At the same time “global economic integration” and “global trade” including outsourcing of production to countries with cheaper labor were sold to the populace as a logical continuation of liberal democracies. Increasing efficiency, thus increasing the level of life. That the level of life also depends on having leverage, and moving critical production outside means reduction of leverage, nobody thought (well, the majority of population didn’t think that, bread and circuses).

While this is a system old as humanity, Chinese imperial bureaucracy and Roman one and Assyrian one and Persian one worked like this, to build hierarchical systems. Troops quelling rebellions in one province are from one in the opposite part of the empire. Troops fighting wars in a province are never local, because wars between empires always involve stimuli to change masters. Bureaucrats are too foreign, everything is foreign and not reliant on locals. Even food and drinks are sent from other provinces and tightly guarded - despite that being far more expensive then than now.

So today in a western country all the digital products are made mostly in other countries, all the electronics are made mostly in other countries, much of the food and much of the clothes and much of everything. And this is treated like the good free western way of life. The further from WWII, the less everybody feared such a situation.

While the firmer is integration, the harder it’s to leave it, and the harder it’s to leave, the less meaningful any freedom is - your vote matters only for the bosses in you part, and they have the combined power of the bosses to deceive you, to misdirect your vote, or to plainly steal it, or to go around it.

Historically integration built empires.

The USSR, a recent example of an honest attempt at autarky, which is often used as an example of who tries autarky and why, didn’t really try. It’s the other way around actually, in 20s it was rather democratic, in 30s it was basically buying foreign technologies and machinery for gold and grain for everything (that’s the Stalin’s industrialization), in 40s too (war and all), and the only parts of its history where it really was trying to do autarky significantly enough was during the Thaw and Brezhnev, and while that didn’t work so well, that’s also the most democratic period of its history.

But at the same time high autarky degree means lower level of life. I’ve been excited with Trotskyism once, despite most of time being a ancap. Because, well, it involves direct democracy and mass participation in all political activity, and no career bureaucrats and politicians, the need for that is substantiated by any limited minority of politicians or bureaucrats being possible to covertly threaten, blackmail, buy, groom, etc.

I don’t subscribe to their “democratic planning of the economy using modern means of computation” thing - I agree it’s possible if Amazon is doing just that on scale far bigger than needed for a government in one country, don’t get me wrong, and that demands fewer resources than all this “AI research around”, but there’s inherent degeneracy in such a planning system because, as a specific example, you don’t know you have to design and produce a good that would be in high demand but isn’t already produced.

I think Trotskyism in many of its parts is still very good, actual participation not only is beneficial for the system, it also gives the populace the psychological understanding that politics is not about casting your vote once or twice for the guys who frighten you less. Feeling of holding the wheel. Personal responsibility and ability to change things for good. These are important exactly to compensate worse level of life (locally worse, because good level of life combined with tyranny eventually becomes worse too) emotionally, because otherwise it’ll be impossible to institute a political system nobody wants.

Well, it is one big process.

Hard to trace the power which allowed for all those slow processes of subversion to happen, but a lot of it stems ultimately from the USSR’s breakup and those who managed to make profit on it.

Western countries’ MIC’s which no more had to prepare for real war, so same big funding, but less accountability. Western politicians making profit on reducing their militaries - it’s a profitable process of selling properties and scrapping tech and such. Western advisors in ex-USSR helping their new mafia elites. Western businesses who first managed to secure some agreements to do business in ex-USSR.

Then - the tech sector, via plenty of qualified labor from ex-USSR moving to USA and other western countries. Cheap fossil fuels sold by Russia to EU countries, which became a major factor in their economies in the 90s and 00s.

Politicians in this were very notably not complacent, just looking out for themselves and noticing opportunities for themselves.

Also a lot happened just due to technical progress and lack of macro-level competition. Soviet system notably had deadlocks because interested parties couldn’t agree to one countrywide system. Suppose USSR somehow managed to survive till now, with its collegial and totalitarian-bureaucratic, but not mafia-style, government. Then total surveillance being introduced in the West now and long ago in China wouldn’t be successfully implemented in the USSR, for the similar reasons EU countries want to have their own surveillance, but not US surveillance over their citizens. In USSR it would be between ministries and factions not willing to be controlled by others. So in USSR there’d likely be some status quo.

I mean, it’s purely a hypothesis, it already imploded and there’s nothing more to say about this. Just - such things as now would sometimes happen during the Cold War too, but having a big totalitarian state as a counterweight helped a lot. Like an example of what will happen if this is allowed, and like an alternative (if we are going to have totalitarianism, then let’s at least have the red workers-and-peasants kind), and like a real threat in case of weakening of western nations.

