1y ago  WhereAreAllTheGoodMen

@sleepyweaselisawake In my world, women are entitled to be slaves. Simples. And they are happier that way.

1y ago  The Dark Winter

@MentORPHEUS

Up to Dunbar's Number at least

I think you can go above that, provided that there is some continuity, i.e., two guys with cultural similarity who don't know each other but have a friend in common who vouches each for the other.

At some point, someone decides to break their previously functional social contract and loot the community's value for themselves rather than mutually build into it.

Absent some counterbalance - such as the cultural/religious commonality among the Amish - I would think it would be inevitable.

1y ago  The Dark Winter

@VasiliyZaitzev

It would work if you were living in an ethnically homogenous (like a White or Asian (fancy, not jungle) community

Up to Dunbar's Number at least, even ethnically diverse but culture and value homogenous groups can make intentional communities work under various systems. The OG hippies made their early 70s communes work for years running, even as legit "real" communists.

The problem is, these communities work until they don't. At some point, someone decides to break their previously functional social contract and loot the community's value for themselves rather than mutually build into it. If groups are strong and cohesive enough, with strong leaders when necessary, they can eject the rogue member and continue on. Hippie groups in particular were passive and inclusive and accepting to a fault and were ripe game for anyone from mildly greedy to outright criminal psychopath to take advantage of. If this continues due to authoritative paralysis, it will kill the morale of the group and it won't survive even if the rogue member gets ejected or leaves eventually.

By the late 70s, many of the OG hippies and their offspring traded their free love for monogamy and marriage, and their free spirited hippie clothes for yuppie suits and values.

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1y ago  It's Fake!

@redpillschool Yep. "Core" inflation - the type without food & energy - and remind me, what to do humans spend money on? - is whatever lie the government wants to tell.

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1y ago  The Dark Winter

@MentORPHEUS It would work if you were living in an ethnically homogenous (like a White or Asian (fancy, not jungle) community - and maybe Botswanans as they seem to have it together, too) - of about 50 people. So about a village of high-trust, high-cohesion folks with a strong work ethic, respect for the rule of law and sense of personal responsibility. I guess you could make it work, sort of, at the country level (think Japan, and, for now, Sweden) but even then you need more government than the Libertarians would find palatable. Beyond that it would fall apart. Then it starts to look like Somalia (I recognize that that's more than a bit unfair; Somalia has zero history with free market capitalism, and was, in fact, a Marxist state before becoming a failed state and the latter does seem to be the nearly inevitable result of the former.)

Unlike the never tried, always infallible "pure communism", pure libertarianism actually would work, but it's just not sustainable outside of laboratory conditions. It would turn into what we're seeing at the US southern border. Lots of orcs trying to get in b/c: "Gibsmedat!"

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1y ago  It's Fake!

@deeplydisturbed My dude, I'm 54. I've seen some shit. But hey, I will play along.

The Bolsheviks would be #1 - arguably.

It's pretty much Mao, but there's something to be said for Genghis Khan, if we want to go back to the dead ball era.

Oh, and remind me, what country did the Bolsheviks run? R...u..s...something? Do not for a second believe that Russian Nationalism was not at play.

After the war

After the war it's economics.

I could list DOZENS of such things from Orange Man Bad, to "Mostly Peaceful Protests" in which all evidence ran contrary to the promoted view point. {Lots of additional words}

How, exactly, does this apply to me?

Americans are overwhelmingly NPC's. And today's message is "Russia Bad - Ukraine Good"

My guess is that I have spent more time in the Rodina than anyone on the board with the possible exception of GLO. Maybe. My judgments are formed based on experience and an understanding of history and every day events. There is some sort of "Herp-Derp PUTIN IS A PHILOSOPHER-KING!" disease among the Edgelords of the Right these days, (because they have finally figured out we live ins a corrupt Corporatocracy). He's not. He's a gangster, just like Every Other Leader Russia Has Ever Had.

Right now, he's shooting up Ukraine because it's fucking Thursday, and his apologists in the West sagely intone about how Russia needs "buffer states" as if the ICBM had never been invented. As it turns out the "buffer states" have agency, and every nation that USED to be in the Warsaw Pact not named "Russia" that had a choice (Belarus and Ukraine did not) broke the land-speed record for joining NATO because they were tired of being Moscow's beaten wife and getting buttfucked every time the Russians got drunk. Sure, America will exploit you economically, but the Americans are far less rapey and you get to have nice things from Rent-A-Center. Lithuania (might have been one of the other two postage stamp countries, adjacent) just renamed the street that the Russian embassy is on "Ukrainian Heroes Boulevard". Being in NATO means you get to give Moscow the finger any time you want.

