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hyzmarca
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Post by hyzmarca » Sat Nov 19, 2011 8:25 pm

> Lago PARANOIA wrote:

> > hyzmarca wrote: The Tea Party tends to be hardcore libertarian while Fascism is totalitarian.

> That's not even close to true. The American Tea Party would love for people to think that they're libertarian because as George Carlin pointed out 'libertarian' has the same sort of vague respectability and detachment that appeals to disaffected low-information voters (also known as lazy, sniveling morons) in the way that 'centrist' does--meaning that a large proportion of the American voting public thinks libertarian is more respectable than liberal or conservative, because, guess what the voting public largely consists of?
> Even so, ATPers are explicitly rejected by libertarians. Now while many conservative and libertarian positions overlap, basically, if you: are against gay rights, want to break down the wall between separation of Church and State, and are concerned about protecting Medicare/Social Security... you are not a libertarian.
> You can get more information on this, including cites and the like, right here: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Tea_Party_ ... bertarians

That article seems to be incredibly biased.
Still, my point stands. Comparing Fascists to the Tea Party is grossly unfair to actual Fascists.
Last edited by hyzmarca on Sat Nov 19, 2011 9:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Lago PARANOIA
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Post by Lago PARANOIA » Sat Nov 19, 2011 9:28 pm

It is really biased. But the point remains; if only about a fifth of your constituency supports gay marriage, you are not libertarians.

> Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
> In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.

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Lago PARANOIA
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Post by Lago PARANOIA » Sat Nov 19, 2011 9:39 pm

> Daiba wrote: My favorite part of this international economic debacle is that investor 'confidence' has become so ideologically enshrined that the people in charge are ignoring what the investors are actually doing. Also that investors worldwide base their risks on Keynesian analysis but the owners of capital constantly shout for supply-side economics, real business cycle theory, and other bullshit.

The bad thing about propaganda is that invariably the propagandists will come to believe it. If Stalin, Hilter, and Mao couldn't resist believing things that they knew from the start weren't true, what chance do these bozos have?

> Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
> In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.

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tzor
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Post by tzor » Sun Nov 20, 2011 3:17 am

> Lago PARANOIA wrote:That's not even close to true. The American Tea Party would love for people to think that they're libertarian

Actually I know few Tea Party people who are true libertarians. Almost all I have met and have known generally tend to be Reagan Conservatives. I would have thought I would have seen some William F. Buckley Jr. style conservatives that generally tended to be libertarian on social issues.
The TEA party philosophy generally tends to align more with the Reagan Revolution than with any of the classical libertarians. Yes they love a limited government and lower taxes argument, but that's the bread and butter of all Reagan Conservatives. On real libertarian issues, the TEA party tends to balk, if not outright complain.
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RobbyPants
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Post by RobbyPants » Mon Nov 21, 2011 1:04 pm

nm. Can't read.
Last edited by RobbyPants on Mon Nov 21, 2011 1:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Username17
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Post by Username17 » Mon Nov 21, 2011 6:43 pm

> Daiba wrote:

> > FrankTrollman wrote:And for some reason, investors don't think that a French recessionary spiral combined with a do-nothing central bank is a recipe for them getting their money back if they lend it to France.

> My favorite part of this international economic debacle is that investor 'confidence' has become so ideologically enshrined that the people in charge are ignoring what the investors are actually doing. Also that investors worldwide base their risks on Keynesian analysis but the owners of capital constantly shout for supply-side economics, real business cycle theory, and other bullshit.

