Control VS Freedom

[Gwazi Magnum]

*Comes in to see if debate will be worthwhile to go back into*

*See's I've been strawmanned under the accusations of cherry picking and generalizing. Regardless of the fact I am arguing against someone generalizing all humans to be of the same knowledge and experience level*

*See's that she has some idea that being in school = expert in all fields*

*Other person is clearly being a hypocrite and lacks the concept of learning and/or someone knowing something she doesn't*

Yea, I was smart to back out.
Arguing with someone who thinks not only they, but all humans are all-knowing gods is redundant.

Though, I feel the need to note.
The very fact she is bothering to argue her point rather than assume that everyone understands and agrees must highlight that not all people possess the same knowledge or experience. In which case her even bothering to argue destroys her own argument.

[Dinh AaronMk]

I still advocate for the appointment of benevolent God Emperors to dissolve all world government and oversee the fair and peaceful rule of the world until the ascension of He With The Nanomachines.

[So Boerd]

Darcs said
But there is a UN? and thousands of other micro-democracies possibly allied whose best interest might be to fend off Russia?What would even be Putin's strategic reasoning in directly taking on the west?

1. Alaskan oil?

2. Then you have the coordination problem. Thousands of little states with thousands of militaries.

3. Free rider problem. If there are 10,000 cities, each state will try and minimize its military spending and let others do the fighting.

Honestly, if you seriously think 1000s if little states could take on Russia, you're proving just how out of your depth you are.

[Dinh AaronMk]

So Boerd said
1. Alaskan oil?2. Then you have the coordination problem. Thousands of little states with thousands of militaries.3. Free rider problem. If there are 10,000 cities, each state will try and minimize its military spending and let others do the fighting.Honestly, if you seriously think 1000s if little states could take on Russia, you're proving just how out of your depth you are.

> Propose a thousand tiny armies for a thousand tiny nations
> All those thousand tiny nations supposed to reduce their military budget and rely on others to fight for them.
> All of the sudden through 11/10 coordination no one has an army because it's assumed their neighbor will handle it for them.
RUSSIYA!!! URA!

And when everyone EUs and the one crutch decides to cut back... Well you can ask Ukraine how it feels for Putin to borrow chunks of it.

[So Boerd]

Dinh AaronMk said
> Propose a thousand tiny armies for a thousand tiny nations> All those thousand tiny nations supposed to reduce their military budget and rely on others to fight for them.> All of the sudden through 11/10 coordination no one has an army because it's assumed their neighbor will handle it for them.And when everyone EUs and the one crutch decides to cut back... Well you can ask Ukraine how it feels for Putin to borrow chunks of it.

And the EU is composed of real countries. Why would the Republic of Lisbon or the Republic of Chicago spend a dime to stop Russia taking over the microstate of Riga?

[So Boerd]

And, who gets control of the US nukes? The republic of Minot?

[Darcs]

Magic Magnum said *Comes in to see if debate will be worthwhile to go back into*

*See's I've been strawmanned under the accusations of cherry picking and generalizing. Regardless of the fact I am arguing against someone generalizing all humans to be of the same knowledge and experience level*

Not only did I never insult your character and use it to try and disprove your point, but: "Regardless of the fact I am arguing against someone generalizing all humans to be of the same knowledge and experience level"

That is a generalization (and wrong, never said they all have the same level of knowledge and experience, arguments would never happen if we did)

Magic Magnum said *See's that she has some idea that being in school = expert in all fields*

I didn't imply that either? Being in school simply means you gain some insight into society and how it works, such as (hopfully) imparting enough knowledge that once you leave you can be a contributing member to it, and one of the things a contributing citizen does.

You don't need to be an expert in all fields to vote, be it on the president, or on every matter affecting your community.

Magic Magnum said *Other person is clearly being a hypocrite and lacks the concept of learning and/or someone knowing something she doesn't*

What?
We're discussing a very real flaw of confederate nations and small countries? They bring up good points and I'm countering, considering, arguing and conceding them.

