FaibleEstimeDeSoi
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User ID: 2072
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
2yr ago
Why I don't think that Ukraine has bright future ahead
Disclaimer: This is not an anti-ukranian or pro Russia post, I wish only the best for Ukrainian people and Russia has most of the same and many unique problems.
Ukraine in 1991 was one of the richest countries in Eastern Europe, being on par with Russia and above such countries as Poland and Belarus. The crisis of the 90s escaped Poland, but was shared by the rest, after which Ukraine lagged behind its neighbors in development. We can say that this is due to such factors as Poland's membership in the EU or the presence of oil in the Russian Federation, but a noticeable lag even behind Belarus shows that this is not the sufficient explanation.
Such estimates of GDP PPP per capita in this context are often criticized for ignoring the problem of the shadow economy or, in plain language, "envelope wages". Only this problem is not unique to Ukraine, but a common feature of the CIS countries, and in it, it is more pronounced than in Belarus or Russia, but not enough to explain such a large gap.
Also, quite often one can hear about the supposed difference in the distribution of economic development in the Russian Federation and Ukraine, allegedly in the second there is greater decentralization and a smaller difference between regions. But in terms of GRP per capita, excluding, for obvious reasons, oil and gas regions like Yamal, in both countries one can see approximately same and strong difference between the capital and the poorest regions. This is also true for Belarus. Similar trend can be seen in HDI ranking - Russia standing at 52nd place, Kazakhstan at 56th Belarus at 60th and Ukraine at 77th.
There are many possible reasons that could explain such an outstanding backwardness of Ukraine even by the standards of the CIS. From crazy theories about the genetic or cultural inferiority of its inhabitants to a more adequate analysis of the particular corruption and arrogance of the elites. I won't pretend to know the right one and I don't even need to find some exact answer to this riddle. It’s enough to ask the question: “Why and what will change or has already changed in 2022, which has not happened in the history of this country?”.
War that will make patriots out of corrupt oligarchs? It started in 2014. A new president who promises to fix everything and fix corruption? It's happened so many times it's not funny anymore. Additional grants/loans/Marshall Plan 2.0? Didn't billions of dollars and euros already have go one way into Ukraine? Where did they go? They will go there the next time if there current corrupt system remains. European integration? It has been talked about since the 90s and European leaders are now talking about "the long road ahead for Ukraine", the status of a candidate is not at all a guarantee of an early entry, ask Turkey, Serbia and Montenegro. Why would EU want the poorest European country after Moldova, with the highest corruption and similar to Georgia problems(that of course could be theoretically solved in the near future but this is beside the point)? EU had enough of one Hungary with Orban stealing economic aid with his cronies, it doesn't need a second one. These internal problems will have to be corrected on their own, before, and not after, entry.
But there might be not enough time to for solving them. Ukrainian demographics are awful, a very old population with average age much closer to western countries and not states with similar economic development, which, at the same time, also has the opportunity to relatively freely leave for better countries. For the same reason that Ukrainian patriots in Canada still not returned and will not return in their entirety to help their homeland, major part of today's refugees have already found or will find work and will remain in Europe, having made a reasonable, rational choice.
P.S. It is more my personal pet peeve and not part of the argument but I think that this and similar economic deals that still going on are very strong evidence of some corrupt dealings going on between oligarchs from both sides.
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
2yr ago
Dehumanization is a very old and popular practice among homo sapiens sapiens. It is closely connected with tribalism, with the division into ingroup and ougroup. These concepts can quite reasonably be considered part of human nature, or rather neurology(Dunbar number). To think about the number of people exceeding the Dunbar number by several orders of magnitude, stereotypes, generalizations and such abstract concepts as "nation" or "people" used, which is why many racists can have friends of another race, communists may not have problems with a businessman they know personally, and Hitler respected his Jewish doctor.