Spain has a new government led by the right wing PP. They promise tough austerity measures. This caused their borrowing costs to rise to record levels. Also, they have admitted that they can't actually survive at those interest rates.
It's funny, in a tragic sort of way. The European right wing are demanding that we abandon Keynesian policies in order to satisfy the market gods, but the actual market gods base their risk projections on Keynesian analysis. So every time the Europeans turn to greater austerity, investors demand higher interest rates as they mark risks up in anticipation of lower growth. And for the last four fucking years, the growth has indeed gone down every time spending cuts go through.
So... Europe is doomed. The political class is convinced that the only possible response to poisoning is to drink more poison. And the markets won't give them any antidote until they credibly promise to stop drinking poison.
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Datawolf
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Post by Datawolf » Mon Nov 21, 2011 10:11 pm

This is unfortunate. Any speculation on what will happen if/when the EU economy completely tanks? I recall someone (Mr. Trollman, I think) mentioning that the EU was established in the first place as some sort of neighbourhood watch against Russia. Is it possible that Russia might step in, pay off everyone's debts and force Europe to suck its vodka soaked dick for the next few centuries?

> Psychic Robot wrote:

> > Pathfinder is still a bad game

> but is it a bad enough game to rescue the President?

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Gx1080
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Post by Gx1080 » Mon Nov 21, 2011 10:48 pm

@Datawolf
Russia is a rotten carcass, plundered by the excess of the Communists and then by the Bankstas on the 90's under Yeltsin. The Russian boogeyman is an overused relic from the Cold War.
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Juton
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Post by Juton » Tue Nov 22, 2011 12:53 am

> Datawolf wrote:This is unfortunate. Any speculation on what will happen if/when the EU economy completely tanks? I recall someone (Mr. Trollman, I think) mentioning that the EU was established in the first place as some sort of neighbourhood watch against Russia. Is it possible that Russia might step in, pay off everyone's debts and force Europe to suck its vodka soaked dick for the next few centuries?

If Russia had any intention of stepping in, Putin probably would have rode in to the rescue of Berlesconi. Supposedly they are close, and Italy probably would have been an adequate investment for Russia, they where in the black they just couldn't find anyone to cover their turnover.
Oh thank God, finally a thread about how Fighters in D&D suck. This was a long time coming. - Schwarzkopf
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Datawolf
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Post by Datawolf » Tue Nov 22, 2011 1:37 am

Fair enough. So the EU will be completely hooped for decades then, I take it.

> Psychic Robot wrote:

> > Pathfinder is still a bad game

> but is it a bad enough game to rescue the President?

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Juton
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Post by Juton » Tue Nov 22, 2011 1:54 am

> Datawolf wrote:Fair enough. So the EU will be completely hooped for decades then, I take it.

If there is still an EU in a few decades. A few years ago saying that the EU would disintegrate into its component states would make you sound kind of crazy, now it's fairly plausible. What is going to be interesting is seeing which nations have working democratic institutions.
For instance Icelanders fought against its debt after their banking disaster, now they're only on the hook for about 7% of that debt. The countries with working institutions will likely default or cancel outrageous debt, the ones that have been co-opted will wallow in debt servitude.
Oh thank God, finally a thread about how Fighters in D&D suck. This was a long time coming. - Schwarzkopf
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DSMatticus
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Post by DSMatticus » Tue Nov 22, 2011 1:57 am

There's always the chance there'll be a spontaneous outbreak of sanity and people will stop setting their economy on fire in the name of austerity.
Then again, they're much too late and it won't happen anyway. So yes, the EU is diving headfirst into pain. At this point, we're just taking bets on whether or not they'll land with their arms or their neck (smart money says neck). Happy 2012! Fucking Mayans.
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Juton
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Post by Juton » Tue Nov 22, 2011 3:06 am

> DSMatticus wrote:So yes, the EU is diving headfirst into pain. At this point, we're just taking bets on whether or not they'll land with their arms or their neck (smart money says neck). Happy 2012! Fucking Mayans.