Magic Magnum said Yea, I was smart to back out.

*makes a post attempting to criticize a person's argument*
*but I backed out*
Okay.

Magic Magnum said Arguing with someone who thinks not only they, but all humans are all-knowing gods is redundant.

Yeah, again, never implied this. Nice strawman, though.

Magic Magnum said Though, I feel the need to note.The very fact she is bothering to argue her point rather than assume that everyone understands and agrees must highlight that not all people possess the same knowledge or experience. In which case her even bothering to argue destroys her own argument.

Jokes on you that's not even close to my argument! In fact I mentioned that argument was a good thing for a politically active county, something along the lines of "an open forum of discussion" or something.

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So Boerd said 1. Alaskan oil?

True-- but we're pretty close to point where oil is going to find itself as a secondary source of fuel.

So Boerd said 2. Then you have the coordination problem. Thousands of little states with thousands of militaries.

If oil is important enough for Russia to take oil is important enough for their trading partners to help contribute a defense.

So Boerd said 3. Free rider problem. If there are 10,000 cities, each state will try and minimize its military spending and let others do the fighting.

I'll be honest, without some external threat like Russians trying to empire like 500 years too late this sounds like the way it should be.

So Boerd said Honestly, if you seriously think 1000s if little states could take on Russia, you're proving just how out of your depth you are.

I'm not so sure about 1000's of tiny micro-nations beating Russia in a war outright (What is the state of Russia? Is it just America that's split up or is it other places in the world?), but I am positive Russia would only put so much effort into controlling a tiny fraction of a place it has no historical precedent for taking.

So Boerd said And the EU is composed of real countries. Why would the Republic of Lisbon or the Republic of Chicago spend a dime to stop Russia taking over the microstate of Riga?

The loss of an ally and trading partner? Also;

So Boerd said Republic of Chicago

c:
I want it so bad

So Boerd said And, who gets control of the US nukes? The republic of Minot?

Man if nukes are still a thing Russia isn't setting foot on Alaskan soil. Their trading partners WITH nukes would be sure to flaunt them.

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Dinh AaronMk said > All those thousand tiny nations supposed to reduce their military budget and rely on others to fight for them.
> All of the sudden through 11/10 coordination no one has an army because it's assumed their neighbor will handle it for them.

Okay, I'll be honest, I want a world where no country has an army.

Dinh AaronMk said And when everyone EUs and the one crutch decides to cut back... Well you can ask Ukraine how it feels for Putin to borrow chunks of it.

Ukraine is butthurt because they couldn't have their territory full of people who wanted to be with Russia. Crimea is historically Russian and a majority of the people there believed they simply were Russians.

I'm not really saying it was Russia's place to openly annex one part of a country from another, or that everyone in Crimea is happy with his arrangement. I'm just saying there's more to this that meets the eye. It's not like Germoney and Polska.

[So Boerd]

Okay, I'll be honest, I want a world where no country has an army

So do I, but there are people like Putin.

Also, @nukes, why would the Republic of Minot commit nuclear suicide for the sake of a few oil wells?

What is your issue with a very weak federal government whose only job essentially is national defense?

[Dinh AaronMk]

Darcs said
Okay, I'll be honest, I want a world where no country has an army.

Well you're not going to get one because armies are checks against the political adventures of other nations. If all armies were to disappear then the door opens for another highly adventurous state to restore their military before anyone else and start picking up other nations, or even states within the larger nation as Be Sharp seems to be advocating (but then again everything he writes sounds so contradictory I'm not sure what point he's trying to make).

And even if not to guard one's self or others from the military missions of another to act as a physical deterrent against unwanted political or economic subjugation of a people. A guard against the defacto control as they're a physical defensive factor.

Once more in this modern era larger world militaries - such as the US army - act as large scale humanitarian organizations as well as operating as subjugating forces for "imperialist tendencies". This is a practice which has been underway since before Alexander the Great and has expanded to the scale it is now since the Second World War. There are populations who would be very, very pissed if you removed the largest, most well-supplied, and most well-funded humanitarian assistance front from the world.

