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Closing The Collapse Gap: The USSR was better prepared than the US (2006)

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Re: Closing The Collapse Gap: The USSR was better prepared than the US (2006)

#81

Post by sacks2k »

ltbarcly3 wrote: post #22
sacks2k wrote: post #5

When human life is meaningless and you don't have to make decisions around a pesky constitution and citizen rights, it's really easy to be prepared for anything.

This is the opposite of what is true. When you have no rights and no constitution, the people who have control will use that control to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else. They'll enforce policies that cause starvation and deprivation, often without even realizing they are doing so - there is no way for information to flow efficiently, and regional authorities only answer to the central authority and n…

"This is the opposite of what is true. When you have no rights and no constitution, the people who have control will use that control to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else."

This was my point. The only reason the USSR is better 'prepared' for anything is because they can make choices that countries like the US can't, at the expense of human lives.

"People use the USSR in WW2 as an example of where central planning led to success"

This is a good example of success in a country that doesn't care about human life.

USSR total deaths in WW2: 24 million United States: 418,000

I think we agree.

Re: Closing The Collapse Gap: The USSR was better prepared than the US (2006)

#82

Post by [deleted] »

pinkfoot wrote: post #58
eel wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The raw data can be gathered from congress.gov, but here's a summary graphic for 2019: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#/... It depends on your definitions of entitlements and military, but for example, social security spending was at $1.0 trillion compared to $676 billion for defense.

Notice that veterans affairs and a lot of the DOE is filed under 'not military'.

[deleted]

Re: Closing The Collapse Gap: The USSR was better prepared than the US (2006)

#83

Post by ltbarcly3 »

sacks2k wrote: post #81
ltbarcly3 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the opposite of what is true. When you have no rights and no constitution, the people who have control will use that control to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else. They'll enforce policies that cause starvation and deprivation, often without even realizing they are doing so - there is no way for information to flow efficiently, and regional authorities only answer to the central authority and n…

"This is the opposite of what is true. When you have no rights and no constitution, the people who have control will use that control to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else." This was my point. The only reason the USSR is better 'prepared' for anything is because they can make choices that countries like the US can't, at the expense of human lives. "People use the USSR in WW2 as an example of where cent…

If the USSR was organized like the US, they wouldn't have had 1/3 of the country die, and they wouldn't have had to have 10-1 advantages to win battles.

The USSR was lucky to survive WW2 at all. They did almost everything they could to lose the war, from purging almost all the competent officers to allowing basically the entire army to be destroyed in Poland. If you took the USSR, and swapped in a democratic government in 1920, they would have escaped the war with 1/10th as many casualties. Maybe they would have surrendered, maybe they would have never been attacked, but in the end the 22 million extra people who died would not have had to.

Your argument comes down to 'only a dictatorship can throw 1/3 of the population into a meat grinder while the others quietly watch' and I'm saying 'only a dictatorship can do that, but only a dictatorship ever has to do that'.

Re: Closing The Collapse Gap: The USSR was better prepared than the US (2006)

#85

Post by bobmcbobface »

This idea of US collapse, as framed seems deeply silly, for a number of reasons.

1. This isn't really the US we are talking about, its the Western economic system

2. Things 'collapse' in different ways. A slow collapse looks more like a transition. Most things don't collapse anywhere near as quickly as the USSR for obvious reasons.

Re: Closing The Collapse Gap: The USSR was better prepared than the US (2006)

#86

Post by bobmcbobface »

routerl wrote: post #77
hash872 wrote: post #23

I dunno, seems a little overly dramatic. Previous world powers didn't collapse, they just faded- Britain, Spain, Portugal, etc. This seems much more likely, especially as budget issues prevent the US from deploying the same overwhelming military power all over the globe. America already spends more of its federal budget on entitlements than the military, contrary to what progressives will tell you- when push comes to…

Portugal absolutely collapsed, due to the 1755 Lisbon earthquake. Voltaire wrote about this[1]. The Portuguese Empire couldn't cope with the near total destruction of their capital, and never recovered. During the Napoleonic wars, the emperial court moved to Brazil and, basically, hid. They were a shadow of themselves. The United Kingdom, similarly, collapsed, under the weight of two world wars. Europe as a whole was…

The UK didn't collapse. It's still here. Just the idea of colonialism went out of fashion for everyone involved.