I think that's a pretty apt summation.
Oh thank God, finally a thread about how Fighters in D&D suck. This was a long time coming. - Schwarzkopf
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DSMatticus
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Post by DSMatticus » Tue Nov 22, 2011 4:40 am

What is the current situation anyway? Greece has swallowed four sets of austerity measures (that failed to do anything) and is in the process of negotiating more austerity for bailouts. Spain has, in a land-slide, elected a party which is promising the same austerity that did not work at fucking all for Greece, and Italy has just replaced their last bunch with a new bunch who are also committed to austerity, but slightly less so than Spain? Somewhere along the line, Portugal and Ireland took a hit?
Meanwhile, France is finally starting to realize the German austerity koolaid has killed everyone else who drank it, and beginning to feel the insidious effects themselves have decided to whine piteously (yet do nothing) that maybe they should have water instead. And Germany is still leveraging its control of EU financial practices to hand out as much deadly delicious koolaid as it possibly can to anyone who says they're feeling thirsty?
It looks like we can safely write off Greece, Spain, and Italy as fully and wholly fucked. Who else is already committed to fucking themselves over? Who can avoid being a domino?
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Username17
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Post by Username17 » Tue Nov 22, 2011 7:45 am

> Datawolf wrote:This is unfortunate. Any speculation on what will happen if/when the EU economy completely tanks? I recall someone (Mr. Trollman, I think) mentioning that the EU was established in the first place as some sort of neighbourhood watch against Russia.

You're thinking of NATO, which may as well stand for No Russia Allowed Treaty Organization. The EU was created for two reasons: the first was to provide en economic incentive for political unity that would prevent wars in Europe from destroying things every generation (which they have basically done for two generations straight - a new record). And the second was to create an economic bloc that could avoid being colonized by Russia or the United States (and more recently, to be able to stand up to China, the Arab League, and India).
Interestingly, NATO is still doing just fine. If you'll recall, NATO just demanded and got regime change in Libya in less than a year without losing soldiers. That fresh off of demanding and getting independence for Kosovo even after promising Russia that they weren't going to. NATO dreams of adding Georgia and Ukraine and pissing in Russia's literal front yard are on hold for the moment, but the line has moved steadily East and Kaliningrad is completely surrounded by NATO countries.
The collapse of European Monetary Union isn't going to break NATO. It may break the WTO, or at least cause the US, China, and Russia to rewrite a bunch of EU rules. Good chance that in 5 years or so we can start calling Port made from California or Argentine grapes "Port" again. Like, on the bottle and everything. The failure of the EU narrative is going to cause a bunch of countries to abandon it. Despite the fact that the EMU has been an incredibly undemocratic institution that has fought tooth and nail against democractic oversight at every step of its rise and fall, its narrative has been one of democratically united democracies - so chances are unfortunately pretty good that a bunch of the countries are going to go through undemocratic stages.
You can already see that happen in Italy and Greece, where the current leaders are unelected bankers who promise to defy the will of the people to dismantle the social safety net. Spain just elected a Francoist party to an absolute majority in parliament. All of these countries have strong fascist movements and recent fascist histories (as does Portugal), so the idea that the PIGS countries could decide to abandon democracy and spend a period languishing under an iron fisted tyrant shouldn't be treated as unthinkable scare talk like it is in the media today.

> Datawolf wrote: Is it possible that Russia might step in, pay off everyone's debts and force Europe to suck its vodka soaked dick for the next few centuries?

No. At least, not all at once.

> Gx1080 wrote:Russia is a rotten carcass, plundered by the excess of the Communists and then by the Bankstas on the 90's under Yeltsin. The Russian boogeyman is an overused relic from the Cold War.

