Yes, it would be cataclysmic. In the longer term though, I would argue that just about everyone on the planet would be a winner if the US empire were finally put down. You can’t really overstate how much of an impediment the US is to global human welfare and development.

This comment sounds like it was written by the official AI of liberalism.

Damn. This shit is depressing. Self proclaimed “leftists” still out there complaining about “tankies” in 2023. Truly embarrassing for everyone.

I see how you haven’t responded in any meaningful way to my broader point that your “evil russians” statement about cold war military equipment is dumb as shit. But I get the sense you think there is someone scoring this debate and that you get a point for being a clever boy. Great job. I concede. Later.

How do you not see how gladio ties into this? It was basically the US changing sides in a war in Europe that never really ended. WW2 was about competition between imperial powers, and communism versus capitalism (as that struggle led directly to the rise of fascism). The end of the war resolved the imperialist competition, but not the question of communism. The US immediately turned around and started giving the European fascists guns, money and power after they no longer posed an expansionist threat, because fascists were still the most staunch anti communists. Again, this is why the soviets executed fascist war criminals, and the west didn’t even prosecute most of them. They became allies instead. It foreshadowed the west’s willingness to support the most brutal right wingers elsewhere around the world for the rest of the century to choke out any resistance to western neocolonial domination.

Yeah this is not really what’s happening. QE went on for a long time before inflation really took off and mostly served to inflate asset prices without any meaningful effect on the price of consumer goods. As has been said, this is because that’s where the lion’s share of rich people’s money goes.

I think the key data point here is the increase in profits recently. Which would not be happening if this was all down to bog standard supply and demand throughout supply chains. Parking money in assets like stocks and real estate doesn’t cause consumer price inflation. But if businesses all realized that the talk of supply chain disruptions and COVID causing prices to go up was a good excuse to raise prices further together, that would exacerbate an otherwise minor bout of consumer price inflation. Which is exactly what happened.

And although it’s pretty damn close to collusion/price fixing in many cases, there is no real enforcement against that sort of thing. There is software that is used throughout industries that basically does the price fixing for you using data from other users/firms. Makes it easy and plausibly deniable because it was just an algorithm that told you to do it. Big part of rent inflation in particular. If there’s no competitor willing to undercut you, even though they could, the Econ 101 bullshit doesn’t really apply. It’s basically just class solidarity among capitalists. Circling the wagons because unusual circumstances temporarily drove wages up, and they weren’t having it.

Anyway, the main point is, if profit rates are going up, it’s not money supply causing the inflation.

Lol. Those people were basically brought over at gunpoint as war reparations. You think that’s the same thing as paper clip and gladio?

Definitely did not miss that. Whatever you think about the USSR, you cannot, without grotesque distortions of history, say that they rehabilitated European fascism. They executed nazis while the western powers were giving them citizenship, jobs, money, and weapons. And if you think soviet efforts to support revolutionary movements around the globe were “imperialism,” I’m not sure what to tell you besides please read a book.

“Evil Russians.” Jesus Christ. As if the West did not rehabilitate European fascists immediately after WW2 and end up on the side of imperialism in every conflict around the world for the rest of the century and beyond. Many of which they themselves instigated. Get a fucking grip.

Liberal thinks the shitty neoclassical economics taught in 99% of universities is economics itself. Imagine my surprise.

“The other party” implies that there is a party representing the left/workers. I assume you are talking about American politics, and are specifically implying that party is the Democratic Party. To which all I can say, if you are actually serious, is LOL.

Yes. I usually just walk away muttering to myself and shaking my head derisively after saying this, like they’re some kind of idiot, leaving them bewildered as they work out the math in their heads and start to wonder if perhaps I am significantly older than they thought.

I tell them I’ve voted for Yosemite Sam in the last ten elections and I’m not about to change that now.

Holy shit. How did people ever get it in their heads that drone strikes are not military incursions? Is it because there’s no humans physically entering the territory? Would you think the same thing if we were lobbing artillery shells over the border?

And how would doing either of those things without the cooperation of the Mexican government be anything other than an act of war?

I mean, I get that there is a difference between sending an armored column to occupy Juarez and a drone strike, and it’s not clear from the title which one we’re talking about, but you can’t really dispute that either of those things would be an act of war under any meaningful definition.

It’s an insane thing to say, regardless, because if you know anything about US Mexico relations you know he’s not talking about some kind of cooperative anti-cartel police action. He is in fact talking about an act of war. And a particularly stupid one at that.

Yeah, was just joking. It was of course never on the table for the soviets, and would be an absurd thing to plan in the first place. I doubt even deng ever thought China was doing anything more than developing their productive forces and buying a modicum of security by opening up. The idea that the west would be stupid enough to deindustrialize itself (by offshoring to a communist country no less) to the extent it has makes sense in hindsight, but I doubt anyone had the foresight to anticipate things turning out quite like this, let alone actually plan it.

They’re after that “peaceful coexistence” the USSR could never achieve because they failed to see that in order to peacefully coexist they first had to absorb most of the west’s manufacturing capacity.

Hell, I dunno. I just plug my laptop into a regular old tv via hdmi.

I realized a year or so ago (after a letter from my isp) that I didn’t actually need to torrent anymore. There are websites like bflix.io (and I’m sure many others) that have basically everything streaming for free. Fuck subscriptions. Would maybe go back to torrenting if I got a vpn sorted out, but you’re not gonna get in trouble for streaming shit on a pirate website, so for now it’s the best solution I’ve found. Certainly not paying any of these assholes. Lol. Fuck outta here with that.

The US government doesn’t have to (but still does anyway) mislead its own citizens because it works hand in glove with the class it represents (not you) which does all the misleading via the private “free press” that it owns and operates for it’s own benefit.

For the life of me I will never understand why liberals think something bad is less bad when it is a private actor doing it instead of the government, but the private actors actually control more of your daily life than the government does because you live in a neoliberal hellscape.

You have no control over anything the government OR the corporate overlords do. Does it really matter which one is screwing you when they’re basically all the same people anyway?

With regard to China, please just try to ask yourself why the standard of living has been improving there for decades while it continues to decline in the US. It’s not fucking rocket science, but you can’t rely on western corporate media to explain it to you.

Ukraine is fucked. As others have pointed out, western vultures are already carving it up via mass privatization (though they may be disappointed with what’s left when the war is over). The “counteroffensive” went nowhere and whether Russia marches all the way to Odessa is really just a question of if they want to at this point. The war was lost before it started and Ukraine will be lucky if it doesn’t get annexed to pieces by Poland et al in the coming months. Best case it keeps some manner of territorial integrity and limps along as a failed state. Not sure Zelensky deserves all the blame for this disaster, as the wheels were in motion at least as early as 2014, but they definitely bet on the wrong horse here.