I suspect this'll be forgotten about in a couple months if they attack Taiwan. Or maybe they'll do an obligatory "They're making us attack Taiwan!" press release.
> The Soviet Union took the wests bait and produced too many guns and not enough butter and the butter ran out.
The Soviets genuinely thought the West would attack - they believed their own ideology - until Gorbachev.
Part of that ideology was profound State control of everything, which in the case of the USSR ended up with a massively inefficient agricultural sector. Farms were either way too small (personal plots) or way too large (State farms/collectives). Poor production of food was not because of defence spending; it was because of an inherently inefficient agricultural sector.
Over time the USSR produced more and more, although the economic growth rate grew ever slower and was basically zero toward the end (and so the USSR was falling further and further behind the West), and the central planners were not controlling money properly and so people ended up with a lot of money - much more money than things to buy, given the token prices set by the State, plus distribution issues (Moscow first, everywhere else further down the pecking order) - and so chronic shortages became the norm, because everyone had tons of buying power.
The USSR was a solid second-world power, in terms of living standards, but people came to view the whole thing as a failure (especially so as knowledge of how life was in the West spread - remember that it was only after Khrushchev established himself, so late 1950s or so, that people living in the USSR even began to have a clue that life was different, with much higher living standards and much more freedom, elsewhere).
Then Gorbachev came along, and seems not to have understood how the USSR worked (which is to say, on Party orders), and he hammered the economy with reforms (half-way house reforms don't work - you're either centrally controlled or not, and trying to be half centrally controlled is a disaster), weakened the Party (with elections, because the Party was getting in his way), and in the end, it all fell over.
Interesting comment. One that I think is ultimately a softening of rhetoric. Why can’t we attack Taiwan? Well, that is what the US would like us to do, isn’t it?
Military advisors very well may be steering him away from any possible conflict, but I think it is more of a calculus of saving face after years of increasingly aggressive and threatening rhetoric.
Why are all the commentaries in the article claiming an information vacuum coming from people in the West. They all claim an information vacuum of some sort around Xi while people with ties to China claim otherwise. Why no comment from anyone from Taiwan. Personally, I have observed that US has been arming Taiwan with so many senior US politicians visiting a supposedly breakaway province of China frequently.
I think that if the Taiwanese declare independence, there will definitely be a war. Whether or not it’s the US who pushes them to it, I don’t think it would matter.
I'm sure some in the USA does want war so they can make a profit selling weapons. Not to mention, getting most allies to sanction Russia made people rely on the USA for oil. With Taiwan, it could be semiconductors? Even though our fabs are nowhere near, it will be the only option.
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[ 5.8 ms ] story [ 34.6 ms ] threadThe Soviet Union took the wests bait and produced too many guns and not enough butter and the butter ran out.
The Soviets genuinely thought the West would attack - they believed their own ideology - until Gorbachev.
Part of that ideology was profound State control of everything, which in the case of the USSR ended up with a massively inefficient agricultural sector. Farms were either way too small (personal plots) or way too large (State farms/collectives). Poor production of food was not because of defence spending; it was because of an inherently inefficient agricultural sector.
Over time the USSR produced more and more, although the economic growth rate grew ever slower and was basically zero toward the end (and so the USSR was falling further and further behind the West), and the central planners were not controlling money properly and so people ended up with a lot of money - much more money than things to buy, given the token prices set by the State, plus distribution issues (Moscow first, everywhere else further down the pecking order) - and so chronic shortages became the norm, because everyone had tons of buying power.
The USSR was a solid second-world power, in terms of living standards, but people came to view the whole thing as a failure (especially so as knowledge of how life was in the West spread - remember that it was only after Khrushchev established himself, so late 1950s or so, that people living in the USSR even began to have a clue that life was different, with much higher living standards and much more freedom, elsewhere).
Then Gorbachev came along, and seems not to have understood how the USSR worked (which is to say, on Party orders), and he hammered the economy with reforms (half-way house reforms don't work - you're either centrally controlled or not, and trying to be half centrally controlled is a disaster), weakened the Party (with elections, because the Party was getting in his way), and in the end, it all fell over.
It uses a bunch of extra BBC footage that was shot but not used, and shows some of the life of ordinary citizens.
Military advisors very well may be steering him away from any possible conflict, but I think it is more of a calculus of saving face after years of increasingly aggressive and threatening rhetoric.