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.

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.

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.

So a degree of isolation and counseling is necessary and the duration would be highly dependent on the individual’s needs.

I agree. In between and also for some time after being given that social housing.

Yeah, that’s to an extent what happened with Soviet microdistricts (so many examples from Soviet practice, guess it was some good after all). Except in a bit different way, but I’ll get to the part about creating a district populated with just homeless people not being a good idea.

There was a bright idea of, for some degree of coziness and comfort, building serial housing organized into similar (they all look like one more or less) sections, having same spaces with grocery stores, laundries, same green places with trees, same everything, and on a bit larger scale even schools in the same locations.

So - being a teenager or a young man in USSR you’d do well not to wander into your neighboring microdistrict after dark or even at day alone. Local hooligans would treat that as trespassing, rob you and possibly beat you up. That wouldn’t be even considered something wrong, your own mistake.

They did achieve the set goal - in terms of green spaces and proximity of everything and nice feel those districts are fine, - but for the same reason of isolation and silence all areas developed this way had (and still have) problems with street crime.

As to your specific concern - I think that if we want to do serial state-provided housing, then it shouldn’t be limited to homeless people.

Probably some kind of categorization of applicants should be done, a few apartments in each building should be allocated to homeless (not in the same section of it, but equally spread), a few for veterans, a few to be sold to redeem some of the cost, a few for students, and so on. The proportions can be decided upon. So that the general composition of each house’s inhabitants were kinda average.

This would naturally be contrary to the interest of realtors and developers and landlords, so I’d expect such a program to require overcoming a lot.

Yes and no. A huge chunk of ex-Soviet people still live in Khruschev-era serial housing.

That’d be buildings that have cracks, leaks and draughts all over them, you can hear your neighbors fucking, and there are no elevators.

Yet when those were being built, most of the population was living in barracks (not the military kind, but flimsy wooden boxes with no conveniences, crammed together, something like construction workers for the duration of one project) or in communal apartments (imperial-era normal or even luxury apartments split into rooms, rooms split with additional walls into smaller rooms, a family crammed into each such room, and only one bathroom and kitchen and toilet for all of them in one communal apartment) , and this show of humanity and a few others (like releasing thousands of political prisoners) form together the particular spirit of 60s and the Thaw in the USSR, where, paradoxically, Soviet people started feeling that there might really be some bright future ahead. Late 40s and 50s after the war were so dark that they are almost absent from popular memory. It’s not a coincidence that Soviet science fiction (a thing that between 20s and 50s became almost dead) had a rebirth.

The housing program was one of the main reasons for this optimism.

So, my point is - I don’t think homeless people would complain about getting bad housing over no housing. And I don’t think that prison is that much worse than Khruschev-era houses, modern materials and all that.

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.

I suppose they shut down mobile internet. That doesn’t make news because wire is normal here.

Also there seem to be tests of DPI and filtering systems now by many ISPs in many places, because apparently Russia is going GFW.

Narcissism (NPL) is inherited and it’s not learned. It’s a DSM condition.

If you mean just being a jerk, then that doesn’t look like this. That looks like Eichmann.

Must be something with psychopaths, for all I know about it was very important to have many children.

Stronger primal instincts maybe, and not augmented by responsibility or fear or love.

In appearances he seems to be real. Culturally quite typical for those jerks who are Russia’s elite now, except their older generation holding power kinda hides that.

Durov is the intermediate generation, gross, but trying to pretend. I don’t know if he was born to such a family (KGB/FSB/nomenclature relatives, getting a good education as a mathematician would check out then) or accepted into their, eh, society seems too strong a word.

It’s like a network of thieves recognizing each other by their particular kind of behavior. There’s too many of them to firmly know they are talking to one of their own, so that behavior and approach to life is all it takes to be perceived as one of them.

(I know you won’t believe me, but they think that signature behavior is aristocratic or whatever, talking in Esopean language, dropping hints, not looking you in the eyes, cold faces, being silent and not talking a lot, fish eyes ; there are people with actual noble ancestry in Russia, they do have sort of a common approach to right behavior, and that’s basically the opposite of this - talking to the other person directly, if making hints, then making it obvious that it’s a metaphor, not trying to show contempt or threat in their face, being clear and honest, at least in appearances.)

Their part of my generation is just shit from the ass. Cunning and more evil, but no class or wisdom at all. I mean, there’s a saying “order beats class”, but they can have order only in ideal conditions too. Using bigger expense to imitate an achievement by smaller expense, which wouldn’t be a compliment to their abilities even if it were real. What’s worst is they don’t even understand it.

Though this is where I must share one thing I’ve learned from them - you can imitate a level much higher than yours. You may have no taste, but read and imitate the taste of people who you want to deceive, and succeed. You may not know some domain area, but deceive those who do. Not have deeper understanding of some important mechanism, but imitate a person who does to those who do.

A thought similar to LLM bots in some sense. So - they are dangerous.

In many cases it’s both.