Comments by "Nattygsbord" (@nattygsbord) on "Professor Gerdes Explains 🇺🇦 "
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I am a bit skeptical of polls. I mean in my own country do both leftwing and rightwing voters rank the economy as important in polls. But in the end of the day is that not the issue that most people seem to care about that much. They have not read up much about economics - not even the basics. They do rarely ever make any facebook posts about it. And it is common that even people that are deeply interested in politics will yawn if you start to talk about the economy.
So I guess that people just say they care about the economy in opinion polls, perhaps just because they wanna think of themselves as responsible citizens, sophisticated, and all that.
But in the end of the day is it identity politics and such trivial issues that people spend hours on debating and researching. They shout on the other side and gets upset. The traffic on social media is constantly flowing. And I think to myself, if all those hours spent on this was spent on studying economics instead, then we would have the most economically enlightened population in history.
But I guess that people feel too dumb to understand economics, so they do not even try to read anything to understand it.
So the polls are wrong I think. The economy is not that important. People care about many trivial issues instead. And they get angry issues like identity politics, or a vaccine against a disease with a 2% mortality rate, or some silly "freedom issue" like smoking pot or abolish conscription.
Indeed I think neither leftwingers or rightwingers care that much about the economy, and they care much identity politics instead.
I do however believe that polls are correct when they say that immigration and gun laws are important for republican voters. Those are not trivial, even if personally do not rank their importance on top 5 priority list. But it is okay have different priorities.
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Can we even have peace talks with Putin - the man who never keeps any of his own promises, a man with no boundries and who happily build torture chambers for children and make nuclear threats?
I believe it is mostly likely that Ukraine wins this war. But say that their counter-offensive bogs down and gets no where..
then I think that the clock is not ticking on Putins side. His economy runs big budget deficits. He could mobilize more people to cover his losses - but that would not be popular in an election year. Especially not if you have to scrap the bottom of the barrel and now take nice white kids from Petersburg and Moscow and send them to Ukraine - without training, and with rifles from 1891 and old T55 tanks.
Indeed, a Swedish volunteer in Ukraine said that 80% of the russian troops his group captured lately were men who did not possess any functioning weapons. And for that reason is he very hopeful for an Ukrainian victory which he now sees just as a matter of time.
I believe that in a peace deal will lifted sanctions be a carrot for russia which can be offered in return for concessions to Ukrainian demands. In the end do russia probably need the west than vice versa. And not all countries in Europe are dependent on Russia. Hungary and Italy are. But Sweden and Norway was from the start 100% energy independent from Russia and all their homes are heated with electricity from hydropower, nuclear power, and Norway is a huge oil producer. The homes in Germany are heated by natural gas, so Germany was in a difficult situation in the past - but not anymore, as it now import all its gas needs from other countries such as Norway, USA, Netherlands, and others.
France is big on nuclear power. So the dependency on Russia looks very different from country to country in Europe.
Sweden could probably easily boycot russia for the next 500.000 years if needed to be. While other countries have it less easy.
I don't know why companies from Italy and France have such a big love for russia. Especially not when countries such as FInland which is a neighbouring country to Russia and once was part of Russia, and was forced to trade with Russia after WW2 to maintain good relations - have managed to undo their economic ties with Russia.
And I can understand that some industries have a hard time to leave Russia quickly even if they wanted to. But in my book do not stupid fashion brands belong to the category of companies vital for the functioning of a society. Puma, Lacoste Reebook and such companies can just go f*** themselves. And as a consumer it is easy to boycot them. Just buy your shoes and t-shirts from some competitor instead until that day they leave rubusiness list.
The money they pay in taxes to the russian government is funding Putins war and killing of civilians. And for what? So a company can make more money off some silly fashion products.
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Warthog is important because he shows us what war means. Abstract numbers of russian losses doesn't tell us much. We don't know if they are real or fake. But with all new drone footage each day on Warthog you realize that russian losses are real and that they are huge. Even if Ukraine might exaggerate the russian losses, are they still enormous. The number of tanks, artillery, soldiers, helicopters, generals, armored vehicles and 8-wheeled armored transports are simply enormous.
This makes us realize that Ukraine can win this war.
Another realization is that russia is more pathethic than ever imagined. We misunderstand our opponent if we project ourselves upon him. Russia is not a high tech army that is sensitive of high casualties. They are the opposite. We see all videos with pathethic beggings for help to the Tsar. All videos of museum piece equipment in use in Ukraine. And sometimes we see just things for laughing in a war of ukraine context - which is important as we need to keep the attention on Ukraine while not burying people in boring, dry, depressive stuff.
Maybe some people like me can survive on a dry fact based diet, but many (most?) people can't. So humour is important.
And it is also an important weapon against Putinism - Darth Putin, is an excellent propaganda tool for example.
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I feel respect for the isolantionist position as a person who do not like wars and want to put my fingers into every goddamn jam jar on the planet. But neither am I naive pacifist that wants to avoid every war at any cost - even the cost of evil winning and snatching land after piece of land and threatening and bullying its way towards world domination.
A few numbers of wars are worth fighting. And this war and the war against ISIS are very clearcut examples of wars, with good vs evil.
This war will create a worldwide prejudice, and if we allow big countries to make landgrabs unpunished then more will try to make the same thing.
If USA also betray its promise in the Budapest agreement would it be a severe blow to USAs trustworthiness as an ally for decades to come. Perhaps Ukraine expected help from ground troops or at least a no-fly-zone over Ukraine... but not even the latter was given to Ukraine. Instead have USA just done the bare minimum, by giving shipments of weapons to Ukraine and let them do all the fighting themselves (and perhaps also some hard handed threats behind the scenes to scare Putin from using nuclear weapons).
If Trump would cut off all aid to Ukraine and let Russia win would it be a severe blow to American diplomacy. Right now have Biden been hesitant to provide ATACMS to Ukraine. But on the other hand, things are about to change I guess...
It is easy for me to blame USA for its actions, but it is another matter to be the president and have the responsability over 300 million people and making sure that they don't die in a nuclear winter, or trigger a world war. Biden is playing safe. And probably and hopefully will this game play well and end with a total victory. Ukraine get all its land back. Russia's inheritance of the Soviet unions military arsenal has been spoiled. USA have proven its credibility as an ally and gotten its weapons tested and proven their superiority, and the people in Ukraine are forever grateful for St Javelin and uncle HIMARS. And Ukraines plentiful natural resources will fold into the western world and provide cheap food, coal, iron, oil, natural gas, uranium and other resources to the west. And their supply to the world markets will drive down prices also on russian goods because of competition. While if russia takes over Ukraine, they will charge high monopoly prices over those goods and strangle western industry's growth and economic growth - but with a Ukrainian victory will the opposite happen.
And US companies could make large amounts of money by investing in exploitation of Ukraines natural gas deposits and providing investment capital to the a poor country in desperate need of foreign investments.
With the russian teddy bear laying on the floor with his teeths kicked out, all ribs broken and bruises all over the body... can USA from now on focus all their attention on China instead. Russia as a military threat is gone. It will take russia over a decade to recover their losses of vehicles. And meanwhile will the technological gap continue to grow, as the west are fielding 6th generation military aircrafts while Russia have not yet even been able to complete their first 5th generation fighter.
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