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Economic costs of war

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Re: Economic costs of war

#531

Post by watwut »

jjoonathan wrote: post #489
miked85 wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could have got US civilians and allies out first - there is no reason it had to happen this way.

Yes, there is. People want to believe that orderly evacuation is merely a function of planning. It isn't. * Diplomats -- needed to show support for the government we put in place until it fell. It was always going to fall, so there was always going to be a scramble to get them out. This dynamic has happened before and it will happen again. It's a function of diplomacy, not planning. * Afghani Allies -- we have to dra…

> we have to draw the line somewhere at who we evacuate, the line was always going to leave some people out who thought they should be evacuated, and that was always going to be a tragedy. The tragedy is a function of line drawing, not planning.

The complain is that current line is roughly "no one". And the people there had not had even time to prepare, organize hiding places or run away.

Re: Economic costs of war

#532

Post by miked85 »

x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #409
miked85 wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could have got US civilians and allies out first - there is no reason it had to happen this way.

Everyone knew we were leaving, Trump set the date. Why folks were still hanging around I'll never know.

Trump set a date; that date came and went. Besides, Biden has rescinded dozens of Trump policies, his hands were hardly tied on this.

Re: Economic costs of war

#533

Post by Pius_IX »

watwut wrote: post #529
mc32 wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cultural aspect is critical and people have overlooked in many places. The Optimism for Russia after the fall of the USSR, Ukraine and Afghanistan, Libya, etc. Places with no democratic foundation or tradition but plagued by corruption. It needs to grow over decades organically for the people to get used to the idea and the institutions, for example, like in Hong-Kong. Singapore is another example and they yet do…

Germany had no democratic tradition either, it was corrupt too. And, as someone else said, many former USSR countries are doing quite well with their new democracies. The factors are way more complicated then just that.

Of course Germany had democratic traditions, going back to the early/middle of the 19th century. The Frankfurter Nationalversammlung at 1848, while it failed quite spectacularly, consisted of people from all over Germany debating. Even before that in many of the smaller kingdoms the people had achieved some representation and constitutions they guaranteed them the basic democratic rights of assembly, speech and a parliament in which to voice their opinions.

The Kaiserreich had a parliament. Weimar failed in the end and had plenty of problems but still it was a democratic government and that despite major challenges (Civil War, lost World War, bad economy).

And if you are willing to look into the many states and small countries that made up Germany before its unification you have 'democratic' city-states going back to the middle ages. Don't forget that Germany was and is deeply federal (Its official name is 'Federal Republic of Germany' after all).

Even right before the democracy was abolished by the Nazis the largest federal state was governed by the Social Democrats (Prussia).

Hell, our social democrats keep telling everybody that their party was founded on 23 May 1863 even if nobody cares.

Re: Economic costs of war

#534

Post by d110af5ccf »

velcii wrote: post #482
Clubber wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is spot on. As aggravating as YouTube censorship is, it's given the power of the press back to the people, if not just for a little bit. This flew under everyone's radar I think and the powers who typically control the news have been scrambling to regain control.

>it's given the power of the press back to the people You are mistaken. Social media and things like youtube, just like elections, provide the appearance of power and choice, but just safely let people to let out pent up emotions. Then they safely contain it without it being spilled to the real world to a certain extent, at the same time give the people who participate in them a certain feeling of "doing something",…

> Then they safely contain it without it being spilled to the real world to a certain extent

Like January 6th? Safe containment indeed.

> youtube and other media like reddit even HN "strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion"

Which results in an ever increasing number of extremist refugees. The Fediverse appears to be growing consistently and I think the systemic mechanisms that are concentrating extreme viewpoints there should be cause for concern.

On the plus side, if a particularly interesting video is removed from YouTube you can often find it mirrored there.

Re: Economic costs of war

#535

Post by Yoric »

zzleeper wrote: post #496
rayiner wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The U.S. spends among the most on education of any developed country, both in absolute terms and a percentage of GDP. Our education spending is over 6% of GDP: https://waterpedia.wiki/image/education-spending-share-gdp-s... . All of the people involved in these foreign war debacles were highly pedigreed. (Fun fact: the President of Afghanistan, who fled Kabul yesterday, is an Ivy League-educated professor who "litera…

In my country the two best economics are offered by a leftwing/socialist and a rightwing/free-market university, respectively. What always astounded me was that even though the faculties are nuanced and respect both sides, the students are just blindly leftist or rightist when they graduate. For instance, teachers at the pro-markets university know that markets have failures so blindly free markets is usually not the…

That's a very interesting point.

As a former academic myself, I can confirm that universities are unfortunately good at building cult-like followings - not only cult-like followings, thankfully, but still.

Do you think that this has an impact on the situation in Afghanistan?

Re: Economic costs of war

#536

Post by Yoric »

fighterpilot wrote: post #485
A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"They might want to teach independent thoughts to their own kids but other than that they have zero incentive to promote independent thoughts to their customers because it's profit and power that feeds their family." This point is about the only bright spot in an otherwise grim perspective. Just about everyone, and that appears to include Putin, wants to do well by their kids education-wise. The rest can fuck off and…

That's right. I don't have existential dread about Putin or Xi. They want total power, wealth and stability. They're corrupt pragmatists, not zealots who are going to die in a nuclear Armageddon. I fear the ideologically committed madman much more.

You have a point.

However, they are also empire builders whose agenda requires weakening the power, wealth and stability of every entity that they consider targets and/or competitor. As someone who lives in one such entity, I consider this threatening.

Not glorious-nuclear-self-destruction dreadful, but still potentially life-threatening.