There's a reason the US Army often emphasis their role in being humanitarian re-builders of devastated states or countries, because they do just that. (Also.

So abolishing armies will not help anything. You're opening up a few doors that shouldn't be opened by trusting people to not extend themselves beyond what they're allowed and found this on trust. Economic and political sanctions can only do so much, so Putin is happily showing us in Ukraine; he hasn't pulled out yet.

Darcs said Ukraine is butthurt because they couldn't have their territory full of people who wanted to be with Russia. Crimea is historically Russian and a majority of the people there believed they simply were Russians. I'm not really saying it was Russia's place to openly annex one part of a country from another, or that everyone in Crimea is happy with his arrangement. I'm just saying there's more to this that meets the eye. It's not like Germoney and Polska.

Just because Russia is basing their territorial claims on the region as being Russians live or once lived there doesn't make their excuse valid or correct, or just at all. Because if we're going off this than Turkic Khazars should have Ukraine and Crimea restored to them. But because Khazaria and the Khazar people no longer exist then we should just throw the entire region at the Tatars because they're the Turkic heirs to Crimea. The Slavs aren't even native to Ukraine, they moved south into Kiev from Ladoga and Novogorod (so while we're giving land out to people with claims lets give all of Eastern Russia to and more beyond west of the Ural to Siberian Turks because they lived their longer than their Russian oppressors).

And while we're at it, let's remove vodka and return Circassia to the Circassian diaspora. They have a more legitimate claim to southern Russia than the Russians themselves have. Yea, that sounds right. Totally as justifiable as the Russian claim to Ukraine and Crimea.

If we let the Russians have their way then Putin will for sure invite the Novaya Russiya movement into the Russian political machine and suddenly everything from the Polish border with Germany and the Danube will be Russian because they claim it, and the political balance of Europe will be greatly upset. This is the real danger in letting Putin have his way, a great disruption of Europe as a whole.

And Putin can do this because there are no military powers in Europe anymore. No one can send (or afford to send) soldiers to discourage Russia before or during the current occupation of eastern Ukraine. They all put the bulk of their military dependency on the US who - guess what - is cutting back. Europe fucked themselves and did basically what Be Sharp advocates what should happen: a shift of military dependency from one to another in the hopes the pattern of military spending will remain the same and totally not become stressed when a more unified political entity decides to shift around in their bed in such a way it threatens them both. Then both nations (or all in this compact) are threatened because they all surrendered their military expertise - or most of all that counts - to this one entity now cutting back their spending.

#RestoreCrimeanTatarKhanateInReperationsForStalin'sMassButcheringOfPeacefulPeople

[TheEvanCat]

Militaries are good things for a lot of reasons. Like A-A-Ron said, they're humanitarian tools.

In addition, they're good places for people to end up in. Where else in America can you start again, get out of the ghetto, and be treated the same if you're white, black, gay, straight, male, female, rich, or poor? The military is, in the long run, focused on the precision application of violence. But there's so much more to that that nobody ever thinks of: you need so much to run a military. You need clerks, acquisition guys, finance guys, doctors, police, fire departments. And militaries generally teach you these things for free, and give you an opportunity to get those job skills.

At least the US Military will pay for your education, healthcare, dentistry, housing, and utilities. Then they'll give you the steadiest paycheck you'll ever have, since you generally aren't worrying about downsizing. You leave when your contract is up or decide to reenlist and give four more years of your life.

They're not evil constructs of war crimes, they're probably the best thing to happen to someone in this economy. It's more than fighting, it's a good shaping force on people. They need to be kept.

