distic
1yr ago
The paradox of value is that things that are more useful than others as a whole, like water, have a lower price than other scarcer things like diamonds.
Replace water with cleaning ladies and diamonds with software engineers and you get exactly the same situation as above
distic
1yr ago
Well it's still as I said, excepted that the old usual system survives and makes it odd. We have something of the sort in the UE: if you are a binational, you can elect 2 governments, and those governments are ruling the EU together (I'm not sure it's not also possible to vote twice for EU parliament). As long as there are few people with two votes, it's not that important.
You cannot deduce that people are not born equal from the fact their parents are not equal, it's a mistake. There is a missing argument here. Indeed, assume that A is 10 times richer than B, but A has 10 children and B only has 1. Then the children are born equal, aren't they?
And also, the richest are only rich because everyone else is somewhat rich. You can only sell iphones or cars to people that are somewhat rich. Even amazon needs people to have phones or computers. So it regulates itself a little bit. I suspect the richest become relatively richer because the population grows. If you take 0.1 cent by product sold, it helps that there are more people.
distic
1yr ago
I'm not australian either, but I don't think it's affirmative action (where you help individuals get better jobs). It's something more collective. Think about it: in the US (and also in Australia), instead of voting by states, you could vote by race or something like that. For example Lebanon votes by religion. That is not something I would want for my country (and it does not work very well in lebanon) but perhaps it makes sense sometimes, just like taking account of geographic differences makes sense sometimes.
distic
1yr ago
It's called paradox of value, or water-diamond paradox (water is a lot more useful than diamonds, but the price of diamonds is higher).
distic
1yr ago
That was my question too. And also, they should have taken account of the non economical consequences of said removal. Like people beeing sad forbtheir beloved ones. Would they really like to live in a world where their beloved ones can be "removed" if someone thinks they are not productive enough?
distic
1yr ago
The fact that an idea is stupid does not mean that someone as intelligent as Marx could not have agreed with it. Kant believed that you can know a priori the geometry of space and Popper thought that evolution theory was not scientific.
If machines do produce value, then the capitalist isn't stealing from the proletarian, they are producing wealth together. There is no exploitation and the ethical side of marxism falls entirely.
distic
1yr ago
Yet another victim of the compromise ideology. Surely it makes sense to make peace with Putin, none of those that tried are there to complain.
distic
1yr ago
There is also a psychological element in it. It means that supporters of the regime have to tell blatant lies. "No it was just an accident, we didn't do it". It trains them to say just whatever their masters want them to say.
distic
1yr ago
Or because they had the opportunity this way and they took it. Putin isn't a god who can choose the day, the place and the way you will die. There is still a lot of logistics.
distic
1yr ago
All hypothesis seem somewhat valid, excepted the first. Like, there are a lot of plane flying in Russia. Perhaps less of them now with the sanctions, but still a lot. No civilian plane was downed for months or years if I'm not mistaken. So what is the chance that it happens to the one plane that has Prigozhin on board, just two months (day to day) after his revolt? Moreover, it would be a very weird mistake, because downing a civilian plane is the last thing you do after a long list of others. Seriously if it indeed was a mistake, I wish them luck to prove it because nobody will ever believe it.
distic
1yr ago
I'd challenge the claim that he was not stupid. Marching against Putin and then claiming to have reached an agreement was stupid, but setting a foot in Russia was even dumber.
If only those events could serve as a lesson that there is no agreement to be reached with Putin: not for NATO, not for Ukraine, not for Georgia or Moldova. Putin just doesn't respect the agreements he makes.
distic
2yr ago
Then you have to explain why it fails sometimes, eg Vietnam and pentagon papers
distic
2yr ago
A random person has not much power. But if the media were all agreeing about war, it's not because they are jewish, but because there was no market fir opposing war. The media could have opposed the war as much as they could, people would have looked at other media. They had as much appetite for anti war media as a AOC supporter for looking Tucker Carlson show. So after that blaming the media and the establishment is ridiculous. Just like it would be ridiculous for Bush to blame it on the people.
distic
2yr ago
When you say that "the jews" are responsible for something, it's a requirement that at least a majority of them were wanting for it to happen.
distic
2yr ago
although the Cold War meant that the Security Council never functioned as intended
Didn't it? I think the purpose of it was (as you explained...) to avoid a war between the great powers? It seems to me it succeeded quite well.
distic
2yr ago
The problem with your theory is that the american jews have not really been in favor of the war:
https://forward.com/news/1797/poll-70-of-jews-oppose-iraq-war/
distic
2yr ago
Americans were wildly misled about the situation, for example, lots of them thought that Saddam was connected with 9/11. Taking down Iraq was strategic goal of Israel.
