There are only three spheres of influence, all ruled from the north. The western, the orthodox, and the Chinese.
A strong south-facing Russia is a good thing for everyone. It gives Russians something useful to domesticate while domesticating themselves.
In a perfect world, the anglos phere, the eurosphere, the russosphere, the hindusphere, and the sinosphere contain islam and simply let africa continue to evolve.
Source date (UTC): 2016-08-20 11:27:00 UTC
I’m having a very hard time understanding why we don’t want Russia to rule the muslim world, other than that maybe we fear a russian-iranian petro-currency. I mean. If the russians want to work with israel, I have no idea why we don’t encourage it.
Source date (UTC): 2016-08-20 11:24:00 UTC
(posted as a comment about putin on the economist)
You’re largely correct but there is a middle position that would be more correct than the one you mentioned.
Putin has done a great deal for his people, and we cannot underestimate, and we must respect and admire him for the change in their quality of life.
He had his vision of restoring 1-the scope of the Russian empire, and 2-orthodox civilization.
But he is also very afraid, not so much for himself, but for his people, and their future. They have not the economy, nor the population to return to great power status in the 21st century. While he has improved order in the country, and he as improved rule of law – enough – he still has an undiversified resource economy, a secret service that runs the drug and smuggling trade, relies upon Chechens as enforcers, and is surrounded (like a mafia godfather) by those that would replace him with glee.
Prior to his invasion of Ukraine he was possibly the most respected and influential politician in the world.
When Ukraine was successful in ousting the puppet president who denied them EU membership – contrary to everyone’s wildest imaginings – there were immediate uprisings in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and chants everywhere that Russia was next to join the western sphere.
But Putin sees American spies and manipulation everywhere, where we Americans see our politicians, state department, intelligence services, and NGO’s as a bunch of largely overpaid incompetent ‘clowns’ that couldn’t do anything right if they tried.
And he believed his puppet. The correct answer, however, was that the young militant men in the streets, having lost relatives and friends, if they found him, would certainly kill him. When the ambassadors confirmed the circumstance, Putin sent Russian special forces to fetch him, loaded the presidential jet with money, sent it to Dubai (I followed it) and he snuck off to Russia – I have no idea how, since it did not appear in an obvious way on radar tracking systems.
So for Putin, he could lose his only warm water port (Crimea) to NATO (not that I can grasp for a moment how anyone would think closing the Bosphorus to Russia would be a challenge. And worse, he’s been trying to repair and modernize the armed forces, but all the manufacturing was done in the Donbas Basin in Ukraine. So in what I see as a panic, in typical Russian fashion, he did not call up Germany, UK, and USA and say: “Folks it is a strategic problem for us face even the smallest chance of losing that port, and we propose that we acquire it from Ukraine on a 99 year irrevocable lease, after which it returns to Russian sovereignty. Because honestly, otherwise, I am derelict in my duty if I let it pass out of our strategic hands. And I am sorry but I must have tacit approval from you on this phone call, and I ask you to use moral judgment in this matter.”
Now it really doesn’t matter what anyone says really, because Putin gets on the air, tells Ukrainians that he’s terribly proud of them, but that this poses a strategic problem for Russia, so we propose 20% discount on market price of gas in exchange for a 99 year lease on Crimea and the Donbas. This will ensure that you are successful, the people in the Donbas can keep their manufacturing and mining jobs, obtain Russian pensions, and the rest of Ukraine will have an easier time financing its modernization program.”
And really, he just then sends in the soldiers HONESTLY, and it’s all done, because (a) Ukrainians see the people in the east as ‘degenerates’ that hold onto the dream of communism, (b) they just care that they can go to Crimea for holidays, (c) the price of gas is a serious burden for such a poor country.
Now part of the reason we have this problem between west and Russia is the Russian inability to admit vulnerability even in such matters.
So just as when Putin approached the USA about nato membership, and the Americans were stupid, he didn’t take his message to the American people and educate them. Just as he didn’t take the Crimean problem to other world leaders and educate them. Just as he didn’t take his message to the Ukrainian people and educate them.