[Vilageidiotx]

TheEvanCat said
Militaries are good things for a lot of reasons. Like A-A-Ron said, they're humanitarian tools.In addition, they're good places for people to end up in. Where else in America can you start again, get out of the ghetto, and be treated the same if you're white, black, gay, straight, male, female, rich, or poor? The military is, in the long run, focused on the precision application of violence. But there's so much more to that that nobody ever thinks of: you need so much to run a military. You need clerks, acquisition guys, finance guys, doctors, police, fire departments. And militaries generally teach you these things for free, and give you an opportunity to get those job skills.At least the US Military will pay for your education, healthcare, dentistry, housing, and utilities. Then they'll give you the steadiest paycheck you'll ever have, since you generally aren't worrying about downsizing. You leave when your contract is up or decide to reenlist and give four more years of your life.They're not evil constructs of war crimes, they're probably the best thing to happen to someone in this economy. It's more than fighting, it's a good shaping force on people. They need to be kept.

I disagree. Sorta. You need a standing army just in case some shit goes down, and you need the infrastructure that allows you to mobilize, but the rest of the military is an economic liability.

Whereas it is true that the military employs people, it employs people to be a drain on the economy. The military doesn't actually produce anything - quite the opposite, actually. It tends to just destroy. So with the military, we have jobs, but no tangible end product. The only product is economic waste - maimed people, potential markets that are burned, foreigners actively interested in working against the west after have their lives destroyed, soldiers for who have their educations payed for by taxes only to have them killed, or at least rendered helpless, thus representing another form of financial loss.

The same sort of energy would be better used domestically. If the government took the people who would be come soldiers and instead payed for their education in technical fields, with guaranteed employment in those fields once they graduated, our money would be better spent. We need engineers, and architects, and doctors. People who's work actually produces something tangible, that could be used to better life for all of us. Let them rebuild the ghettos instead of making new ones across the sea.

The American military, as it stands, seems to exist for two reasons: for the continued health of a defense industry who pays politicians to keep it in business, and for the masturbatory quality it gives to patriotism.

[Darcs]

@So Boerd
I guess I'm of the mind that we do something that hasn't been done to maybe remind Putin that this isn't okay.

So Boerd said What is your issue with a very weak federal government whose only job essentially is national defense?

Crazy southern ideals

---

@Dinh AaronMk
I'm a huge fan of military operations that don't involve senseless death, but like, that doesn't even need to be military at that point, just fund humanitarian operations-- ¿por que tantos tanqes?

Dinh AaronMk said So abolishing armies will not help anything. You're opening up a few doors that shouldn't be opened by trusting people to not extend themselves beyond what they're allowed and found this on trust. Economic and political sanctions can only do so much, so Putin is happily showing us in Ukraine;

I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on the trust thing, I AM an anarchist after all, if we were to have it in the way I really want it it'd be utter bedlam.

Dinh AaronMk said he hasn't pulled out yet.

Hehe, Phrasing.
This made me giggle.

Dinh AaronMk said #RestoreCrimeanTatarKhanateInReperationsForStalin'sMassButcheringOfPeacefulPeople

Russia is rightful Mongolian clay Khan stronk.

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@TheEvanCat
Long history of military helping out my family of minorities, I'm in a personal position to acknowledge that the things you're talking about are true. I almost certainly wouldn't have been born if it wasn't for the military providing a second option for a good amount of men and women in my family. I respect the help it can provide to someone who needs it and doesn't want to turn to things that could potentially ruin their lives.

That being said, the military isn't solving those problems, it just acts as a band-aid. It helps, but it isn't going to heal all the symptoms of the problems it can help individuals with, and the money it costs to maintain the military (American) is a drain on the whole country, and ultimately only helps to create on a large sale the problems it helps some people escape.

I agree with Vilageidiotx on pretty much everything, so I really don't want to rehash all their points (but I think needing a standing army could be argued, but again, that's just me, filthy anarchist scum).

[So Boerd]

The military is just a better version of welfare. You both pay poor people, but with welfare you pay them to sit on their butts where the military gives them great job skills. Don't tell me the military wastes money if you love a Eurowelfare state.