The current situation around the "special operation" is therefore not at all unique, but rather normal for any conflicts in history. Just as state propaganda in the participating countries in World War I presented their enemies as monsters on posters, today's propaganda shows opponent`s soldiers as orcs and pigs. Propaganda, like advertising, works for most people, and while avoiding its harmful effects can be easy for some, the problem is that few people try. Now a large part or maybe even most of Ukrainians and Russians hate each other, along with this, real Russophobia is widespread in many Western countries - this is an inevitable consequence of unleashing "special operations" and nothing can be done about it yet. I think it is wrong to dehumanize people in return for theirs dehumanization of ourselves. Of course, after reading hundreds of comments by Ukrainians about stupid orcs without culture, who need to be forced to pay tribute and decolonize their "Рашка"(disparaging nickname for Russia coincidentally having the same name as medieval Serbian principality), average Russian can be filled with desire to write about stupid grunting piggies and their Khokhlostan, but this desire is worth overcoming in oneself. He should think about how the "Khokhols" came to such a life: are they themselves do not consider that the "Rusnya" was the first to start? Almost everyone is sure that their hatred is just and reciprocal in its own way, this is perfectly cultivated by propaganda that specifically chooses what to show to its target audience. For this to stop working, people need to stop thinking that the answer to hatred should be the same blind hatred.
It should be clarified that here I am talking about specific xenophobia of a general nature, of course, strongly disliking army of the country that destroyed your house is completely different. But to transfer these emotions from the army, from politicians, from specific criminals to gigantic groups of people consisting of millions of individuals is stupidity. At the same time, one must understand that average commentators and couch experts who succumb to propaganda are not doomed to maintain their opinions for the rest of their lives. Germanophobia in Europe after the First and Second World War did not last so long, as well as Anti-Japanese sentiment in the United States. As in the past, propaganda will shift its focus to other things, and the majority of people will gradually lose their radical positions. Of course, some parts will not be forgotten for centuries but it will not be the full-fledged xenophobia of today. I think Orwell written about it brilliantly in relation to his own time`s big war here - https://orwell.ru/library/articles/revenge/english/e_revso
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
6mo ago
I think it's just because people have much more to lose now. Your normal standard of living is big enough so you don't have to diverge from a safe railroded life path to live well. Why would you commit if by doing so you limiting your own options and open up yourself to failure?
Currently playing Diablo 4 and this cutscene genuinely stunned me in the sense of how it unintentionally conveys perspective of religious reactionaries so well(maybe I wrong here of course, can't read creators' minds). There is plenty of modern mainstream woke stuff in the game. racially diverse cast with good roles for minority characters, angel that was mostly good in lore previously was made into a selfish coward, et cetera. But here we have demonic figure offering freedom from religious obligations and societal constraints, freedom that leads to the brutal killing of a priest who was the one man who resisted the temptation, freedom to be beautiful in sin. That could have been short story told in a tweet by an anon with 5k followers, instead it's a main plot point in AAA game. And normies don't see it, because idk, priest was mean. I am not in any way religious or conservative, but it's interesting to see their views being represented even most likely without them being involved in production.
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
1yr ago
He already uses this tactics to some extent by conscripting mostly ethnic minorities and rural population. The same tactics Mao utilized when he sent surrendered Kuomintang soldiers to Korea: win-win scenario for him.
There is no deliberate forceful conscription for ethnic minorities in Russia, generally mobilization impacted everybody proportionally to the size of young male population strata(of course on average poorer ones, because of bribing for protection). Large part of Russian forces now consist of people who decided to sign up their life for money and as you can expect more of them would be poor, and like in many other countries Russian minorities are relatively poor(not all of them, Armenians are having it pretty good). There is almost no military tradition among Russians in modern day to counteract this.
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
1yr ago
But there is another solution - desacralization of sex and all the things that it entails. There was some movement in that direction with Sexual revolution but it stopped at current feminist puritanism. Without psychological significance given to it by ourselfs rape is no worse than being beaten up.
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
1yr ago
Reading something on the Internet is quite popular activity indeed. As is reading books that is also today involves "staring at a screen".
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
2yr ago
For the majority of humanity's history people didn't have a choice in the matter. They wanted to have sex and kids were inevitable byproduct of it. Also for some time children were profitable investment of resources. Both of these reasons became invalid, hence demographic transition.