I suspect it is almost incomprehensible to a Russian that Americans are actually naive utopian idealists, but they really do believe they do the right thing – despite overwhelmingly contrary evidence. But as the Israelis have demonstrated, taking your case to the American people via the press if you’re trying to exchange something and be reasonable is a guaranteed win.
So I view Putin in fairly charitable terms, as a man who saw his world fall apart, his people suffer, and himself as the hero who can restore them and their world, and possibly go down in history as an example for them.
He has one problem really: *He doesn’t sell, he only tells.*
And he has no one on his staff that ‘sells’ the Russian position.
Which is pretty damned rational really.
Curt Doolittle
The Propertarian Institute
Kiev, Ukraine
Source date (UTC): 2016-08-19 13:30:00 UTC
https://www.quora.com/Why-can%E2%80%99t-Canada-become-as-powerful-as-Russia-given-that-both-nation-share-few-similarities-vast-regions-and-next-to-another-superpower-China-and-US/answer/Curt-Doolittle?srid=u4Qv&share=5b629f35THE DEMANDS OF WORLD POWER – TODAY
To create a word power one requires ~500M people, nuclear weapons, and sufficient access to natural resources that one can sustain an autarkic economy during a period of long conflict.
Russia cannot be a world power. It isn’t. It’s a gas station with nuclear missiles, a lot of unemployed men, and a history of invading and conquering neighbors. The only reason russia exists is that the rest of the world didn’t shut her out of the financial and economic system out of fear she’d use her missiles.
Canada by contrast has something on the order of 75K total military personnel, which cannot even defend itself without the USA paying for it (just like europe).
Source date (UTC): 2016-08-18 08:54:00 UTC
It’s because I”m not trying to reconcile or compromise, but revolt and separate so we cooperate by market rather than suffer majority rule.
Source date (UTC): 2016-08-18 08:51:16 UTC
Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/766195750426513408
To create a word power one requires ~500M people, nuclear weapons, and sufficient access to natural resources that one can sustain an autarkic economy during a period of long conflict.
Russia cannot be a world power. It isn’t. It’s a gas station with nuclear missiles, a lot of unemployed men, and a history of invading and conquering neighbors. The only reason russia exists is that the rest of the world didn’t shut her out of the financial and economic system out of fear she’d use her missiles.
Canada by contrast has something on the order of 75K total military personnel, which cannot even defend itself without the USA paying for it (just like europe).
https://www.quora.com/Why-can’t-Canada-become-as-powerful-as-Russia-given-that-both-nations-share-a-few-similarities-vast-regions-and-are-next-to-a-superpower-China-and-the-US
To create a word power one requires ~500M people, nuclear weapons, and sufficient access to natural resources that one can sustain an autarkic economy during a period of long conflict.
Russia cannot be a world power. It isn’t. It’s a gas station with nuclear missiles, a lot of unemployed men, and a history of invading and conquering neighbors. The only reason russia exists is that the rest of the world didn’t shut her out of the financial and economic system out of fear she’d use her missiles.
Canada by contrast has something on the order of 75K total military personnel, which cannot even defend itself without the USA paying for it (just like europe).
https://www.quora.com/Why-can’t-Canada-become-as-powerful-as-Russia-given-that-both-nations-share-a-few-similarities-vast-regions-and-are-next-to-a-superpower-China-and-the-US
https://www.quora.com/How-does-a-President-lead-a-country-fairly-and-democratically-with-so-many-people-having-mixed-agendas-ideas-and-opinions/answer/Curt-Doolittle?srid=u4Qv&share=08163832It’s impossible, since democracy is only capable of selecting priorities among people with homogenous interests, and impossible to select between conflicting choices among people with heterogeneous interests.
Markets let us cooperate on means despite different ends – no monopolies.
Democracy is a monopoly in which we cannot cooperate on means because of different ends.
Democracy has been a catastrophe.