[Vilageidiotx]

So Boerd said
The military is just a better version of welfare. You both pay poor people, but with welfare you pay them to sit on their butts where the military gives them great job skills. Don't tell me the military wastes money if you love a Eurowelfare state.

People sitting on their butts would be a neutral position, economically. The Military is a negative one. Welfare would be somebody being payed to be a purchaser who doesn't produce. The Military is somebody payed to do damage, and then not produce. And that is just talking about the mythological creature that is the welfare queen. For the most part, welfare is just used to hold up people who are productive in low pay jobs.

And no, the military doesn't only gives job skills to people in support roles, and even that is kind of iffy. Our current job market likes people who follow traditional paths, so ex-military often ends up struggling. Somebody who sees combat gets it even worse, because people assume combat experience means baggage. For years, I assumed that the military was a good jumping point too, until I worked in a place meant for finding people jobs. The biggest complications were prison time, military service, and having a disability.

[So Boerd]

Tell me again how welfare isn't being abused. (Denmark data)

People sitting on their butts would be a neutral position, economically. The Military is a negative one. Welfare would be somebody being payed to be a purchaser who doesn't produce. The Military is somebody payed to do damage, and then not produce.

Wrong. The military does a whole lot of work to protect commerce through the gulf of Aden. The military being so much ahead of all peers prevents actual conventional wars which are the most economically damaging of all wars. Taiwan isn't a smouldering pile of ash, thank the US navy in the Taiwan Strait crisis.

[Vilageidiotx]

Economic globalism prevents actual conventional wars (with a little help from nuclear weapons). Clinton could have sent one ship to the Taiwan strait and everything would have been cherry. A guaranteed war with the west would have been economic suicide. The Gulf of Aden, similarly, does not require the amount of military spending we currently engage in. Not even close to that. Now, I am not saying we need to obliterate the entire military. That is unrealistic - at this point in our civilization, we still need it. What I am saying is that, in the United States, we waste too much money on defense, and that it would be much more practical to spend that money domestically. I would rather see that money used to put people through school.

And scales can be deceptive - it doesn't seem to describe the percentage scale, but I assume that means percentage of unemployed? If we pulled that scale up to complete 100% rather than the 14% that allows the graph to skew, what you would see is a small bump of people managing to get a job while the grand majority of unemployed people enter poverty. That really creates a moral puzzle: What is worse? Fourteen people abusing the system, or eighty six people living on the streets?

[So Boerd]

It is percentage of the unemployed.

What I am saying is that, in the United States, we waste too much money on defense, and that it would be much more practical to spend that money domestically

Economic globalism won't stop Russia from annexing half of Ukraine.

The fact is, the aggressor loves peace. He would rather take our goods without a struggle. What we have to do is convince him we have the resolve to respond. Having a giant military which is superior to his in every way convinces him not to provoke us, since a very lopsided war requires less resolve than a very close, contentious one. Already we're having difficulty proving to China that we have the resolve to do serious damage to them if they play too many games in the Senkakus, and you want to make sure they know we don't?

[Vilageidiotx]

Economic globalism is doing a better job at stopping Russia than the US military is. Did anybody ever think we were going to put boots in Crimea? Whatever game Putin is playing at, it was never the risk of conventional warfare that scared him, and he can't play too long at this game if he wants to keep the goodwill of his people. If he went too far, it would be an embargo of Russian oil, universal across the west, that would bring him down. War would just muddle things up and damage everybody involved. I'm sure the Ukraine has no interest in being completely burned away by such a conflict.

Likewise, we wouldn't want to go to war with China. The economic repercussions would be severe in both countries. Severe enough, it is true, to most likely bring down the Chinese government. But it would also be severe enough that even the United States, if we are perfectly honest, would risk revolution. You triple the price of living and tell Americans that the Senkakus, or even Taiwan, is worth the bloodbath that would be a war against China. It isn't the cost of the military that would bring either of us to the brink - it is the cost of cutting off trade.