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
1yr ago
You can basically say this about almost any state that existed for several centuries. International anarchy wasn't any different elsewhere. Moscow state was just one of the most successful at this up to the 20th century.
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
1yr ago
If Ukrainians didn't want to fight, they won't. People have their own agency, and no amount of cajoling and money got the Pashtuns to fight for 'Afghanistan' or Cubans to fight against Castro
I'm mostly agree but it seems that most of the Ukrainians want to fight in abstract, as country, but not themselves, as the existence and unpopularity of mobilization show. You don't close the borders for fighting-age males if you aren't suspecting that they will choose to run from the country instead of risking their lives for it.
Almost half of Europeans are Slavic and there would have been much more than half without commies, they are also the reason why slavs are so much poorer than westerners. So if you look at the poor white women population numbers slavs dominate, you don't need some cultural effects for this.
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
1yr ago
I wasn't knowledgeable about US to have an opinion about it when this was true. And I think that the latest part of that period was color blind enough to be just the result of fair hiring practice. But for example native Russian minorities being almost non-existent in Russian media apart from a selected few does bothers me.
How to overcome your extremely low conscientiousness?
TL;DR: Basically the question in the title.
I have a problem that I believe is somewhat common among people here, at the least I'm definitely sure that, for example, @self_made_human mentioned something like this about himself - high intelligence(Hadn't taken any official test in psychologist office, but Raven Matrices or Mensa Norway test show 135+ IQ) hindered by low conscientiousness. It is monstrously hard for me to do anything other than to procrastinate, the only things that can motivate me to do something are the deadline tomorrow(even then I thinking about waiting till the next day's morning), need for a life necessities or a sudden bout of inspiration. Of course I still did and do things required from me by the society, like getting useless degree to secure myself from military conscription but I will always do the basic minimum, late and with much struggle.
I have a very nice remote relatively high paying job so I theoretically could just accept my own weakness in that department and live a life of enjoyable hedonism. But sadly in my mind mythical laziness lives together with countless ambitions and planned great lifepaths that I should immediately start working towards. Of course it sounds like self-imposed problem but I am genuinely at an impasse here. I tried the whole standard motivation spiel, dividing my goals into smaller ones, scheduling my tasks, being mindful and grateful(whatever it truly means), etc., and nothing worked.
I want to spend additional time to talk about currently popular notion of dopamine fasting: restricting yourself from the wonders of civilization and plain old masturbation. It also hasn't helped but I think my case slightly unique here because I was doing the opposite of restraining myself from hyperstimulation my whole life. From the moment I became literate, I read something basically every waking hour, I mean it quite literally, I woken up and then the first thing that I did was picking up a book that I was reading while falling asleep, after I would be going around doing my morning routine like brushing teeth, while holding it in my left hand. I even read on the go, nowadays with smartphones it's really common, but I'm emphasizing this so much cause I never met a person that did this thing with printed books. I'm continued this tradition to this day and majority of my procrastination consists of reading, mainly useless information that is not in any way related to my job, degree or surroundings. This became especially apparent when I learned enough English to read in it, I probably know much more about US politics, culture wars and general trends, than of my country's. I did try to limit myself, both in electronics and in the other things, nofap included. In the end it became clear that even in the absence of any stimuli I would still rather lay down and think about ideas for articles, posts, videos, memes, novels, businesses and world domination instead of actually doing something in that direction.
I have had some amount of success with a YouTube channel, several blogs on different platforms and meme pages, but it was always limited(4k subscribers not 40k) and this is always limited my motivation. Most of the time when I start and complete a project it's because I was inspired in that particular moment and finishing it brings me joy every time. Almost always reception to them is very good. Across all of them I have hundreds comments thanking, complimenting me or asking for more and it is great to hear. But these positive emotions just aren't enough for me to motivate myself.
I already got distracted several times while writing this so I sum up my problem: I want to do things, but I also can't force myself to do them regularly enough to reach some level of success and this situation is eating me alive.
P.S. Forgot to add this - I tried the medical route, but I live in the country where psychostimulants that work are prohibited and what was proscribed to me had either zero or no effect.