So one can imagine that USSR’s breakup did lead in many ways to what we have now. At the same time had it not happened, then maybe on my side of the screen everything would already be surveilled (or maybe it is).

A few stolen elections in a row were approved by US politicians and various European politicians almost unanimously, because of “supporting Yeltsin against reaction”, and “if not this imperfect democracy, then Commies or neo-Nazis”, and “but we’re having a reboot of relations”, and then with almost open realpoliticking shit about how Putin is convenient to do business with, and if there’s a change of regime, it won’t be as easy.

So I would argue about root causes a lot. Especially since the root cause would be Western interference during USSR’s breakup, first aimed at preserving USSR, then after that failing aimed at preserving Russia as 1) some sort of superpower, 2) authoritarian regime led by Yeltsin’s crowd.

It doesn’t even matter that they likely didn’t know what they were doing, likely led by Tom Clancy books style idiotic ideas of the dangers and chances in that process, and the main “threat” perceived was some “radical reactionary takeover” leading to someone launching nukes just for the sake of it. It even reads idiotic, but such opinions were said officially, however nuts it was.

EDIT: And also there’s the subject of Ukraine’s nukes. If someone didn’t know, it’s not Russia that pressured Ukraine to get rid of its nukes in favor of Russia. It’s USA. Convenient to have one hegemon in a region, with whom you can deal, except that hegemon might eventually accept the idea that they are the hegemon.

Früher war mehr Lametta?

As someone still in Russia, a bit of the same.

That is, I expected things to get worse, but not “avalanche of shit, cockroaches and rat bones” levels of worse.

Except the idolization part started receding much earlier, when I actually learned English well enough to understand that these are very intolerant societies. Say, where in Russia people disagreeing with you on some key matters would look at you like a fool or just decide to stop this conversation so that neither of you would offend the other, in English-speaking countries, it seems, there was simply no way to survive outside of some echo chamber and God forbid you find none to fit into. But that was like 10-15 years ago, now, of course, in Russia you can get jailed or strongly fined for words.

But I thought there’s some deeper wisdom and in those harsher societies people are also somehow better capable to maintain their common freedom and dignity yadda-yadda. In fact that’s not what I see.

As a bit of gloating - at least now the “why are you not all revolting against Putin” Western types can be answered with their own regrettable example instead of common sense and logic, these are fine, but an example is more efficient.

I’ve thought of all these, but what I’m describing should be a comprehensive system in itself and at the same time have global identities and addressing of all content, so that data model could be applied, for example, for a sneakernet or for some situation where you’d have to synchronize data over delay-tolerant networks.

Most of all like Briar or Usenet or something else.

I would say the future is in pooling resources.

Like it happens with torrents. As one p2p protocol very successful.

Self-hosting not applications, but storage and uniform services. Let different user applications use the same pooled storage and services.

All services are ultimately storage, computation, relays, search&indexing and trackers. So if there’s a way to contribute storage, computing resources, search and relay nodes by announcing them via trackers (suppose), then one can make any global networked application using that.

But I’m still thinking how can that even work. What I’m dreaming of is just year 2000 Internet (with FTP, e-mail, IRC, search engines), except simplified and made for machines, with the end result being represented to user by a local application. There should be some way to pay for resources in a uniform way, and reputation of resources (not too good if someone can make a storage service, collect payment, get a “store” request and then just take it offline), or it won’t work.

And global cryptographic identities.

Not like Fediverse in the end, more like NOSTR.

Not really. A normal thing for most functional states 50 years ago. A comprehensive pipeline of training and preparation for various industrial and military roles.

From first aid to orientation on terrain to radio knowledge to flag signals. Flight clubs, other relevant sports, small arms disassembly and assembly. What to do in case of an emergency. Chemistry, electric engineering, mechanical engineering.

Computer games weren’t a thing, and cheap small drone planes too. But this is pretty normal, except nothing is official, because today nation-states prefer gray schemes.

It’s not just a multicultural area, it’s as if they made the African continent two states, drawing the border randomly for one of them to be majority Muslim (and consisting of two unconnected parts).

It’s a whole world with a few language families of completely different cultures, inside which there are languages as big as German not mutually intelligible with their related languages near them.

There’s no such ethnicity as “Indian”.

BTW, about religion - there is an ethnic and religious group in India, their Church is Apostolic Christian, Miaphysite, and it’s in communion with Coptic and Armenian churches, and it has way more members than there are Armenian Christians in the world. Yet when listing Miaphysite churches, it’s usually not even remembered.

