Comments by "buddermonger2000" (@buddermonger2000) on "Wendover Productions" channel.

  1. Adam something made a video about "Can Ukraine win this war?" and he actually covers it very well. I don't agree with him at all politically but that video is very Good on the subject. But.. to summarize: The rasputitsa is basically the worst mud in the world bogging EVERYTHING down Which means they need to use roads. The second part is that this entire invasion was supposed to conclude within a week. They were meant to capitulate Kyiv within about that time and capture all major objectives in about 3 days. This, was not to be. Due to their initial strike being largely ineffective as destroying their equipment, and the chain of command staying in place, with Ukrainians also offering fierce resistance, meant that this invasion got bogged down. It depended upon the linchpin of that strike taking down everything and it looks like there was no plan B. The final part is that the Russian forces here have 0 morale and no air superiority which means that their fighting is of little effect. They are conscripts fighting what they view as their own people and air superiority is a huge force multiplier which is being denied to them thanks to numerous sorties by the aircraft they do have and lots and lots of anti-air. With no will to fight and little support, fighting a motivated enemy that will blow themselves up just to delay your advance is damn near impossible. The invasion was well-planned but the plans were thwarted and brought the Russian army into a fight it had no intention of getting into and was NOT prepared for.
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  2. I think this is an interesting quirk that isn't well touched on. American manufacturing half died because it was too expensive to come in anywhere but the back of the line when the low cost was centralized in China. If it's centralized across a land border it'll make a lot more sense overall to have it in a variety of steps than simply the final step.
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  3. My thought at the point where he said "The US military doesn't innovate anymore" was asking "At which point did they stop innovating?" and having to ask myself if you can cut it off at 30 years ago to make that decision before realizing that even immediately after that, those prime contractors have been making new stuff, and they're still making new products in order to try to sell to the government...
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  4. I think overall it's probably fine anyway in the long run given how important Spanish is becoming to the USA anyway so by the time that investment is even completed you may have the US just naturally having Spanish speaking theme parks. They already make announcements in Spanish after an English one so overall I think it services it well enough.
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  5. The USA is what happens when you take Britain's Island diplomacy, stretch it over a continent, and also have no continent where there are significant powers to have a tie to the continental diplomacy. This is a position that will be largely untouched for likely hundreds of years more. The challenge will be whether or not it can continue its power projection as time moves on.
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  6.  @ian3693  I think you missed the point then. His point is that everyone else also saw that reduction. I mean... if you flipped the switch and the light turned off it was probably you. But... if everyone else's light turned off without flipping the switch then it probably wasn't. And then you later find out that everyone's lights went out because someone else flipped the breaker. That's basically what this guy is attempting to outline.
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  7. It really wasn't. I was born here too. And I've also lived in other parts of the state. Florida is simply a water prone state and we've dealt with water quite well with basically all planning and building taking that into account. So by all accounts it's fine.
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  8. Not Hakarl!
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  9.  @PURENT  Yes but until 86 it was incredibly low
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  10. No that's not right. At all. In all of these you see them basically going back and trying to fix it. The most interesting part about the ships in this instance is that the US had already divested its other ships and so tried to get these to work despite design issues. It's also a problem with regards to what the government wanted. They wanted size, firepower, and range, so compromises had to be made. The problem started with a shit idea. The fact that it was used is not the problem of the companies, but instead that of policymakers. And it's very interesting how he's basically cherry picking for this video given the immense success of the Joint Strike Fighter despite the immense cost overruns from an attempt to make things LESS costly via a new manufacturing method.
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  11. ​ @swell07_ If the US spent 30% of its GDP on defense you'd see the entire economies of Japan and the UK combined spent exclusively on defense. You have no idea what you're talking about. If you believe as a percentage of the government budget, you're correct it's not 3%. However, spending is tracked as a percentage of GDP as a way to keep things relatively constant since government budgets can change over time and can choose focus.
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  12.  @fruitella196  Yeah but it's not because of any advantage. The best thing you had was that you were hard to invade, and then you had a sea culture to make sure that you couldn't be which is more geopolitics. The USA ended up being the perfect version of Britain. Why do I say that? Take Britain and the policy, talents, etc, and expand it by millions of miles. It's island diplomacy on steroids. Tbh in reality the US controls at least half of the world itself having the whole western hemisphere as its sphere of influence even if it doesn't directly control it. And it did it while Britain was up controlling half of the world. Canada may not have been directly under the American sphere, but who's going to be more relevant to you in control? The island of your countrymen thousands of miles across the ocean, or the country who out-populates you and shares thousands of miles of border with who really Only doesn't invade anyone due more to disinterest fueled partially by lack of real reason to do so? So honestly Canada was under American domination as well in real terms. So overall the whole thing is basically that the US is just... bigger Britain without a Europe to concern itself with. That's it. Britain itself was always only partially interested in European affairs and primarily concerned more with its colonies which honestly were more economically important at least for resources of production. So honestly? Take Britain, make it the size of Europe, and then you have the US.
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  13. @Appletank8  I mean, even if that was the case (no, there is still substantial dual-use development they draw upon), this wouldn't be the data to draw on to make that point as it's flawed for the reason I just discussed. It'd still be the incorrect conclusion from the data.
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  14. Yeah but that applies to the entire south. Not just Florida. So it's not really of relevance here.
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  15.  @michaelsommers2356  You're right, however 90% of the south before air conditioning basically made it as much of a backwater as Russia was and not being the major population center of the USA. However, after the invention of air conditioning the southern states now account for half of the population of the USA.
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  16. It's not just nostalgic boomers but the fact that the manufacturing sector provided basically all of the middle tier jobs. But some manufacturing is coming back to the USA anyway and I think American-Mexican manufacturing is likely to grow in a complementary manner much like Germany and Poland which the US-Mex relationship has already had to a large degree.
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  17. So uh... why don't the immigrants try to get visas to Canada or perhaps a European country?
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  18. The only way to enforce diplomacy is with economic and military force. If you want to protect the oceans, someone is going to have to risk starting a war over this as that's what REAL diplomacy entails.
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  19. Maybe make a video on why people aren't making hydrogen fuel cell vehicles instead of normal battery powered EVs
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  20.  @tomfields3682  Okay, but this video is about factors unique to Florida. That is not one of them.
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  21. Yeah I'd say that after making this video, go talk to Perun
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  22. different kind of weird in the video
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  23. It's mostly the first part which comes into issue. The final one is also an issue, but it's genuinely what pushes innovation forward. The second part however is indeed a large problem though, and the US already has problems maintaining that who already exist
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  24. ​​ @dustinbrueggemann1875 This is a bit wrong and does some funky accounting (44 trillion across 10 years is basically the entire current mandatory budget for fiscal year 2023). Not to mention that the reason Amazon doesn't pay taxes is because it literally doesn't turn a profit some years, at which point you're essentially asking someone out 10 dollars to pay taxes on that loss of 10 dollars. But at least the defense industry we do get what we pay for. Wendover is a bit misleading when he says that the US military was 30% of all innovation in 1960 and only 3% today given everything that's happened since 1960 with the rest of the world getting wealthy and doing R&D on just about everything now. Not to mention that innovation is primarily in computing, and it's still using those innovations, as well as creating its own, to create new things such as the F-35 for which 80% of the technology for it didn't exist when it was originally commissioned.
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  25.  @dannybonura3927  Pretty sure the only way to have dual citizenship is to be a natural born American citizen from another country.
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  26. No. It's not too big. It's too big without having the proper borders. Which is why the USSR had its borders where it is
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  27. They don't, but at the same time it's true and why the US never had a real standing army until the cold War
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