what is that I don't even.
OK, no. Just, no. Your grasp of Russian history before 1991 is basically nonexistent. Let's go back a bit. Russia spent the 19th century as a vast undeveloped wasteland languishing under the grip of disinterested tyrants and rapacious feudal warlords. Like China, it was an endless hellscape of subsistence farmers with starvation in one province or another every year for centuries at a time under a ridiculously out of touch set of emperors. They were routinely kicked around by Western Powers and even got their asses handed to them by the Japanese Empire.
However, like China they had a huge population and a tradition of obedience to authority and indifference to human life, so under Communist central planning they grew fast and strong. They went from a ludicrous laughing stock to the most powerful country in Europe in one generation. And they kept that going for like two generations before their empire collapsed under the weight of being unable to reform themselves to late 20th century standards with the amount of dogmatic conservatisim they had invested in.
In the 1990s, Yeltsin brought in a bankster coup that created a literal banker-criminal syndicate that controlled (and continues to control) tremendous amounts of the country's wealth. Russia fell prostrate under the draining maw of corruption and lost a good chunk of its territory.
Nevertheless, Russia is still the strongest single country in Europe. And with the EMU falling apart, power will naturally gravitate back to Russia as it moves away from Germany. The reality is that in the whole world the largest tribe of people is the Han (the majority population of China) at about a billion people, and then there's a three way tie between the Americans (the synthetic tribal affiliation of of people in the US and Canada), the Bengali (the people of Bangladesh and Eastern India), and the Arabs (the majority population of the middle east) - at about 300 million each. Now here's the thing: the Slavs are in three different groups but collectively they are 400 million people and occupy more than half the land area of Europe (in addition to all that stuff in Asia).
Right now, West Slavia is all part of the EU, and Yugoslavia is divided into the NATO part and the Russian part, and Russia doesn't even own all the Russias as White Russia is currently Belarus and Little Russia is off being the rabid weasel that is Ukraine. But the reality is that if the Slavs get in line to form Slavia, it would be bigger than other prospective world super powers like the Caliphate or United Bengal. And unlike those ones, or even China, Slavia is full of Europeans who can like read and shit.
Slavia is not a world super power right now because it is divided into factions. But it's divided into like four factions, and has a much better chance of getting put together than The Caliphate does. And of the current countries in the Slavic region, the only ones that are strong enough to push Slavic Unity are Russia and Poland. People in Europe are totally right to fear Russian domination. Dominating Eastern Europe in something that Russia did 30 years ago and something they could do five years from now if NATO participation dried up.
The thing you don't hear nearly enough about is the rising influence of Poland. As the most powerful country in Slavia that isn't Russia, their influence is continuing to rise. They are the sixth most populous member of the EU, and the largest country in mainland Europe that isn't on the disaster train that is the Euro. Also, it's important to remember that everyone in this region remembers Poland used to look like this.
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Username17
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Post by Username17 » Tue Nov 22, 2011 12:00 pm

To give an example of how this Pan-Slavianism thing works, here is the flag of the Russian Federation:
Here is the flag of Slovakia (a Western Slavic country):
And here is the flag of Slovenia (a Southern Slavic country):
You may notice that those flags are fairly... similar. Actually it's the same flag, it's just that Slovakia and Slovenia put the shields of their respective local clan heads on the Slavic Unity flag and Russia flies the Slavic Unity flag unadorned. However, East Slavs alone comprise about 250 million people, with the West and South Slavs being smaller (if generally more affluent) groups.
As for the reestablishment of the Soviet Union, that is already underway. Basically, Russia is just waiting for Belarus' currency to complete its collapse before they make a Union Ruble. So far, it's Belarus, Russia, and Kazakhstan. But the secessionist regions of Moldova and Georgia have already held referendums on joining the Union and those referendums have passed.
So far, there is no indication that any country in Western Europe is going to be forced to suck vodka cock in the immediate future. But I think that Ukraine and Georgia have already been forced to put the vodka cock in their mouths, and will have to enthusiastically start sucking on it in the coming years - especially now that the EU can't support them if Russia decides to start playing hardball. The real question is not whether Russia can unseat the EU's position at the world leadership table, but whether they can force China back into the number 3 chair. And honestly, I think they can.
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Koumei
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Post by Koumei » Tue Nov 22, 2011 1:00 pm