I mean, they use English as the main international language inside India, the fact that there’s no native language fitting the role of lingua franca more talks for itself. It’s not about policy, it’s about the fact that Hindi or Urdu are nothing for Dravidic regions. Not even oppression, just WTF and why should they use it.

Well, I live in Russia, but I’ve read there were changes about taxes calculation logic for people of low enough income too. Maybe they are smiling about that?

It’s still funny how the supposed problem of US state debt going is apparently not a problem when it’s your side inflating it beyond the year 1946 record against GDP. Or so they say.

BTW, when people say that US state debt is being misinterpreted and it’s not a problem, - basically any country’s state debt is, until it isn’t. That would work like, well, loss of trust into US ability to support the debt, which means loss of the value of USD, which together may form a positive feedback loop. Not hard to see that if such thing were to happen, you’d have rapid inflation and probably default.

(Also maybe that talk about bringing production back to USA, Musk’s political ideas and funding for military structures, all that stuff, are being done in preparation for the inevitable, - it’s technically possible to avoid it, but politically may not be, cause both main sides just promise more spending to own the other side. Because their plans that don’t make sense now look kinda better in a hypothetical scenario of post-default USA. It’ll still have enormous human capital, and its economic situation would allow to use that for building industries anew.)

Compared to before, no, there aren’t.

Well, that can be said about Greeks and Armenians in Crimea as well as Crimean Tatars. That’s because after Stalin’s forced movement to Kazakhstan (which is barbaric act, of course) or wherever, when descendants of those people were allowed to return, they were more likely to move elsewhere in the union. And after 1991 Greeks would often repatriate, well, to Greece, changing the ethnic character of the whole Russian and Ukrainian Black Sea coast, and Crimean Tatars to Turkey.

I think you also underestimate the role of Sevastopol. Purely due to strategic importance there’d be people coming from all parts of the empire and the union, and the “melting pot culture” there was Russian.

There has been an ongoing genocide since the tsarist times,

That’s a weird way to say this, before Crimea becoming part of the Russian Empire the actual Crimean Khanate didn’t exist for too long. It seems you have a misconception of Crimean Tatars being some sort of the native population of Crimea. They were not. They were a nomad vassal state to the Ottoman Empire, conquerors themselves. They weren’t the majority there ethnically under that khanate either.

That’s why people are “wary” of Russia - because it is a genocidal state since time immemorial.

That’s gross from someone who’s likely a US-American or a European. Also “time immemorial” doesn’t quite mean what you seem to think.

Tell me, why are there no more Tatars in Crimea?

There are, in fact, Tatars in Crimea.

You are literally saying “fucking moron” to something you imagined yourself and I didn’t write.

You are right.

So basically what they’re doing to every other western nation.

You mean western nations’ government policies are all perfect and people pushing against them are Russian shills? And making their politicians look bad?

Maybe those governments and politicians are Russia-infiltrated, and these complaints are resistance.

I don’t think there’s any need to evict it to pressure it to vote the right way.

So Hungary blocking things is a collective performance.

Or maybe not, then the leverage they gain from veto is more than the pressure put at them. In such case that leverage is apparently damn big and they are a small country.

He’ll get servicemen killed. It won’t be funny.

It would seem that I’m arguing in the direction opposite of what you’re claiming, but I don’t care, I think I’ve met you before.

You are an idiot, go fuck yourself.

by now, power is the only ideology. They’re mighty so they must be right, don’t they?

It’s not about “right”. It’s that you can’t trust anyone, and if you make a mistake, your own input to any revolution doesn’t happen.

Russia had a revolution before, it can have one again. …

Collective psyche can be regulated. It will happen when people in Kremlin make a mistake.

Who would be the current-day Bolsheviks, opposed to the deposed-of system but also to the freedom of the people?

Yes, that is where I’ll add that making a transitional committee of Yashin, Navalnaya and others, augmented with the older wave like Kasparov and Portnikov, might not be a good idea. Only allowing ex-commies (ex-system in this case) to “turn democrat” and become the government like in 1991 can be worse.

I’d probably trust escapist communists like RSD and groups of edgy ancap children more.

Closest they got to ending that cunt was Prigozhin attempting a coup in a drunken rage, but he sobered up and chickened out before it was done.

No. Prigozhin was a spoiler. A demining attempt, because Putin probably got afraid enough of a coup in the military and decided to use Prigozhin to try and detect people in the high command who’d assist Prigozhin or react favorably, or at least not do enough to impede.