The original anglo model was not democratic but consisted of different HOUSES for each CLASS, including the CHURCH, so that Monarchy, regional managers, personal property owners, and common people(church) could negotiate EXCHANGES between the classes.
The English system created a market under which most can be satisfied. Democracy destroyed it by creating a monopoly under which no one can be satisfied.
Curt Doolittle
The Propertarian Institute
Source date (UTC): 2016-08-17 16:18:00 UTC
—“How would an Anarcho Capitalist society look like, in the long run?”—
[L]et’s take a look:
(a) Libertines (anarcho capitalists) differ from libertarians (jeffersonian contractualists), where Contractualist Libertarian = do no harm to the commons, and anarchist libertine = do no good to the commons. This is the underlying principle of decidability in libertinism (anarcho capitalism): avoid costs of physical, normative, an cultural commons, where the principle of decidability in libertarianism is merely the prohibition on the imposition of costs that would cause retaliation.
(b) no anarcho capitalist polity can form out of rational economic incentives because without commons and territory on low cost trading routes, any such polity must be endogenously parasitic.
(c) no anarcho capitalist can retain desirable, productive individuals in competition with other societies that do produce commons that add multipliers to the market for reproduction and production.
(d) any anarcho capitalist polity that did survive would be limited to endogenously parasitic members, and those polities that bore the parasitism would eventually, when in a period of stress, colonize, conquer, or destroy such a polity (pirates, drug dealers, money launderers etc).
(e) Ergo no anarcho capitalist society is possible -and its arguable whether one was desirable. If you need a nearly lawless borderland and will bear the costs to consumption of living there, then go. Antartica, Siberia, and canada contain vast areas of unused territory because it has not economic value higher than it’s costs of survival in harsh conditions.
The only possible liberty is that of the anglo saxons: contractualism. And the only means of achieving it is to eliminate demand for the state as a suppressor of aggression and retaliation by the use of the common law to prohibit the imposition of costs on life, kin, relations, things, built capital, norms, traditions, and institutions.
There is only one possible form of liberty then: the only social science man has discovered: rule of law, natural law, common judge discovered law, universal enfranchisement, and universal accountability, and universal reciprocal insurance.
Curt
—“How would an Anarcho Capitalist society look like, in the long run?”—
[L]et’s take a look:
(a) Libertines (anarcho capitalists) differ from libertarians (jeffersonian contractualists), where Contractualist Libertarian = do no harm to the commons, and anarchist libertine = do no good to the commons. This is the underlying principle of decidability in libertinism (anarcho capitalism): avoid costs of physical, normative, an cultural commons, where the principle of decidability in libertarianism is merely the prohibition on the imposition of costs that would cause retaliation.
(b) no anarcho capitalist polity can form out of rational economic incentives because without commons and territory on low cost trading routes, any such polity must be endogenously parasitic.
(c) no anarcho capitalist can retain desirable, productive individuals in competition with other societies that do produce commons that add multipliers to the market for reproduction and production.
(d) any anarcho capitalist polity that did survive would be limited to endogenously parasitic members, and those polities that bore the parasitism would eventually, when in a period of stress, colonize, conquer, or destroy such a polity (pirates, drug dealers, money launderers etc).
(e) Ergo no anarcho capitalist society is possible -and its arguable whether one was desirable. If you need a nearly lawless borderland and will bear the costs to consumption of living there, then go. Antartica, Siberia, and canada contain vast areas of unused territory because it has not economic value higher than it’s costs of survival in harsh conditions.
The only possible liberty is that of the anglo saxons: contractualism. And the only means of achieving it is to eliminate demand for the state as a suppressor of aggression and retaliation by the use of the common law to prohibit the imposition of costs on life, kin, relations, things, built capital, norms, traditions, and institutions.
There is only one possible form of liberty then: the only social science man has discovered: rule of law, natural law, common judge discovered law, universal enfranchisement, and universal accountability, and universal reciprocal insurance.
Curt