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
1yr ago
Interestingly, it's arguable if the Christianity or the West would both exist without Roman empire.
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
1yr ago
Incentives can exist jn the world without copyright. People written books, created songs and plays before it after all. Internet allows for even more ways to fund your project while making final product free to download, Patreon and Kickstarter devs make a living this way already. You don't need to be a communist to be against intellectual property.
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
1yr ago
And why do they refuse? Do you think that people want to be fat and unhealthy? They can't apply it like how average person can't just "learn to code" despite the existence of freely available courses and free time.
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
2yr ago
"When my kids were small, they could walk to the local park a few blocks away. When they were bigger, they could bike to the grocery store to buy ice cream"
All of this is even more true about high density cities.
"have my kid walk through dense masses of whores, addicts, thieves, bums, and lunatics."
What you describe is not an endemic problem for high-density walkable neighborhoods. If some random noname russian cities can solve them, then it can be done in US as well.
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
2mo ago
That's why you can't have massive deportations without authoritarianism, even if they are supported by the majority. People go to the US for the better life that's just too of a empathetic reason for the public to not be sympathetic to them. Yes, this line of thinking logically leads to de facto open borders and hundreds of millions Africans and latinos going to US but that too second order for common folk.
Either that or public stops being empathetic to anybody but their tribe, but I don't think that's very likely in America.
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
10mo ago
Does anybody here knows how to find old reddit posts from a specific subreddit? There is no search for oldest, no option for specific dates and even scrolling down for top of all time will not work because of 1000 listed posts limit. Previously there were a couple of api based solutions but they got bricked recently. It would be very strange if there wasn't a way of doing this considering that all the posts are there and are accessible through links to this day.
Posting this in Friday fun because I need this to autisticly read discussions of the game/book/film from when it released, not for anything useful.
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
1yr ago
Many non-Russian people do live in Moscow and pass opportunities to immigrate, but it's mostly because of cultural and familial factors than anything else. Moscow before the retarded SMO had basically European level of living for the middle class and while it's still lags behind US like all the rest of Europe, you can choose to live there for the same reasons people chose to live in the latter and not the former.
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
1yr ago
Developing on video watching speed discussion: What Youtube channels you watching? Preferably relatively less popular and of the "hidden gems" variety.
To start:
Stupid Ones Games, - there is little to watch here, but the guy is developing Paradox-like grand strategy similar to Victoria II in Unreal Engine. Right now there are no dev blog style videos, only snippets of some features no longer than 3 minutes, but I expect this to change in the future.
Min Maxer Gaming, Quite niche content and only two videos, but if like you old RTS and specifically solo missions there is something for you. Currently he tries to complete Age of Mythology campaign without losing a single unit.
Engel, Dead channel, but author already made quite a number of video essay style game reviews which were sadly never popular.
DiploStrats, Main and only focus is analysis of Diplomacy matches, which because of their interwoven strategic and social nature are interesting even for people who never played it.
The Distributist, I think many people here already heard of him, but still I wanted to mention this channel for its interesting far rightist perspective, that maybe is common here, but expressed in much better form, than you can expect from mottizens with similar views.
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
1yr ago
Actually compared to Eastern and Central European neighbors Russian Empire wasn't particularly bad, and there were a number of improvements, in no small part thanks to the some in the past that were similar to Navalny. Of course after First World War and revolutions everything went to shit for the next century.
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
1yr ago
Isn't this argument goes not only against open borders but even modern large countries with no internal barriers in them. How small should your PaCCPs be? And what about effects of scale that historically allowed large countries to dominate smaller ones?
Huxley's dystopia has many more problems apart from artificial wombs. Caste system and pacification of population by drugs do not necessarily stem from destruction of traditional family structure. But generally to me, this theme of "terrible utopian technology destroying traditional way of life" and "loss of authenticity/connection to nature" repeated ad nauseum by dystopia authors such as Huxley or author of The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect is disgusting in its denial of how much better our lives are compared to our ancestors because of technologies and how their imagined societies are often better compared to us in the same way and for the same reasons.
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