Comments by "" (@timogul) on "TLDR News EU"
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@danielwebb8402 Oh, this is just a massive misunderstanding about what "authoritarianism" means. It does not mean "someone tells me what to do." It means "someone tells me what to do and I have no say in the process." You can have democratic communism, which is very different than authoritarian communism. The problem with the communist governments in history were that they were built around authoritarian power structures that funneled power and authority to elites at the top. That is a problem with authoritarian power systems, not with communism, and really isn't even technically "communism" by the definition of the term, it was just a misuse of the term. Cuba is also an example of an authoritarian version, largely as an offshoot of the Soviet model that dominated the middle 20th Century.
If, on the other hand, the people can freely vote, freely elect people to represent those interests, then it is not an issue. Everyone would be required to contribute, but the systems to manage those people and determine how they contribute would be in the hands of the people.
Personally, I don't favor a fully communist system but it is still highly misunderstood, largely due to the influence that Russia and China have had on the conversation.
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@SirAlric82 Plenty of non-communist countries have also devolved into totalitarian dictatorships, like Mussolini's Italy, or Hitler's Germany. Even the US had a brush with that a couple years back. Also, the meme that "communism killed more people" is a bit nonsense, don't make a fool of yourself by spreading it. Authoritarian killed those people, not communism, and authoritarianism is the big killer.
The point is, communism is an economic model, not a political model. Most of the states you discussed were some degree of communist politically and some amount of authoritarianism politically. It was the authoritarianism that got them into trouble. Full on communism has never been fully implemented on a national scale, and is probably impractical at that level, but there are plenty of socialist nations out there that are doing as well or better than their less socialist neighbors. Successful countries tend to be a balance of factors, not fully one thing or another.
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@SirAlric82 So your argument is that even though "their ideology" has never been attempted before, "their ideology" must suck because other ideologies with the same name failed? That makes total sense.
I don't think it was at all a coincidence that so many communist countries went bad. I think that it was geopolitics. I think that the first communist country was Soviet Russia, and that most other countries in the early 20th Century were rabidly anti-communist, to the point that they elected people like Hitler and Mussolini to keep the communists out. any country that did attempt to go communist was ruthlessly crushed by outside powers as best they could be. This meant that what communist countries did emerge tended to be politically aligned with Soviet Russia, at least in their formative years, and as they say, "lie down with dogs, wake up with fleas." No communist nation has yet formed that was not ideologically founded on Soviet Russia as a base, and that is no communism at all.
It's also worth pointing out that many of the capitalist nations that the west supported in the Cold War were no less authoritarian and harmful to their own public than the Soviets. It was the right call to make at the time from a geopolitical standpoint, but no basis on which to judge the efficacy or fairness of a political ideology.
As to your second point, there is no political system on Earth that can allow people to say "no, I don't want to do that." No nation in the world functions like that. Everyone must follow the rules of the nation they are in or face punishment for it. The difference between a good nation and a bad one are that in a good nation the rules and punishments are both faith and supported by the people in general, but there will always be some who would prefer not to follow them.
Here's a simple example of how it works. Say you have an apartment of nine people, and it's gotten a bit messy. The majority of the roomates agree that they would prefer it cleaner. Now, you could go with anarchy, anyone who wants o clean can, and anyone who doesn't has no obligation. That would only lead to the lazy people doing no work and the more responsible ones taking on an undue burden. You could go with authoritarianism, one person dictates who cleans what, forcing everyone else into compliance (and realistically giving himself a lighter load, although that is not strictly necessary). And then there would be the democratic communist approach, which is that everyone discusses among themselves what the chore schedule should be and votes on the outcomes, such that some of the lazier ones might not want to do their assigned task, but they are required to do so by the consensus of the group, everyone does their fair share, everyone shares the benefit of a cleaner apartment. What is "authoritarian" about that?
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@Juho221 And yet Crimea was still a Sovereign part of Ukraine after the fall of the Soviet Union. If Russia wanted it back, they could make a fair offer to buy it, or go through proper Ukrainian legal channels to have a referendum, as happened with Scotland a few years back, but NOTHING justifies their military occupation of the area, and no state is allowed to unilaterally secede from another without the consent of the full state as a whole.
Also, the value to Ukraine is that it is part of their contiguous landmass. It has no land border with Russia. Crimea being a part of Ukraine gives them more contiguous sea access. More importantly, even IF Crimea is "useless" to Ukraine, it is still a part of Ukraine, and no country is allowed to seize part of another country, no matter how "useless" it might be.
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@Juho221 Ukraine is gaining ground consistently. The current conditions are not there for a serious push in either direction, but the weather will change, and then Ukraine will start advancing again while Russians keep dying and dying until they run out. If Putin decides to use nukes, then he's done. Russia's done. He might, but that's out of anyone's hands. Again, "Putin might be stupid enough to use nukes" would not justify allowing him to keep Ukrainian territory at the end of this, because then the ONLY lesson to be learned from this conflict is, "if I invade a place, and threaten to use nukes, I'll be allowed to KEEP IT," which will just mean he'll invade someplace else within a few years, and keep going until he's put down. Total defeat for Russia is the ONLY peaceful solution to this conflict. ALL alternatives only lead to more war in the future.
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@Juho221 Again, if "Putin might use nukes" is allowed to be a reason to not oppose him, then we may as well just hand him Europe and the rest of the world right now and skip the middleman, because he'll keep taking a bite off that apple so long as it doesn't kill him.
Ukraine is unlikely to gain ground over the winter, but they are unlikely to lose it either, and will continue pushing forward in the spring. They will have no trouble surviving the winter, even if Putin inhumanely cuts their power. The more he tries to harm civilians, the worse it will backfire on him.
Russia was clearly not in the state for THIS invasion, given how badly it's gone for them, and yet if they are allowed to walk away from it with territory gained, then that will have been a long term success for them. They cannot be allowed to have gained ANYTHING from this little adventure. If "peace" were declared today and the borders settled at their current locations, then Russia might not invade again tomorrow, or even next year, but within the next few years they would go "you know, I think more of Ukraine is actually Russia" and just swoop right into it again, maybe better prepared that time. They did it when they were allowed to keep Crimea.
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@revertrevertz5438 They have wind and solar in Antarctica. They don't freeze unless you don't bother winterizing them for some stupid reason. I'm not sure where you live, but a few years back, the US state of Texas had a big blackout. Why? Because their NATURAL GAS pipelines froze up! And because they had removed themselves from the national power grid, otherwise their neighboring states could have offset their power load. It just goes to show, avoid putting Republicans in charge of anything, right? :D
Anyway, no, wind and solar can work regardless of weather, IF the system is designed reliably. You need to ensure that you have strong battery facilities (not necessarily a generic chemical battery, but some form of energy storage), that can hold onto energy accumulated during peak periods so that you can spend it during lower periods. There are all sorts of projects being developed to store energy like that, and which is best for a given area depends on the local conditions.
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