It seems to me that people that are so easily mislead should take part in no decision at all. As I said somewhere else, being dumb is no excuse.
distic
2yr ago
The idea that one is not threatened by a neighboring state because there are other neighboring states unaligned with Russia doesn’t make sense. I am not threatened by five enemies because I have four?
Let me rephrase it: Ukraine joining NATO does not improve significantly NATO capabilities regarding Russia. I'm sorry, but the idea of a land invasion through Ukraine is ridiculous. It would mean a nuclear war. We are avoiding to send troops to Ukraine to avoid a nuclear conflict, but somehow we would invade Russia? And even if we wanted to take the risk, it would make more sense to attack from the baltic states as they are a lot closer from Moscow and Saint Petersburg than from Ukraine.
Ukraine is small, it will always be weaker
No, it won't be weaker if it has stronger allies. Russia would never have dared to invade Ukraine if it was a NATO country. And the birth rates mean nothing, as they can change fast. Russia also has declining birthrates, so the population ratio might very well be constant.
NATO violated the promise not to expand east as part of the negotiations involving German reunification.
The Russian propaganda says so, but until "they told us" becomes an international treaty, it's meaningless. If those promises even existed, they were never part of a formally approved treaty. No country has ever felt bound to respect oral promises of former leaders. It is just insane to claim they should. But even assuming that those promises were formally made and broken, I don't see your point. My argument was that Ukraine could not trust Russia security guarantees because Russia violated its security guarantees toward Ukraine twice. Are you claiming that Ukraine should actually believe Russia because NATO also broke some of its promises? It makes no sense at all.
distic
2yr ago
It's not a democracy/dictatorship question. It's about imperialistic leaders that only respect strength. They see any concession as a sign of weakness. There are leaders like that in democracies too, even though it's rarer and they are less dangerous because their powers are limited.
distic
2yr ago
US foreign policy is somewhere between loosely controlled by elections (Democrats and Republicans differed in the 2010s over our our approach to Iran, for example.) and not at all.
Sure, because Americans do not care. If it did matter to them, it would be controlled by elections. But in this particular case it somewhat mattered to them, yet they agreed with the government.
distic
2yr ago
In practice, neutrality would have meant that Ukraine will always remain weaker than Russia and can be invaded at any time. Russia would just have to wait for a time where NATO is occupied somewhere else. Russia violated the Budapest memorandum and the Minsk agreement. How could Ukraine trust them to not invade them?
Moreover, the fact that Ukraine is or is not in NATO is not very relevant for the security of Russia. They are American nukes in the baltic countries, so the threat would not be any bigger. On the other side, Russia would still have nukes, so the invasion risks aren't any higher. So if Ukraine joining NATO does not change anything for Russia security, you have to find another reason why it matters to them. The only thing Russia can do if Ukraine is "neutral" but not if it is in NATO is invading them.
has destroyed the country
No, the invasion has.
has cost enormous sums of money
The invasion has. The US are not responsible for it.
has wasted American influence in Ukraine
Are you kidding? American influence is stronger than ever in Ukraine.
has pressured Russia into developing better drone technology
No, their invasion has pressured them to do so.
has finalized the alienation of Russia from the West
Once again, it's their choice to invade Ukraine that has alienated them. Even after 2014 the west was totally OK negotiating with Russia. Have you heard about Nord Stream 2?
has influenced Arab nations into cozying with Russia
They always did... They are not democratic countries, they have an interest in helping authoritarian regimes. It has not much to do with Ukraine.
and all we get in return is some dead Russians
And the reassurance that you won't abandon your allies, which was in doubt after the Afghanistan retreat.
The Musk example is bad, because Musk is more than thousand times richer than a subsaharan african, children cannot choose their parents, and Musk does not have 1000 children so it's particularly meaningless. And no, it's not better to be the billionth child of Musk than the child of an average american.
But anyway that wasn't my point. My point was that you cannot deduce your conclusion from your hypothesis. Maybe your conclusion is still right, but it remains to prove.
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