this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2025
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It's only stupid when you assume that the government is working in the interests of the working majority. However, if our government represents the interests of the oligarchs like the Irvings then this makes perfect sense. It's a great way to divert our tax dollars from socially useful things they're meant for like building housing or infrastructure, and put them back in the hands of the kleptocrats who own this country.
I see your point but I'll stick to my view that it's stupid, for the people. That is always my take.
It is stupid for the people, and therefore we should not be tolerating our government working against the interests of the working majority.
So what to do because I've tried nothing and am all out of ideas.
At the stage we are currently at, education is really the thing to focus on in my opinion. No meaningful change will be possible until there is a critical mass of people who have a shared understanding of the problems, and agree on a general course of action. This is a good read with some food for thought
https://redsails.org/witbd-rs-abridged/
What rabbit hole is this that you have shared? It does look like a good read and I'll definitely follow up. To your point, no meaningful change will be possible until we genetically alter our humanity into something more coherent. As we are late to the show we will also have to resort to a bit of extermination as well if we hope to beat the clock on the worlds demise. That's the part where people think I'm nuts, which is of no consequence. They have no concept of the depths to which we will be sinking either way.
I'd argue that social systems can be just as effective at driving human behavior as anything. A lot of people who've only lived under western capitalism tend to conflate the way humans behave within this system with human nature in general. Having grown up in USSR, I can tell you that social relations are very much a product of economic relations within society.
Forgive my perhaps uninformed take on Russia but isn't there much more social cohesion because there is a common dislike of the state and the economic situation due to their actions and corruption? Once basic needs are met, as used to be the case in the west, people will branch off into goals based more on their own "selfish" desires. I try not to get too sidetracked with my doom and gloom scenarios because I'm well aware that there is no support for these extremes. I just wonder how to establish the social buy in of a single country or world population with time running out.
During the Soviet years, most people were pretty content with the state of things actually. Everybody had guaranteed jobs, housing, healthcare, and education. Nobody worried about being able to retire in dignity either. The period when things were actually bleak was the post USSR period in the early 90s.
Social cohesion stemmed from communist organization of society. Since there was no capitalism there was no path to capital accumulation. There weren't people like Musk or Bezos running around. The way you got ahead was by becoming an artist, a scientist, or an engineer. These were the people who were held in highest regard.
Absolutely agree and was referring to post USSR when talking about discontent. Started in the 90's but has persisted and been fed by open information in the 21st century, no?
The discontent today is actually fairly low because the economic situation has been steadily improving since the 90s. For example, the World Bank just reclassified Russia as a high income country, and the IMF forecasts that Russian economy is set to grow faster than all the western economies. This is why Putin's government has very high approval right now, people remember how bad things got in the 90s, and they've seen their lives steadily improve since then.
Interesting. The impression we get from brief news reports and no follow up is that the economy is hurting because of the sanctions. I think it's a shame that there isn't the same suffering that they are inflicting on the Ukranian people. They need to understand what their government is doing, propaganda or not. We'll have to see how it all works out.
The reality is that Russia isn't really affected by sanctions at this point because they've redirected their trade towards the global south over the past three years. The real problem is that people in the west don't seem to understand what their own governments are doing, and the fact that Ukraine is being cynically used as a proxy to fight a war with Russia. Now that the proxy war is failing, we're seeing the US starting to look for ways to end it.
I heard about the proxy war theory and it's depressing to think these people are that evil. The world is a fucked up place, no doubt.
It's not a theory, Marco Rubio has openly admitted that it's a proxy war already https://thehill.com/homenews/5179806-russia-us-proxy-war-ukraine/