Would this union help Moldova, Transnistria and Belarus out of their positions as some of the shittiest nations in the world? Is "a crappy economy after the USSR broke apart, leaving us with basically nothing" pretty much the cause of all their problems, solvable by buddying up with Russia to get some cash injections and some more industry/shared resources?
As for South Ossetia and Abkhazia... given the number of UN states that recognise their independence can be counted on the fingers of one hand, what would their joining the Union mean? Now, given it was "They were part of Georgia, Georgia was part of the USSR/basically was considered part of Russia. Georgia broke off. They wanted to stay with Russia so broke away from Georgia. Fast forward to Georgia thinking it can pick a fight and getting fucking flattened in a hilarious event." you'd think countries that aren't wrapping their lips around NATO cock would be totally cool with it. And considering NATO is okay with unilaterally declaring breakaway regions their own nations, maybe it doesn't need a big UN vote?
Given we can generally assume Putin wants to be at the top when this happens, and that Putin was loyal in The Old Regime and actually liked the idea of communism, what are the chances that this Union would go back to the semi-communism of the Soviet Union (without the human rights abuses and murders of the time, and potentially without the animosity between them and America, though the ball is very much in America's court for that one. "Whaa whaa whaa, other countries run themselves in ways that we don't like!")?

> Count Arioch the 28th wrote:There is NOTHING better than lesbians. Lesbians make everything better.

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CatharzGodfoot
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Post by CatharzGodfoot » Tue Nov 22, 2011 1:12 pm

> Koumei wrote:Given we can generally assume Putin wants to be at the top when this happens, and that Putin was loyal in The Old Regime and actually liked the idea of communism, what are the chances that this Union would go back to the semi-communism of the Soviet Union (without the human rights abuses and murders of the time, and potentially without the animosity between them and America, though the ball is very much in America's court for that one. "Whaa whaa whaa, other countries run themselves in ways that we don't like!")?

Only in the sense of significant government ownership of industry (which is still the case, witness Gazprom). Putin was never ideologically Communist; he was ideologically in favor of [himself] wielding political power.
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Koumei
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Post by Koumei » Tue Nov 22, 2011 1:19 pm

Ah, fair enough. I suppose the Gazprom thing is a good indicator that yes, they probably would return to Communism-ish. And Putin will be able to wear his Commissar hat. Though I imagine he'll still take is shirt off at any given moment.
When I mentioned the Union thing to my correspondent in Sweden:

> ...dammit, we only JUST got used to saying "Russia" instead of Sovjet, too.

> Count Arioch the 28th wrote:There is NOTHING better than lesbians. Lesbians make everything better.

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Username17
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Post by Username17 » Tue Nov 22, 2011 2:24 pm

Putin's ideological opponents have a distressing tendency to mysteriously fall off of buildings and slightly less mysteriously die of polonium poisoning. Russia's murder rate is fucking insane, being fully 2/3 that of Brazil. Actual rates of killings were lower than the US before the 1989 shakeups, and are almost four times that of the US today.
Basically, Putin runs the Foot Clan. Ninjas with elaborately bizarre weapons prowl the streets and keep people mostly in line while criminal empires compete with each other to get the most bizarre scheme going. The idea that a Russian Union under Putin would have less killings in it than the Soviet era is laughable. It already has much much more.
The advantages: there is much more pornography and the government doesn't care what you do in your free time (being gay was decriminalized in 1993). And you can have access to several competing brands of many things.
The disadvantages: you are constantly being harassed by one of those inexplicable criminal organizations from a Steven Seagal movie. Also, the government doesn't actually care if the people around you are driving without a license.
The Russian Federation is the setting of an action movie. Both in that there are great wrongs that the hero needs to avenge and in that there are huge numbers of mooks with guns or melee weapons to fight through to do that.
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Koumei
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Post by Koumei » Tue Nov 22, 2011 3:04 pm

Wait, so... it will actually be worse than the USSR? Wow. I take it Belarus and Moldova won't actually be seeing a rise in quality then?

