191–200 of 235 posts
We can clearly hear the drums beating from across the Atlantic. A new adventure was already expected with the change of administration.
It's worth noting Trump was the first US President to not start a war in half a century.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/27/eddie-gallag...
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> Since then I honestly think there should be no profit in making weapons while a war is going. It is an interesting thought but ... if the government tells the industrial chain "you aren't getting paid for this" then there is a pretty high chance the war will be lost. Being optimistic, maybe it could work for one war. Then the next war people ask "where are our weapons?" and the answer is "there are none". There is…
...then there is a pretty high chance the war will be lost. That is the status quo. USA military has not won a war in my parents' lifetimes. USA military is optimized to consume resources, not to accomplish traditional military objectives.
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Something I don't get: Why is the Ukrainian president less concerned about invasion than the US president? Anyone have a good answer to this?
The Ukrainian President is concerned about invasion, not sure where you’re getting the idea he’s not. His criticism is specifically about the handling so as to not cause panic: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/01/28/ukraine-russ... .
"US warns Russian attack may be 'imminent,' Ukraine disagrees"
From President Volodymyr Zelenskyy down, the Ukrainian government has tried to urge calm, with senior officials making clear in recent days they don't see the risks now as any more heightened than over the last eight years of Russian-stoked conflict in eastern Ukraine.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/us-warns-russian-attack-immi...
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Yep. About 5000 American soldiers died in the Iraq War. A tragic loss, undeniably. Iraqi deaths? Estimated to be between 400,000 and 1,000,000. That doesn't include deaths that will follow for decades from lasting damage and the instability that followed in the region and continues to this day.
Don't forget the lasting effects of depleted Uranium munitions: https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2019/09/21/new-study-do... that's a particularly nasty thing to be lobbing around. The shell that just keeps on shellin' long after the war is over.
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I think universal basic income is the best compromise between capitalism and “socialism”. What if there were only private health care, parks, libraries, school, elder care… but everybody was “rich” (enough to easily afford them all).
How does that solve the problem of capital-owners simply raising prices to match new general level of income? For example, if renting housing previously cost $X, and UBI was implemented giving everyone an additional $Y dollars, I would expect leasing costs for housing to immediately jump by, say, 0.75*Y, and the costs of other goods to rise similarly. UBI would then just be a general transfer of money from the poor a…
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Pretty simple really. If you are being invaded without provovation and every attempt at diplomacy has failed, and going past form, you know that if your enemy succeeds in overrunning you, then your women wiil be raped and you and your children killed then you've no option other than to fight with all your might. That's the extreme case, at what point on a sliding scale the options change is moot and subject to vigouo…
The justice of the case does not tell you how much suffering will be caused by a particular course of action. People chose to run away, do nothing, comply, or collaborate all the time. And that may be the best way to protect your family. Talking about "just war" is a way or moralising a practical decision.
You may not have the chance to run away as you'll be forced to stay, like it or not. We saw that played out many times in WWI, WWII and in Vietnam where conscription was rife and the rules of the draft were essentially inviolate and not negotiable.
I know from personal experience, I opposed the Vietnam and was drafted anyway much to my chagrin (I won't bore you with details as they're not relavant here).
However, the Vietnam War was not one of those conflicts to which I was referring above. This is why there was so much opposition to it. Simply, it was hubris and false logic on the part of those governments involved and that's only a tiny fraction of the story.
Where a war is not 'legitimate' (as I've defined above), I verily believe one has a moral duty to oppose it at every opportunity. However, that's much easier said than done. One should never lose sight of the fact that armies have been recruiting for millennia and they know evey trick in the book. Feigning illness, etc.in an attempt to escape is often extremely difficult.
There's always the conscientious objetion route but that too can be an unusually difficult path.
As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, I believe there is an extreme case where one has no other option other than to fight, so I couldn't honestly argue conscientious objector case (perhaps I'm just a bad lier).
In the scenario where there's no other option, escaping to safety also has horrible drawbacks. First, you're leaving the dirty work for others thus increasing their burden, second if you have any conscience or moral fortitude then you'll live with that for the rest of your life. You may not think so now but you will later - perhaps many years later.
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How does that solve the problem of capital-owners simply raising prices to match new general level of income? For example, if renting housing previously cost $X, and UBI was implemented giving everyone an additional $Y dollars, I would expect leasing costs for housing to immediately jump by, say, 0.75*Y, and the costs of other goods to rise similarly. UBI would then just be a general transfer of money from the poor a…
You're assumption is untested as well. I'd rather guess that with greater mobility and the ability to move between jobs without fear of losing everything, people would move elsewhere and invest in housing outside of expensive cities. I can see an argument for some sort of regulation around housing which disincentivizes financialization of that market and increases supply. A Land Value Tax seems like a possibly good a…
Even now, people can move out of expensive cities and into the hinterlands. A few weeks ago, we had a story here about a guy who worked himself up from blue-collar work to carpetbagging (his words) in a rural town. It's possible to do that for anyone on a reasonable salary, but most people choose not to. On a known stipend, the prices in those tiny towns will rise just the same; the incentives to do so are the same as those that keep them at their current level, after all.
The recent move to remote working is probably going to do a lot more for equalization and social/physical mobility than UBI ever would, simply because it gives people the option to opt out of life in major cities. That's something that UBI by itself could never do. People will still have the fear of losing everything, of spiralling into unrecoverable debt, of never actually owning the house that they live in and the car that they drive. Look at Social Security as an example. A monthly stipend does not stop the elderly from going homeless.
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> Since then I honestly think there should be no profit in making weapons while a war is going. It is an interesting thought but ... if the government tells the industrial chain "you aren't getting paid for this" then there is a pretty high chance the war will be lost. Being optimistic, maybe it could work for one war. Then the next war people ask "where are our weapons?" and the answer is "there are none". There is…
...then there is a pretty high chance the war will be lost. That is the status quo. USA military has not won a war in my parents' lifetimes. USA military is optimized to consume resources, not to accomplish traditional military objectives.
I started paying attention to this when I lived close to DC around 2002. Bush was cutting the top tax brackets while ramping up for the Iraq invasion, the defense contractors made record profits (I remember one CEO making around 30 million) and the DC metro was plastered with ads touting the patriotism of the defense contractors. I thought "these guys are making record money, are getting their taxes reduced, try to l…
> Since then I honestly think there should be no profit in making weapons while a war is going. Why should the weapons manufacturers be left out while oil companies, mercenary corps, and construction/logistics companies get all of the action? "Everybody" deserves their place at the feeding trough.
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That's the extreme case, but there's also the argument that the Afghans were fighting a just war from their perspective against foreign invasion. Despite all the horrible stuff they're inflicting on their own people day to day.
That's the big, big problem! Let me give you a few well-known countries and you can think about whether there are any parallels between them and Afghanistan. 1 England: the English Civil War (very simplified description). The terrorists as we would call them nowadays [the Parliamentarians] won and King Charles I was executed. The people that now rule the UK have inherited the system of government originally set up by…
1) > Pretty simple really!
2) > That's the big problem!
At all but the most superficial level you'll find armed conflict motivations over all of human civilizations isn't "pretty simple really" and you'll find there are a lot of "that's the big problem's". Trying to reduce a topic as big as armed conflict in human history to a single idea of "just" or "unjust" isn't a particularly insightful or explanatory approach.