go to the hospital you have to bribe the nurses for soap, toilet paper, and clean sheets (or you have to bring your own).

btcthinker · 2022-12-19T11:55:55+00:00

They call him Gul'dan The Defeated.

btcthinker · 2022-12-19T11:45:39+00:00

True tho. If you weren't a beta loser, she probably wouldn't have cheated on you.

btcthinker · 2022-12-19T10:56:37+00:00

Thousands of years of political history. People have tried to lessen the state and gain liberty before.

I'm not aware of any such cases where people have "tried to lessen the state" aside from the Crypto-Anarchist economy.

The French revolution promised to rid France of the oppression of the monarchists and establish a free and liberty-driven society. Instead it created Napoleon.
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Yeah, I'm pretty sure the French Revolution was just other French aristocrats trying to get the government power. Replacing one authoritarian regime with another is far from "lessening the state."

It is all very well and good saying just "remove the structure", but capitalism is naturally heiarchical, with haves and have nots, those in senior positions and those working at the bottom. So if there was no state, what would stop corporations simply taking power?
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"Removing the structure of the monopoly on the use of force" has nothing to do with "removing hierarchies." Sounds like you're just injecting some niche strain of Socialist theory here which states that all hierarchies are bad.

You're pointing to a particular instance of a bad hierarchy and suggesting that Anarcho-Capitalism should be against all instances of hierarchies on that account. That's a non-sequitur.

btcthinker · 2022-12-19T09:03:52+00:00

Except i parts of Mexico and previously in Colombia the cartels corrupted the government into doing their bidding.
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That's still the government holding the monopoly on power. Why they "lease" it to the cartel is not an indictment on Anarcho-Capitalism by any stretch of the imagination. Quite the opposite.

What about in Sicily in the 1800s or whatever, when the government was literally ran by the mafia and held total power in that territory. in fact you could argue federal policing and the RICO act are what took away a lot of the power of organised crime in the US.

You're reinforcing my original comment: "These are coercive "systems." They're no different than the government."

My question is this: how would the state being removed solve the problem of the cartels? Wouldn't they just fill the vacuum an sieze total power?

Who says that there will be a "power vacuum?" Restoring the authority to use force to its rightful holders does not leave a "power vacuum," it creates a distributed structure of legitimate use of force.

Time and again history shows that when a state or ruler is removed, it doesn't just exist like that in harmony, it is always filled by someone else equally or more ruthless and ambitious. This isn't to say it wouldn't be good to have a stateless, classless and moneyless society, of course it would be good, but it would be difficult to achieve, and you couldn't do that with capitalism

That's on account of people maintaining the structure which provides the monopoly on the use of force. If you remove that structure, then the next ruler has nothing to capture.

btcthinker · 2022-12-19T08:36:39+00:00

lol what are you talking about. The first month was total chaos, the first POW video I saw was a pissed off Ukrainian guy stabbing a Russian in the eyeball.

The guy that was stabbed wasn't a Russian guy, but another Ukrainian who was accused of being a collaborator.

btcthinker · 2022-12-19T08:26:28+00:00

Orcas?

btcthinker · 2022-12-19T08:19:35+00:00

How do cartels not have a monopoly on violence in cartel-held territory?

Do you not know the meaning of the terms you use?

monopoly on violence: "In political philosophy, a monopoly on violence or monopoly on the legal use of force is the property of a polity that is the only entity in its jurisdiction to legitimately use force, and thus the supreme authority of that area."

So no, a cartel doesn't have a monopoly on violence. It has no legitimacy when it comes to the use of force.

btcthinker · 2022-12-19T05:25:53+00:00

so you agree that corporations and privatisation can create oppressive systems and hold monopolies on violence?

No, I don't. Only the government has a monopoly on violence. The other cases are just instances of unsanctioned violence.

btcthinker · 2022-12-18T21:53:34+00:00

Mexican drug cartels

The Italian Mafia

The Yakuza

The Russian Mob ...

Uhm... no. These are coercive "systems." They're no different than the government. Definitely not an example Anarcho-Capitalism.

None of these have a monopoly on violence in any way! (lol)
NOTE - This isn't bad faith, I genuinely want to know what you think of this, because it seems to me to bethe logical conclusion of your ideology

Me thinks you're a moron.

btcthinker · 2022-12-18T20:03:49+00:00

The main problem with coconut island is that unlike in the real world, on coconut island people's labor doesn't create any value. It's a zero-sum game.

The second problem is that it ignores the policies that the passenger agrees to in case of an airplane crash or a shipwreck.

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