Russians keep gravitating towards authoritarians over and over again. Can’t think of any other country that reverted back to it multiple times in a century. Weak people want strong man leaders, just how it is.

Russia has special services. They work all the time, work very well, and “entrapment” is not a problem for them, similar to “fruit of a poisoned tree”. When you detect people likely to wish for a change early enough and neutralize them, either by silently jailing or intimidating or disrupting them, the society is much more amorphous.

It’s not about gravitating anywhere, wishes or sympathies.

But there’s still a reason why you’re having these particular kinds of dreams, and not different ones.

I dunno, if we are going to that level, then I see plenty people not from Russia in the interwebs having this. In case of MENA people - much stronger.

It’s a problem, but not such a deep one. Even among ex-military people from older generation.

Do you think it’s even constitutional for Putin to deputise people with presidential powers? That any court would challenge him? Law in Russia was, and is, subordinate to the powers that be.

No, Putin has been logically fully described in the “Dolls” show. He just wants to torture and kill people better than him, and the law he’s interested in only as long as he can call whoever he wants destroyed “state criminals”.

I’m saying that the Russian empire was different, and even the USSR was different.

That’s the attitude of those considered strong, yes. You either become them or you break and end up with a tattoo saying “slave” on your forehead or something.

Yup, I’m saying it’s not the only idea of morality in the whole of Russian society and not even the dominant one.

It definitely is the one emanating from the state.

Part of the same ethos, with maybe slightly different dances, clothing, and they can continue pronouncing things with h instead of g as long as they admit they’re Russians, that they accept, as you put it above, the father’s authority

In this case no, it’s not the father. It’s the same master. Slaves replace their own dignity with their master’s importance.

So those really thinking Ukraine shouldn’t be independent are the people terribly irritated by Ukrainians not willing to have a master. If Ukrainians wanted to have a master, that master would have a lower status than their master, in their opinion, so it would all be fine - Ukraine is a separate country, but Ukrainians are in the same general status. It’s envy - why can they have this and we can’t. A typical village thing by the way.

Like that anecdote about hell and a Jewish cauldron, guarded by three imps to throw those escaping back in and prevent them from helping others, a Ukrainian cauldron guarded by one imp to just throw those escaping back in, and a Russian cauldron unguarded.

It’s not. It destroys social cohesion, it breeds neurosis.

Yep, in this regard we agree. It also breeds idiocy and cowardice with all participants certain they are being wise and brave and sacrificing.

The reason is simple: Without the people neurotic, distrustful, and accustomed to bowing to authority, the central authority would fall, because people would actually be able to organise bottom-up. The central authority knows that, and thus does nothing to combat it, the people, well, it’s Russia’s only way to greatness, isn’t it? Any alternatives?

That’s where you are wrong.

As you might have guessed, one can’t punish FSB for entrapment, they are the ones doing the punishing. So that’s what they were doing since Soviet times. Everyone trying to “organize bottom-up” will just be detected by FSB before being visible for anyone else.

They are proactive. They have their agents of various kinds in youth groups, in hobby groups, everywhere. They even provoke such “organizing”.

They literally lure teens into “political” groups. Just for everyone with potential to be under control.

It would be problematic, say, in the US, if FBI tried to put someone in jail for being a member of a group the leader and half other members of which are state agents, and which approached that someone first. In Russia it’s not. They are always fishing for people willing to do something.

I’ve literally heard of more cases where a (say, anarchist) group had such agents, but it all became known because of some other crime (a murder in that case), than in “extremist” sense. Meaning this happens very silently.

So, about distrust. It’s well-substantiated. Russians can’t organize in Russia and can’t, frankly, trust a Russian in such things.

Similar to Armenians TBH, it sometimes seems there are more agents of various intelligence services and oligarchs in Armenia and diaspora than people really interested in changing something.

Which brings me to Navalny’s balls of steel, returning to Russia: Yes, that’s impressive. That’s strong, “virtuous suffering”. But it’s also accepting the status quo. You can’t be a revolutionary against a system by holding onto the ethos that fuels it.

Absolutely! That’s exactly what his action communicated.

I think he was trying to send a signal to that layer of deeply skeptical people that he’s one of them and not of those like Sobchak and Nemtsov and similar. And he was successful, he’s seen very differently from them.

Except see my previous part about special services’ work. The real problem is not in nobody willing to organize. Without it, whether Navalny would do his sacrifice or not, Russia’s government would have changed around 2012.