Hearted Youtube comments on William Spaniel (@Gametheory101) channel.
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Hi. I'm ukrainian. Even tho ur assesment is mostly correct and i do think that you are mostly right, i think you forgot to count in one other detail. In a war of attrition, the resolve of both parties will matter, not only one. As such, i would say that ukrainians figting for their homeland with high morale makes a cost of war to russia a bit higher than one could have expected. I mean, on one side all the people and soldiers are motivated and are ready to continue fighting, on the other side only one man and his close friends are as much motivated. Russian soldiers on the ground are not that much motivated. I think this makes cost of war higher to russia. And i think we should also count in local resistance to ocupation. I know it doesnt sound like much, but in the ww2 resistance really did make a lot and put its weight into defeat of germany. As such, i dont think it should be completely disregarded. As of what i know right now, there are cases of locals poisoning russian soldiers and destroying some equipment. Which, again, makes cost of war that little bit higher. Again, im not sure how this higher cost of war will impact russian resolve to fight for the territory, but for some reason i do think that it may. I think mostly we could add these 2 factors into the chances of ukrainian army achieveng more tactical victories on the battlefield.
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(This ended up a little long, there's a TLDR at the bottom)
I think you're a little quick to rule out the "Nazis" explanation because yes, it is insane according to the definition that most of the world uses (that is, having political and racial views broadly similar to those held by the National Socialist German Worker's Party). If you pay attention to Russian state media, though, they define it very differently: it's pretty much anything that opposes or runs counter to Russian values (or that's the way they frame it: in practice, it's having political and racial views opposed to that of the United Russia party). The entire West is, therefore, Nazis according to Russian state media. This isn't extrapolation from what they've said... they've explicitly said this.
So, according to what is now a Russian definition: United Russia believes in "strong leadership" (read: authoritarianism) and so, therefore, genuine liberal democracy is Nazi. United Russia believes in a largely state-run economy (most large Russian companies have been renationalised since 2000), so belief in a free economy is Nazi. United Russia has conservative views regarding gender and sexuality, so progressive views on these topics make you a Nazi. Yes, that means that some of the things that make you a Nazi according to Russian state media are polar opposites to the views of the National Socialist German Worker's Party.
This largely makes it a reframing of cause 4, but there is another wrinkle: The Russian political narrative is that their system is more functional than Western-style democracy, both in general (they lie to portray democracies as weak, unstable, and on the verge of collapse) but in particular for the Russian people. Their own system, b contrast, is portrayed as being the best system for Russians, which is only being held down by the West and will inevitably rise when the West collapses. It therefore maintains the consent of the people because the people believe that however bad things might be, it's genuinely better than the alternative (and the chaos of the 90s reinforces this belief). Now, they can rationalise away the Baltics because in their eyes they're small countries being propped up by larger Western economies and they're basically Nordics or Poles, not Russians, but Ukrainians and Belarussians? Well, they're basically Russians according to the Russian people.
Which means that a democratic and prosperous Ukraine or Belarus are among the biggest potential threats to the Kremlin's legitimacy - because if THEY can get better lives under a genuine democratic system, why can't Russians? This is why the government demonises "colour revolutions" so much: the narrative is that attempting genuine democracy for Russians just results in weakness and instability, and a lot of Russian foreign policy is aimed at making that a self-fulfilling prophecy. Belarus is a dictatorship, so they don't need to intervene unless there's the potential for that to change. Ukraine, however, was making steady steps towards being a functional democracy, which left the Kremlin with three choices: shift Ukraine back to authoritarian rule (the initial objective of the war); ensure that Ukraine can never become prosperous (which the war helps to achieve); or break down the familial relationship between Ukrainians and Russians so much that Ukrainians are "othered" by the Russian population to the degree that Westerners are (the least desirable, since they'd like to either control Ukraine or have a destitute Ukraine as an object lesson of what could happen to Russians if they seek genuine democracy). The fact of the war will naturally result in the third, but the "nazi" epithet reinforces it. If Ukraine wins the war and becomes a prosperous democratic nation afterwards, well, they're not really the cousins of the Russian people that they were previously regarded as, they were REALLY just a bunch of nazis all along, we wouldn't want Russia to go in that direction, now would we?
Which makes it essentially a combination of east-west rivalry and personal benefits, but not just Putin's political benefit, but that of the Russian political system in general. Everyone who currently benefits from the Russian political system, whether an oligarch, a United Russia politician, or a potential successor for the presidency, benefits from maintaining that system, and therefore benefits from preventing a prosperous and democratic Ukraine from serving as a viable model for an alternative political system for Russia.
Which is one more thing that makes a negotiated solution unlikely, since the war is basically a win-win from this perspective. If Russia wins, they can destroy either the democracy or the prosperity of Ukraine (depending on how successful they are). If they don't, however, a long war will still impact the prosperity of Ukraine, and the longer the war goes, the more anti-Ukrainian sentiment can be developed in Russia (especially when the Ukrainians naturally demonstrate anti-Russian sentiment as a result of the war).
TLDR: The seventh substantive cause is "Preventing a democratic, prosperous Ukraine from becoming an inspiration for political change in Russia". The "nazi" epithet is simply a means to that end.
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5:30 We CAN do better! We can recast these N equations and N unknown q's as a linear equation (A*q = b). A is a NxN matrix with 1's on the main diagonal and 1/2's everywhere else, q is a vector of equilibrium prices, and b is a vector (a - c)/2 where c is the vector of the marginal costs for each firm. Luckily for us, the inverse of A has the form 2*N/(N+1) on the main diagonal, and -2/(N+1) elsewhere.