> Count Arioch the 28th wrote:There is NOTHING better than lesbians. Lesbians make everything better.

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Username17
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Post by Username17 » Tue Nov 22, 2011 3:30 pm

> Koumei wrote:Wait, so... it will actually be worse than the USSR? Wow. I take it Belarus and Moldova won't actually be seeing a rise in quality then?

Oh no, they totally will. There are counties in Moldova where the largest industry is exporting human kidneys. That is unfortunately, not an exaggeration. The creation of the Eurozone had the effect of making peripheral countries appear more stable and thus encouraged investment from the core into the peripheral countries. Like this:
As Transnistria and Abkhaz and South Osetia move into currency union with Russia, they will get access to Russian capital markets and investment will flow into them. They will get to be Celtic Tigers and shit, where foreign investment is relatively high and they have a correspondingly large growth rate that makes investors pile in. Life in Moldova and Northern Georgia is going to get a lot better.
But that comes with having criminal syndicates being put in charge of things. Not that you would notice in Moldova, because their entire population is three and a half million people and wikipedia says that 400,000 women were trafficked from Moldova between 1991 and 2008. As in: White Slavery is currently claiming about 20% of the young women in the country, so having the less explicitly rapacious Russian gangs in charge would be a huge step up.
And the whole thing where being gay is no longer illegal is a pretty big deal too. I mean, there are no protections for homosexuals at all, you can't get domestic partnerships recognized, and good luck adopting. But it has been more than a decade since you could be put into a mental institution for being a lesbian. There are a lot of things about new Russia that are better than the Soviet period. But reduced violence and crime is simply not on that list.
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Gx1080
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Post by Gx1080 » Tue Nov 22, 2011 5:33 pm

Nice to see that you are white-knighting communists.
Also:
"It wasn't Communism that sank X country, was this other thing. See, it wasn't real Communism".
Is an old excuse.
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Username17
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Post by Username17 » Tue Nov 22, 2011 6:29 pm

> Gx1080 wrote:Nice to see that you are white-knighting communists.
> Also:
> "It wasn't Communism that sank X country, was this other thing. See, it wasn't real Communism".
> Is an old excuse.

Uh... what the hell are you talking about? Noone is white knighting the Soviet Union. They were an insular and repressive regime.
The thing where you claimed that the Russia was brought down by communists is just fucking bizarre though. Russia was a podunk country that got its ass kicked by the Japanese and Austrian Empires. They were not a world power. Then the Bolsheviks took over, and Russia became the second most powerful country on Earth. The whole Cold War thing happened because they were the second most powerful country on Earth. That was a period that lasted like forty years.
The fact that Russia has recently been the second most powerful country on Earth is not some sort of secret. The period of world history is named after the fact. Saying that communism destroyed Russia as a world power is just really weird, because they were not a global super power before or after they were nominally communists.
So Gx, what the fuck? Under your model of Gx-history, what the fuck happened between 1917 and 1957 that catapulted Russia from the lower rungs of minor empires to world superpower status? How could they go from "weak power" to "global superpower" in a single generation if the regime was destroying more than it was making?
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Ancient History
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Post by Ancient History » Tue Nov 22, 2011 6:41 pm

I think Gx was pointing out that you didn't mention Russia's "communist" economic system as the reason they lost the Cold War and eventually splintered into a bunch of shitty post-Soviet states, and that you were producing the "banksta" era as an excuse to say that what the Soviets had wasn't really communism. Because all bleeding-heart liberals are just communists anyway and don't want to admit that communist states have failed because of communism, because that would mean communism is wrong.
Which, y'know, isn't the case for Soviet Russia because they totally were not communists, any more than the USA is capitalist. We have plenty of socialist programs at work in the US, thank you very much.
So I don't think Gx was talking out of his ass on the thing you were thinking he was talking out of his ass about, I think he was talking out of his ass about another thing.
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