This is a general thing that happens to resource-rich nations - the Dutch Disease, the resource curse. If a country makes too much money pumping stuff out of the ground, it depresses industrial growth. The country gets rich, which means it can buy lots of stuff from everyone else instead of paying its own people to make it (who now expect more pay for less work). Its stronger currency accelerates imports, depresses exports. Over time the country falls behind in economic development while its resource production falls as mines are depleted. Then it ends up as a poor backwater behind its developed neighbors (unless other factors intervene).

However, this story gets oversold a bit. Being resource rich has costs (which break countries if ignored), but it has more benefits. E.g., Saudi Arabia/Qatar/Bahrain/Kuwait have regional and even global significance due to oil wealth, even though they're patches in the desert hampered by ultraconservatism.

The Spanish Empire didn't just spend all its gold and silver on wine and fancy clothes - it bought giant professional armies. It absolutely dominated 16th and 17th century Europe, conquering half of Italy and repeatedly challenging France, the strongest European power, despite having a lower population and starting in a weaker position. It also colonized much of the New World plus the Philippines, making Spanish a world languge. Sure, Britain, France, and the Netherlands preyed on and eventually supplanted Spain (and did so without Inca slaves mining for them), but Spain was the number one world power because of all the wealth it acquired.

Another user in the same situation: @hogposting - July member, banned for "trauma delegitimization" (???) and "reactionary" when all he did was participate in the VCJ arguments, saying you can be a leftist, but not a vegan, and a vegan, but not a leftist. As far as I can tell, nothing that can be construed as harassment or wrecking or even anti-veganism, just someone reacting to the VCJ debacle.

And I'm gonna mention @GrandAyatollaLenin and @ElonMarx again. Banned earlier for arguing with mods in good faith - which shouldn't be a permaban offense, especially when the rules aren't clearly stated and the mods themselves get into petty arguments.

First Vietnam doesn't like democracy, then Iraq doesn't like it, now Americans have a problem with it! Clearly we haven't been enforcing it hard enough.

Have you tried to remote control 4 airplanes at once while Cheney's trash-talking you?

Reagan only got bad in the final years of his second term, and they still kept it on the dl. How are they gonna survive 4 years with Biden unable to hold a simple press conference? Will they have to switch to Harris early?

It's astounding how much grift you can assemble at one table - and Joe Rogan really is the most decent among them, which is saying a lot.

"Oh, shit! It's a recession! Everyone else is gonna sell: SELL SELL SELL SELL!" ... "Oh, fuck! The economy is growing and corn is cheap! Everyone else is gonna buy: BUY BUY BUY BUY!"

Tolkien's dwarves are an Antisemitic caricature at their worst (though not as bad as the racist descriptions of orc-aligned humans in LotR) ... but yeah, at the end of the day it's a great story of timeless lessons about human nature. I enjoy it immensely and heartily second your comment. Don't take my mockery too seriously.

USSR was trying to reform agriculture (collectivize, maximize output to enable industrialization, fight reactionary/independent farmers) when a poor harvest happened. The government interpreted the initial low yields as a sign of peasant rebellion/resistance to reform and doubled down on force/punishments, which only deepened the problem. Later they backtracked and sent help, but it was already too late for millions of people in grain-producing areas (Ukraine, Southern/South-Central Russia, Northern Kazakhstan).

Nazis then used it as propaganda to undermine support for communism. Ukrainian Nazi collaborators picked up this line and carried it with them into US/Canadian emigration, which was reproduced as Cold War propaganda.

Modern Ukrainian nationalists then re-imported it and spun it into a founding myth for a new independent Ukraine, with the Soviet/Communist government (full of many nationalities, including tons of Ukrainians) now painted as Russians killing Ukrainians in a genocide to replace ethnic Ukrainians with ethnic Russians, which is used as a justification to purge Ukraine's communist history and displace the Russian language in Ukraine. There's zero evidence that any plan to target/kill Ukrainians existed under Stalin and all the evidence that grain-producing areas were the ones affected, not ones with any specific ethnic composition.

The event is thus best understood as "the Soviet famine of 1932-33", not a Ukrainian-specific tragedy. It was of course a horrible tragedy that was exacerbated by existing policy and initial mismanagement, with some leaders guilty of criminal negligence. There're lessons to draw from it for the Soviet government specifically and for leftist government generally. There're parallels to the British-caused famines in Ireland and India. But the way it's used today is a heap of lies constructed by some of the worst people with the most hostility to anything leftist.

Tolkien got better over time.

In the Hobbit, the class story is "fat rich boring kulak can be a badass hero - maybe because he comes from an adventurous bloodline on his mother's side".

In Rings, it becomes "fat rich kulak can be a badass hero - but only with the help of the landless bum who is actually noble of spirit".

Maybe he'd have gotten to "hobbits and orcs have more in common with each other than with Aragorn or Sauron" eventually.

Glory, glory, hallelujah! @jabrd and @congressbaseballfan returned, a certain aristocrat of the insects banned - the skies are getting brighter all of a sudden. :Care-Comrade: :Care-Comrade:

I was ready to give up on the site after the threads calling for their reinstatement were removed yesterday with no explanation. But fuck if I'm not glad to be wrong! Let the tide turn and reason prevail.

...Gonna mention and hold out hope for @ElonMarx, @Ram_The_Manparts, @Amos, and especially @GrandAyatollaLenin who was still seeking a case review when the shit went down a few days ago.

If it was one big list I don't see why it wouldn't work. And people having to wait a day longer to be unbanned would still be more fair than permabans for all.

I'm directly complaining about the toxicity that's causing me to leave.

I'm trying to say that a good person volunteering to be a mod (which is a great and admirable thing, just like policing is supposed to be and is portrayed in mainstream culture) can get into bad behaviors under the pressures of the role.

Excusing bad behavior by mods isn't helping the mods in the long term. Hold them to a high standard and everyone will love each other more.

The people who joined ISIS were singular examples, to be fair, and stopped posting. But there were ISIS supporters there spreading their propaganda. The point is that when communication and information were the primary goals, with people wanting to learn about facts, you can even get people who want each other dead to talk in a civil manner. This is different from an ideological community like this one, but the lesson I draw from it is that civility is possible everywhere.

That's why I called it a metaphor. I don't mean it as a comparison. The similarity is in the attitudes not the contents of the actions.

I'm not saying there's a war - I'm saying it feels like an US vs. THEM conflict when good comrades are banned for no reason and people say "eh, it's okay if some innocents get banned."

Hey, libs and reactionaries hate all leftists. Leftists only hate leftists who aren't True Leftists.

Removed by mod

This has been superseded though, no? Almost every conversation on the site right now is directly or indirectly referencing the recent drama.

A good-faith post by an original/regular user trying to present a solution should at worst be removed, not used as a reason to ban the poster.

I don't eat meat. But I love humanity - and so should you. Humanity would be better if it didn't eat meat, but they do, and I love them, and you should love them more than you hate their sins.

Thanks for illustrating my point. If you don't like church - you worship Satan. If you don't denounce how 99% of humanity lives, you hate puppies.