That is the reality of the modern world. Militaries have some uses when dealing with entities that aren't part of the economic system, AKA rebels and terrorists (though this is debatable, since we have failed the largest of these operations time and time again), but in the post-cold war economy, where there is no alternative to the west's trade network, those countries with economies large enough to project power entirely owe their economic capacity to international trade, and their ability to function at an internal level can be completely destroyed.

[So Boerd]

Vilageidiotx said
Economic globalism is doing a better job at stopping Russia than the US military is. Did anybody ever think we were going to put boots in Crimea? Whatever game Putin is playing at, it was never the risk of conventional warfare that scared him, and he can't play too long at this game if he wants to keep the goodwill of his people. If he went too far, it would be an embargo of Russian oil, universal across the west, that would bring him down. War would just muddle things up and damage everybody involved. I'm sure the Ukraine has no interest in being completely burned away by such a conflict.Likewise, we wouldn't want to go to war with China. The economic repercussions would be severe in both countries. Severe enough, it is true, to most likely bring down the Chinese government. But it would also be severe enough that even the United States, if we are perfectly honest, would risk revolution. You triple the price of living and tell Americans that the Senkakus, or even Taiwan, is worth the bloodbath that would be a war against China. It isn't the cost of the military that would bring either of us to the brink - it is the cost of cutting off trade. That is the reality of the modern world. Militaries have some uses when dealing with entities that aren't part of the economic system, AKA rebels and terrorists (though this is debatable, since we have failed the largest of these operations time and time again), but in the post-cold war economy, where there is no alternative to the west's trade network, those countries with economies large enough to project power entirely owe their economic capacity to international trade, and their ability to function at an internal level can be completely destroyed.

A facile and idealistic argument. The certain prospect of the loss of nearly all international trade didn't stop Hitler. Germany and Britain were each other's biggest trading partner pre WW1

I wish we lived in the world where this was true, but I never mistake the world as I wish it to be with the world as it is.

[Dinh AaronMk]

Globalization during the Second World War wasn't as big as a thing then as it is now. World War One largely disturbed the pre-existing informal globalized routes built up during the Industrial Revolution. And the Interwar and Second World War period hardly had much in the way of globalized management as exists now (The pre-war years lacked for instance the Bretton Woods Conference which established such things as the IMF and World Bank). Economies in the forties could be largely self-sufficient or they would have shifted trading partners or found new access to the resources they needed. Great Britain severing trade with the Nazis was something of a formality, to starve the Germans they really had to target their fuel production directly in bombing raids and attacking fuel convoys directly and it wouldn't have effected them.

Nowadays we got a whole lot of international bodies dictating the direction, growth, and flow of finance and production. IMF and World Bank keeping international money transfers moving along. OPEC for oil, and the rise of trade blocs like NAFTA, the EU. Such organizations have existed before, but their creation and establishment greatly surged in the 60's to the 80's and then again in the 90's with the formal collapse of the USSR leaving behind a lot of independent nations. There is also the very international World Trade Organanization.

Major trading blocs:


This is not to mention that a lot of important industrial architecture is often shared between states or regions. Russia for instance pipes oil directly into Europe, which makes economic sanctions a lot harder. Though at the same time the Saudis and OPEC can informally sanction Russia by dropping the price of oil well below the price the Russians would need to benefit off of oil production and not go into debt (and in effect become the international version of the Rockefeller family).

Apart from greater international trade on and more energetic regional and international level there is the latest advancements in communication technologies which affords us all the ability to shout at others from much further away and socially connect us to people like in Ukraine. Depending on how stoutly Putin wants to censor the net to keep Ukraine out of it, or on how avid the Russians are in keeping to the Russiky corner of the internet.

Though however there's some predictions out now that post-depression we may go through a period of deglobalization, which means more jobs for American robots and more eventual freedom to do whatever without too much threat (Russian economy is still tanking from their current actions). But these reports are from 2009 so still mid-recession doomsday predictions.