Timothy Snyder on How the Collapse of the Soviet Union Took America by Surprise

Re:Timothy Snyder on How the Collapse of the Soviet Union To... by johnchristopher on Sunday September 22, 2024 @06:25AM (#41616069)

> Yes and no. What a country needs to do to be prosperous is fairly easy - liberal, free market capitalism. No other system has come close to that.

That's not enough. You also need to be at war with other countries, win those wars and impose war reparations so high the losing party is obliged to grant you control of its tariff and industries to repay an ever increasing and eternal debt. "It wasn't fair they didn't want to buy our opium".

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Re:Timothy Snyder on How the Collapse of the Soviet Union To... by roenxi on Sunday September 22, 2024 @06:44AM (#41616150)

Yeah. And how do you win that war against a liberal capitalist economy without a liberal capitalist economy? The only other option is to beg a liberal economy to lend you the industrial capacity to fight.

Capitalist economies are relentless war-winning machines.

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Re:Timothy Snyder on How the Collapse of the Soviet Union To... by somat on Sunday September 22, 2024 @07:22AM (#41616302)

Please note that during the last big war, your much vaunted capitalist economy. was turned into a planed economy. This was done in order to focus it into a war winning machine.

However, I do agree that in general the most good is done for the most people by application of the the free market.

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