Well the problem from my POV is that that exact empire he defended was persecuting millions of people, banning their languages, sending their people to forced labour camps, exterminating native people in Siberia, and keeping about 90% of the whole Russian society in serfdom (which in Russia was basically slavery).
You keep being "open-minded" about that, I prefer modernism and liberalism, thank you.
There was never a 'rules-based world order'. We live purely in Pax Americana and every government exists at the pleasure of the United States. If the US wanted to, and if it did it correctly, it could easily conquer most countries. Afghanistan happened because America lost the will, not the ability. Had America gone the normal colonial route, Afghanistan would look a lot different today.
> If the US wanted to, and if it did it correctly, it could easily conquer most countries.
It could possibly conquer many countries by largely destroying them as was done to Germany and Japan, but since the US is a democracy and a sizable portion of its people have morals and aren't sociopaths, it's politically impossible to fight a war this way in the modern era without some kind of extreme provocation. Even immediately after 9/11, I think most Americans would not have signed on to a campaign of total war in Afghanistan with multiple millions dead.
And even back when America did pretty well take the gloves off, doing nearly everything it could short of nuclear weapons in Korea and Vietnam, it still couldn't win. So I don't think it's a foregone conclusion that any decent-sized country could be conquered easily even if the 'will' was there.
Fair enough. I guess my point is that even if military and political leaders did want to take this approach, they'd face massive popular resistance. So it kind of depends on what you mean when you say a country 'wants' something.
To wit, some ~60% of Americans currently oppose offensive arms sales to Israel[1], and yet it continues. Would you say America wants this to happen?
<< There was never a 'rules-based world order'. We live purely in Pax Americana and every government exists at the pleasure of the United States.
Yes. However, Pax Americana did, at least initially, at least give semblance of established rules working. Now even that pretense is gone.
<< Afghanistan happened because America lost the will, not the ability. Had America gone the normal colonial route, Afghanistan would look a lot different today.
Eh. No. I am not sure where the concept this weird concept of 'bombing them to nothing did not help; we probably need to bomb them some more' comes from. I accept your premise that some of it is the question of will, but you have to admit that two decades with nothing to show for it is not.. great.
> bombing them to nothing did not help; we probably need to bomb them some more' comes from.
To be clear, bombing is not colonizing. Colonizing entails undoing the current culture and replacing it with your own. You don't replace culture with bombs, but rather by taking the young people, educating them in America, and then shipping them back a la Britain (among other things). You have to do this for several decades, or maybe even a century, maybe multiple centuries.
This is a weirdly interesting distinction. Can you elaborate a little on this point? I am not sure what I think yet, but I am curious what you think could have been done differently in Iraq ( or Vietnam for that matter ).
Logically, yes, but it doesn't always happen. Ballmer forgot MS was a software company, thought it was only a Windows company, and wasted a decade. Oil execs look at the cost of change, and decide they're not energy companies, only oil because that's what they know.
If Microsoft is the wrong answer Kodak, who squelched their own digital photography stuff because they made so much from film, is a classic cautionary tale about a company getting too wed to its business model and allowing itself to become obsolete.
Yeah, I've read that, but I lived through it and even worked for them for 6 months during the period. No, Ballmer was not an underrated CEO. He was an overrated COO and a terrible CEO.
> Oil execs look at the cost of change, and decide they're not energy companies, only oil because that's what they know.
Some do yes, but it's not a hard and fast rule. What I notice is that when oil companies start green energy projects, people immediately question their motives as if it's anything more complicated than wanting to make more money in a new industry. They ought to be commended.
Yes, I agree it doesn't always happen, but in aggregate it typically does. For example, Borders didn't get on with the digital trend, but B&N did. I agree that any one oil company might not be forward-looking enough, but overall, there will those that do and those that don't, and you can't assume any one company is in the latter group just because of their current industry.
Except probably 99% of their profits come from oil. 99% of their infrastructure is setup for oil which has been honed and put into place over decades.
Can you imagine the cost of revamping all of that? And then they have to explain to their shareholders why their profits are a fraction of what they normally are, otherwise their stock price will sink which will affect the company in myriad ways.
There's so much to this space that I'm ignorant of, but I know enough to know that it's really not that simple.
They don't need to revamp. They have access to billions in revenue that can be put in to setting themselves up as key players in yet another industry. Many of them are doing just that. Eventually, they all probably want to dominate the battery / grid renewables industry as well. Why wouldn't they? They are uniquely positioned to do so.
Chevron is an oil and natural gas company, not an electricity production company. Directly producing green energy is a bit like Apple selling Windows PCs.
There must be some difference, as otherwise my washing machine would be a computer too since it has a screen, input, and an operating system; and conversely that the Windows phone wouldn’t have had such a brief existence.
Chevron is a profit-making company, and will do anything that makes it money. The only relevant question is whether they'd have any advantage in green energy, or would they lose margin to competition.
Failing at green energy might be profitable enough if it drives up costs for other green energy companies.
Absolutely, and this is a common pitfall of large companies. However, history also shows us that many large companies can and do adapt and do go on to dominate newer fields. For example, American express was a shipping company (and a massive one at that) before it started venturing into novel financial services.
If anything, large companies are better positioned than startups to enter new capital-intensive verticals, and I think history bears this out.
The way you write this implies that it is somehow an intrinsic fault of the DoJ and not the fault of monopolists like Google with the massive resources to slow walk these kinds of things, or the effective lobbying of the Obama administration followed by four chaotic years of Trump.
Never forget that corruption is always to blame for these failures, not the noble people who try and fix these things with flawed institutions.
> Never forget that corruption is always to blame for these failures, not the noble people who try and fix these things with flawed institutions.
This is dogmatism. You're implying that those working for the government are inherently more noble than the rest, and that only private enterprise is flawed. To the contrary, I am implying nothing, just pointing out that the DOJ is late to the game. This would have meant something a decade ago when Google absolutely dominated. But they're being nipped at by a thousand different companies right now.
Part of the problem is that the standards are incorrect. If you go by dietary standards, you are eating way too many carbohydrates and likely eating too many times a day, especially if you do not have an active job.
Most people should mainly be eating fat and protein with a decent amount of grains and fruit and vegetables. However, the standard advice is to eat a lot of grains, some fruit and vegetables, a modest amount of protein, and little fat. This is awful and leads to very high hunger. Especially if you eat multiple meals a day, as is also commonly recommended, this is a recipe for being ever hungrier day by day.
It wasn't until I eschewed all advice, started eating one big meal a day and maybe one snack and matching my carb intake with my fat intake that the hunger that I had known since childhood magically disappeared and I lost 25 lbs (and am losing more). Finally a 'normal' weight seems not only in sight, but extremely easy!
I have noticed this too. The site guidelines say 'no low effort comments', but low effort comments that fit the general zeitgeist are often allowed, while well-thought-out ones that disagree are downvoted. If anyone has a suggestion for an alternative forum focused on technology and science, I really would love suggestions.
There are legitimate reasons to be concerned over the COVID vaccines that have nothing to do with 'vaccine denial' [1]. What does 'vaccine denial' even mean? I've never met anyone who denies the existence of vaccines.
[1] Such as the elevated cardio vascular risk for young men that exceeded their risk from COVID.
While I don't personally lean that way myself, I'm also not close-minded enough to dismiss the possibility outright.
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