Putin could have had 99% of what he wanted by simply rolling into the Donbas. But it's not really about the Donbas. It's about a land bridge to Crimea and about control of Ukraine. Maybe he believes in what Solzhenitsyn called "The Gathering of the Russian Lands" (I think P is to cynical for that), or maybe he just wants it. Maybe he thinks he's going to install a puppet regime in Kyiv. Not working out how he envisioned. He's using WWII tactics, except now their are Javelin missiles. Maybe he thinks he's going to do what Zhukov did and just flood the zone, but it's not going well so far. He's breaking his teeth on Ukraine.

Speaking poor, hapless Ukraine. So far from God, so close to Russia (apologies to Benito Juarez). Russia is fucking with Ukraine because it is the only nation in the neighborhood that it CAN fuck with. And if Russia want's buffer states, when, uh, sorry "if" it takes control of Ukraine, it will have FOUR NATO states on its borders. So much for that theory (technically it has two right now, but only if you count Kaliningrad's borders with Poland and Lithuania, but I don't. If you do then the number goes to 5.)

I'm not siding w/Ukraine b/c "I Support The Current Thing!", I'm siding with Ukraine b/c I spent the firs two nights of the war up until 5 and 6 am coordinating with various Ukrainian friends (some of whom are ethnic Russians, btw) on comm apps helping them figure out which roads were open because they were busy trying to run for their lives.

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1y ago  The Dark Winter

@VasiliyZaitzev Agree, I was closely involved with the core National Libertarian Party for a few years in the early 90s; their Presidential candidate visited my house twice. I got disillusioned because for such a smart group of people, they really seriously didn't seem to have a plan for governing a large diverse nation that wasn't just scaling up what worked for their got-their-own-shit-together-just-fine upper middle class demographic. It was like they thought once a Libertarian administration came to power, things like avarice and greed wouldn't be an issue ever again. Corporations would apply conscientious long-term stewardship to resources under their control even if that means lower profits next quarter every quarter. Individuals would respect each other if the government "just got out of the way."

There were many brilliant speakers and thinkers in the group. To a one, when pressed on tough questions, they'd go so far with their answer and explanation, then hit a mental cul-de-sac where they'd keep looping back on a platitude or talking point. Unlike most political pugilists, they were always impeccably polite and civil about it. This demonstrated to me that "ability to drink the kool-aid" isn't an affliction of the stupid, it seems to be innately baked into the human condition.

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1y ago  It's Fake!

@slutmagazine

Way back in the Bad Old Days of 1938, ethnic Germans in the Sudetenland start causing trouble to get the attention of the highly nationalistic totalitarian strong man who is the leader of a powerful adjacent country.

Said leader has territorial ambitions, and decides to tell the owner of the Sudetenland (the part of what was then Czechoslovakia that is now the Czech Republic), "This is ours now. We must protect the ethnic Germans there. Do not worry, we are nice guys and will not run you over with our tanks and take your whole country."

The powerful adjacent country then proceeds to run them over with tanks and take their whole country on their way to furthering their territorial ambitions.

Substitute "ethnic Russians" for "ethnic Germans" and "Donbas" for "Sudetenland", and it is Exactly The Same Play as we are seeing now in Ukraine, except Ukraine is giving Russia a much harder time than the Czechs gave Germany, mostly because the Czechs got sold out at Munich, and Putin didn't bother.

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1y ago  The Hub

@VasiliyZaitzev Ha, touche. Still, I maintain a pragmatic Prep, but till the S actually HTF assume enough normalcy ahead to be worth investing and building for.

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1y ago  The Dark Winter

@deeplydisturbed

Any sort of libertarianism is ideal, but only for those who are capable of it.

So basically the top 10%-20% of the population. Maybe.

Basically anyone who is a grown-up and a libertarian is someone who has never been anything less than upper middle class, white and perfectly healthy. It's not workable in any kind of large way. All they do is siphon votes from the slightly less sucky major party. Libertarians are why Raphael Warnock won in Georgia and why the Dems now control the Senate.

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