Re: Closing The Collapse Gap: The USSR was better prepared than the US (2006)

#87

Post by addHocker »

pfraze wrote: post #49
zozbot234 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our countries may not be authoritarian but they're certainly rigid in the sense of having a huge amount of accumulated "technical debt" in their social organization, that by definition is simply not amenable to gradual change. A collapse of some sort is then the only feasible form of restructuring, and is a natural consequence of such circumstances especially given outside stressors. So I would definitely not put it…

I do agree that the US is rigid in its thinking. We accumulated a lot of wealth in the mid-20th century and a lot of national policy debates are around how that wealth is distributed rather than about undertaking new national ventures to bring in significant new wealth. It's understandable to a degree - we have a lot to risk by taking big national projects - but it feeds into our distribution problems because we want…

Those who have wealth, have entrenched interests. Why would a coach manufactur support the automobil or the production of parts for automobils.

Now, take the strucutural design flow that is privatized pensions, meaning a whole part of society can be hijacked to support openly or cladestine these entrenched interests, and the result is a political landscape that is enraged by those living outside this system - hanged up to dry.

And those within, basically seeing no way they can change it, without having significant risk and loss of quality of life. Privatization has hidden costs, when applied to infrastructure. He who buys your water pipes, can hold you hostage..

Re: Closing The Collapse Gap: The USSR was better prepared than the US (2006)

#88

Post by zelon88 »

neffy wrote: post #68
zelon88 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Plus the US has one advantage that previous stable empires didn't have- federalism, a decentralized system. Even in an emergency, we'd just see power shift to local state leaders. The fed gets it's money from GDP producing states. There are far more GDP draining states the further inland you go. If those states don't get federal funds, they will not be able to have a functioning judicial branch which is the only on…

If one was to be brutally fair about this, those so called "GDP" draining states, otherwise known as the Farmers who not only feed the USA but also sell half of their crop abroad, would be far better off as separate countries, with their own currencies and local banks to provide lending, rather than being the source of financial flows that prop up places like New York city. And in this putative local warlord future t…

I'll be honest I never thought of it that way but it's a good point. Food production is the main export of the states I had in mind in my original post. However, food production shouldn't be counted as a "value added" (arguably, since they don't export enough outside US borders to turn a standalone profit) to the American economy. In the same way that Quality Control is not considered "value added" to a factory, but it is still very much a required part of manufacturing.

However, Japan has very few arable farming areas and get something like 70% (I made that up) of their food from the ocean. In the absence of American farmlands, I'd wager that fisheries would be able to sustain urban coastal areas almost indefinitely.

In all the Mad Maxx/Book of Eli style movies, the characters are almost always inland, trying to get to a populated coastal area where survival is more practical.

Re: Closing The Collapse Gap: The USSR was better prepared than the US (2006)

#89

Post by Robotbeat »

nopriorarrests wrote: post #57
Robotbeat wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In space industry prowess, it continues a slow decline (although they had a more robust system to begin with, so it has been managed fairly well).

I see it as a good thing. Russia waste less capital and valuable human resources on vanity projects. I know that HN crowd will dislike my view, since space is hot topic, but well, I would rather focus on something more tangible. Germany has nothing to show in space industry prowess, but it is nice, wealthy country which focuses on problems at hand.

The space industry is about $400 billion. It’s not “vanity.” Did you think I was just talking about human spaceflight or planetary exploration? Those are only about 5% of the global space industry. Russia has been locked out of modern satellite development and their lead in launch capability continues to decay. This is bad for Russia in terms of export revenue and also overal national defense.
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