The quantity produced by a firm in an N-oligopoly is thus:
q_i = (N / (N + 1)) * ( a - c_i ) - sum( a - c_j ; j != i ) / (N + 1)
= (N / (N + 1)) * ( a - c_i ) - a * (N - 1) / (N + 1) + C_other,i / (N + 1)
= min{ C_other,i / (N + 1) + a / (N + 1) - N*c_i / (N + 1), 0 }
where C_other,i is the total marginal costs of the N-1 other firms, and the 'min' function restricts the output quantity to non-negative values.
The total quantity produced is q = (N * a - sum(c_i) )/ (N+1) with a profit for firm i = p(q)*q_i - c_i*q_i = [ (C_other,i +a - N*c_i) / (N+1) ]^2 at an equilibrium price of p(q) = a - q = (a + sum(c_i)) / (N + 1). Since sum(c_i) is proportional to N, q ->a - c_avg, p(q) -> c_avg, profit_i -> (c_avg - c_i)^2 for large N, where c_avg is the average marginal cost for all firms. The limit of the per firm profit equation captures the idea that long-term profits tend to zero.
The equation for the quantity produced also says something interesting about when firms should enter the market. If a firm produces (q_i > 0), then C_other,i + a > N*c_i. So c_i < a / N + (N-1)*c_avg /N -> c_avg. Firms can enter the market as long as their marginal costs are less than the average marginal costs. If N is small, it may be possible to enter with higher than average marginal costs, but this margin diminishes with N.
Thanks for the lecture. Glad to see you're back in the swing of things.
-S
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the lines on maps are just an attempt at representing in a single variable (area on the map) all the variables that have value in bargaining for the sides of a conflict.
So we are collapsing all of these things that have value into 1 thing we can look at. For example russia's decision to invade ukraine takes into account many things that they value. They have gains in: the land itself, security risk from NATO, people in eastern ukraine, propaganda material, etc...; and they have losses in: soldier's lives, material costs of militarization, people's dissatisfaction, etc...
In practice each of these variables can be given a numeric value (soldier's life = 100$, 1 mile of land = 200 $, so if we can gain 1 mile but we will lose 1 soldier, it is worth it). When all variables are measured in the same unit, you can simply add and subtract everything to see if you have net gain or loss.
This unit can be $ or space on a map, or anything really. hope that helps
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Very well done, but a little too conjectural and theoretical for me. Wars are first and foremost about economics. Russia's economic problem is that several of its oil and gas pipelines to its major customer Western Europe, cross over Ukraine, once a satellite country, but now no longer in an enforced orbit about Moscow. With Ukraine courting NATO, to Russia this is like giving your enemy control over Russia's purse-strings.
The real problem is that Russia always relied on force to create compliance from its satellites, and neglected to build positive relationships based on mutual trust and honesty.
The other reason is that Russia lacks an ice-free all year port for its navy, and the Black sea is vital to its military security. If Russia controlled the Black sea coast that now belongs to Ukraine, Ukraine would be ham-strung back into "compulsory satellite" status, unable to ship its grain out without Russia's cooperation. This is a "tit-for-tat" war of economic empowerment.
Another more personal reason, is that all rich Russians have a dacha on the Black sea.
Not very cheerful, but true I think. P.R.
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One thing you left out is the importance of weapons standardization. This is important for logistics reasons if a war DOES break out, but it's also important because it lowers the barrier to entry for sending aid to your allies, because all your ammunition and most of your integrated systems are interoperable. See: the NATO STANAG list on wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardization_agreement for a whole list of reasons why this has worked out for NATO so far. The most well known of these standards is the interoperable ammo (12.7x99, 7.62x51, 5.56x45) and the associated belts and magazines for said ammo. The same is true of tank, artillery, and explosive small arms ammunition like 40mm grenades. This is why it was so easy to ship a dozen different artillery systems from different nations to Ukraine, because the manual of arms for all of these systems is very similar by design, and the ammo is identical, differing only in the size of the powder charge used (which is adjusted based on the range of the piece and the distance to target, based on the length of the barrel). Other things like radio frequencies, minimum standards of proficiency for training in a vast array of specialties and generalities. The next step is joint ventures on highly technical systems, like the F35 program (and to a lesser, semi-failed degree, the Eurofighter program before it, which France pulled out of before developing a very similar aircraft, the Dassault Rafale, instead. Pilots who have had the chance to fly both, say that they perform similarly in many regards, and they're interoperable with the IRIS-T missile program originally developed for the Eurofighter. These missiles are comparable in performance in many regards to the AIM-9X, and outperform the older AIM-9Ms that are still in inventory in many countries. To my knowledge, many of these hardpoint systems are semi-interchangable, requiring at worst a hard point adaptor be developed. This is why we were able to immediately give Ukraine AGM-88 HARM missiles to put on their MiG 29s, since we'd already helped Poland do exactly that, and the missiles have a self homing mode that can be used fairly easily with the platform, in a demonstrably effective manner, as shown by recent gains in air supremacy by Ukraine since those missiles began being deployed in numbers. Turns out S300 and S400, TOR, and BUK, are all kinds of garbage at shooting them down as well, which makes it likely that they will continue to be suppressed and destroyed effectively going forward. Considering we're already giving them AWACS support as well, they'd really better hope we don't decide to figure out a way to mount AIM-120D AMRAAMs onto the same jets, because those can be guided via AWACS Datalink entirely autonomously of the jet firing them, without the jet having to ever turn its own radar on and reveal its position to the enemy, stealth jet or otherwise. Just fly into range at max speed and altitude, then fire and forget, on to perform another mission or go home, while the AWACS does the work the rest of the way. Russia can't even do this just within their own army, but NATO can do this with ease among its various nations at the flick of a switch and the press of a button.
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