That came from a government regulated monopoly. — frank
Linux began in 1991 as a personal project by Finnish student Linus Torvalds: to create a new free operating system kernel.
Open source isn't in opposition to monopoly.
I think you missed my point. — frank
It still needs to be answered in order to have an alternative for Russia if the authoritarian regime collapses and something else is built upon those ruins. — Christoffer
See, if you persist in your terse, cryptic style of posting rather than making clear and expansive arguments, you'll continue to confuse me. You still haven't told me which Western values caused the Russians to go a-conquering. — jamalrob
The USSR collapsed. That wasn't because of the West.To try and wrest this back to the topic... The argument was that Russia had better follow western societies (even at the risk of commercialisation) since there were no viable alternatives. I pointed out that the lack of viable alternatives was a deliberate result of the system itself and so couldn't be used as evidence (it didn't win in a fair competition). You said that ruthless competition was sometimes good, — Isaac
Linux is Unix based. C language comes from Bell Labs. — frank
The USSR collapsed. That wasn't because of the West. — frank
The development of Linux at least implies that it's possible to develop such systems collaboratively. — Isaac
Are you suggesting all the West's efforts to destroy the USSR were irrelevant? Or are you suggesting they took a 'live and let live' attitude toward communism? — Isaac
I mean, of course there's a way to make a society without capitalism that still has a strong foundation in freedom, freedom of speech, and so on. — Christoffer
What this tells you is that capitalism doesn't require competition. In fact, the worst episodes in the history of capitalism were when monopolies ruled overtly. — frank
I'm saying the USSR became, as Gorbachev put it, "a mountain of lies." — frank
Why are you still talking about justifications for war when I expressly said in my last post that this was not about justification for war? — Isaac
I'd call that genuine Western hubris, if Americans or others think that the Soviet Union collapsed because of them. The Soviet Union c ollapsed on itself.That the USSR collapsed isn't really in question. The question was the extent to which 'the west' were instrumental in making that happen. The west clearly put huge efforts into destroying them. — Isaac
Destroy? Or contain? — frank
Then we simply would have to talk about the real reasons for Putin's invasion of Ukraine. — ssu
So this was the real question: can a modern and free society avoid the ills of capitalism? Which BTW is a question not just for Russia. — Olivier5
The arms race of the Cold War is only a minor reason.So by what mechanism did all their enormous efforts manage to miraculously have no effect whatsoever? — Isaac
Putin hasn't backed down from a war before. It might be difficult for him cut it and stop and just declare victory. I think the next timeline for Putin will be the "home for X-mas"-moment of May 9th Victory Day as important. If the army could wrap it up or at least there would be something to show then, Putin might be happy.In either case, it's not good, even removing the bunker talk. If they don't finish this quickly, they will suffer enormously from sanctions, which further pushes them to the brink.
We'll see. — Manuel
the [lower-yield] US warheads were not a direct threat to Russian security but were concerning nevertheless — Russia says alarmed by US deployment of low-yield nuclear missiles (Feb 6, 2020)
Putin held a ceremony at the Kremlin to welcome 23 new foreign ambassadors to Moscow — Russia says alarmed by US deployment of low-yield nuclear missiles (Feb 6, 2020)
Putin simply doesn't care. He hasn't been interested in the economy at all. If he would be, Russia would have played a totally different game in international politics. Just like, uh, China.Of course he cannot portray anything other than a victory of sorts. I'm curious to find out when this stops, how will the removal of sanctions proceed. — Manuel
But throughout this period, Ukrainians had not been aware of the size of the nuclear arsenal on their soil—Ukraine was effectively the third largest nuclear power in the world at the time—nor had they considered the high costs and logistical problems of nuclear divestment.
The deterrent value of the nuclear weapons in Ukraine was also questionable, as Ukraine would have had to spend 12 to 18 months to establish full operational control over the nuclear arsenal left by the Russians.[9] The ICBMs also had a range of 5,000–10,000 km (initially targeting the United States), which meant that they could only have been re-targeted to hit Russia's far east. — Wikipedia
It also wasn’t clear if Ukraine had operational control of the weapons or whether Moscow retained the launch codes.
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