the_dunk_tank
It's the dunk tank.
This is where you come to post big-brained hot takes by chuds, libs, or even fellow leftists, and tear them to itty-bitty pieces with precision dunkstrikes.
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How long do you think it'll take liberals to figure out that derivatives and oil futures don't translate into ammunition and rations if you outsourced all your factories?
They never will, the signs are already bad for the Ukrainian side.
This is not to say "Russia stronk, victory imminent", but that there's a rising tide on the Russian side which has, amusingly, more stable allies, that can actually ship war supplies on time. Even this lib commentator is not shying away from noting the Ukrainian counter-offensive floundered. The closer you get to the actual details, the less gung-ho you are about the war, funny that.
One of the worst and best things to happen to the world was the rise of the private defense contractors.
Obviously I don't need to explain why it is one of the worst things. But as for the best? Man, if all of the worst excesses of capitalism and neoliberalism aren't captured in a microcosm that is defence contractors...
The sheer amount of graft and inefficiency and boondoggles and everything else that comes from putting profits first in a captive capital environment. That's not to say that truly free-range capital is somehow a force for good but when defence contractors know that they're going to get handed billions upon billions of dollars every year and that they're competing against maybe a couple of other contractors, and sometimes none at all, then they're largely insulated from the forces of the market that tend to drive capitalist innovation.
The fact that the US had basically emptied its stocks of certain munitions really early in the Ukraine war speaks volumes about how fragile of a paper tiger the military-industrial complex really is. Obviously the US would have strategic stockpiles tucked away for when the shit hits the fan but last I checked it was going to take years for stocks of certain munitions to be replenished.
And the US isn't even in close to being in a full-blown war right now.
If it was like the old model the US would be able to take direct intervention into production, command-economy style, to produce weapons in order to fill the current shortfall in production but it would probably require an all out war with the US at the centre before they'd even consider abandoning their precious and fundamentally hamstrung neoliberal model.
Shit's rotten to the core and it is glorious thing to behold.
An important thing that westerners forget. Aside from rampant privatization in western counties, they frequently alienate the global south by demeaning them, their cultures, and refusing to provide any aid to substitute China’s and Russia’s aid. They expect Africans, Latin Americans, and Asians to just shut up and sanction everyone to the detriment of their people and economies.