Re: Economic costs of war

#537

Post by watwut »

Pius_IX wrote: post #533
watwut wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany had no democratic tradition either, it was corrupt too. And, as someone else said, many former USSR countries are doing quite well with their new democracies. The factors are way more complicated then just that.

Of course Germany had democratic traditions, going back to the early/middle of the 19th century. The Frankfurter Nationalversammlung at 1848, while it failed quite spectacularly, consisted of people from all over Germany debating. Even before that in many of the smaller kingdoms the people had achieved some representation and constitutions they guaranteed them the basic democratic rights of assembly, speech and a par…

Weimar was forced on them and was seen as disorderly mess by population. Yes, they had parliament pre-WWI and they still were not democracy. They were monarchy run by royal families. They were also highly militarized country at that too.

Some debates and some representation does not constitute "democratic tradition".

Re: Economic costs of war

#538

Post by anticodon »

xyzzyz wrote: post #524
mc32 wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cultural aspect is critical and people have overlooked in many places. The Optimism for Russia after the fall of the USSR, Ukraine and Afghanistan, Libya, etc. Places with no democratic foundation or tradition but plagued by corruption. It needs to grow over decades organically for the people to get used to the idea and the institutions, for example, like in Hong-Kong. Singapore is another example and they yet do…

> USSR, Ukraine Many former USSR countries are doing quite well with their new democracies. Consider, for example, that Ukraine had basically as much democratic tradition as Poland had (big parts of it literally being parts of Commonwealth of Poland for centuries), and yet Poland’s democracy has been doing much better. I agree that culture and traditions matter, but with your examples, you are overstating your case.

I don't know about Poland, but Ukraine is certainly not a democracy. Starting from the fact that the presidents are appointed by oligarchs (you may call it a conspiracy theory, but it's true), the country is plagued by corruption. Ending with the fact that current president and his party are closing media of opposing parties (so much for "freedom of speech").

Nor does it help the Ukraine. All the industry was destroyed in the last 30 years. And agriculture is not enough: if you seed all available land of Ukraine, it would produce only about $40 bln of agricultural products, while Ukraine yearly imports from abroad are $60 bln. The country is unsustainable, it would eventually collapse. It's not the only country in the world that consumes more than it produces, but other countries have some kind of advantages allowing them to subsist while being netto importers. E.g. USA also consumes more than it produces, but it can freely print world reserve currency and buy whatever it needs. If someone objects, it has most expensive army with bases all over the world to suppress any discontent. Ukraine doesn't have a single possible way out.

Eventually people that have any skills and energy will migrate to Europe/Russia/other countries (I was constantly surprised how many there're Ukrainians working in every part of the world - even the most remote ones), existing population will wither. There's a conspiracy theory that Ukrainian government is afraid to organize population census (the last one was long time ago), because they know that results will be unpleasantly surprising.

Re: Economic costs of war

#539

Post by roenxi »

nightski wrote: post #235
hestefisk wrote: post #207

“Medicare for all”, the single payer universal healthcare system in the US, was projected to cost between $16-34T [1] over a decade. I know there are some big questions around the actual cost of US aggression / state terrorism since 9/11 (ie 6.4T vs 2T as per other entries in this thread). A rough 80/20 analysis suggests: * We could have funded free healthcare to roughly one quarter of the US population for 10 years…

It's never been a matter of money. We've seen the government can pass multi trillion dollar bills on demand and increase the budget at will. That's what is lacking, the political power/will to pass such legislation. It's unfortunate but it has nothing to do with this war or its cost.

While it is true that these things aren't just a matter of money, it is difficult to argue that Afghanistan was a better place to put the funding.

This is ultimately the biggest domestic consequence of the war for the US - if someone can have their way burning trillions of dollars (of borrowed funds, no less) wrecking Afghanistan, what is the justification for not doing the same thing for something that makes someone - anyone - feel good about life?

Re: Economic costs of war

#540

Post by anticodon »

Clubber wrote: post #462
asdff wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The good news is there are more independent thoughts these days. 70 years ago it was hard having independent thoughts when it was three channels on TV and two newspapers and everyone listened to the same couple of popular artists. Back then, if you were too independent you would get beat up after class or worse.

This is spot on. As aggravating as YouTube censorship is, it's given the power of the press back to the people, if not just for a little bit. This flew under everyone's radar I think and the powers who typically control the news have been scrambling to regain control.

No. YouTube actively blocks any discontent. You can say anything you want as long as it is something that not threatening "democracy" or "liberal discourse". E.g. probably you can upload a video stating that Earth is flat, but you'll be immediately blocked if you upload something criticizing LGBT* or other sensitive areas. I've seen it many times.

Also, YouTube (and Google in general) manipulates search results. E.g. in Russia you're fed by force with Navalny's channel. If you block his channel explicitly, YouTube starts to show you one of the thousand clones of it. Or other content with similar views. While content that contradicts the YouTube censorship policy will be well hidden from view.

It's not a freedom of speech.

I understand that US has the strongest propaganda and state of the art brainwashing techniques. So the usual reply is something like: "But it's the absolute truth! Anyone trying to refute it is a bigot!" But I know the only truth: there's no absolute universal truth. Imagine what science would be if it would be disallowed to refute theories?..

US bigotry is something resembling a religion: "We know better how people in country X should live!", "We know better how all the world should view same sex marriage!", "We know better how the country Y should be governed!", etc, etc. But the point is that most of the time people saying this don't know where the country is located, it's culture and traditions, why the people live the way they live, do they like it or not, etc. They just sure that everyone would be happy to eat hamburgers, drink Coca Cola and have Disneylands everywhere. It's such an arrogant dumb view, but it's ingrained in every western person by the best media and propagandists.

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