Polish government tells citizens to gather sticks for heating, stick it to putin.

@clousems said in #7:

> Western victory in a war between Ukraine and Russia? That'd be a neat trick.

you can pretend to be naive, but the ukraine conflict is a proxy war between NATO and russia.

> Reason no. 3 is an obvious pipe dream, and I can't imagine that was a real factor in the decision.

nobody said the west was competent.

> Russian economy holding on, in picture form:

this is just cope. people have been saying "the russian economy is gonna collapse any day now!" for the past 3 months, meanwhile their currency is stronger than it was in a decade, and the russian government is increasing pensions by 10%.

> (PS-- not even Russia is claiming that its economy is "fine". The CBR-- a fairly pro-Russian source of Russian economic news-- is discussing the need to adapt to a new, more challenging economic status quo in pretty much all of its bulletins. Considering the sorry preexisting state of the Russian economy, that is what we economists call "pretty freakin' bad")

i think that is a stretch, sure nobody is saying that the russian economy is not worse off in the short term, and those problems have to be solved, but comparing the russian and western economies since the war started, and comparing where they are headed, it is obvious that russia is going to stay ahead. inflation is stable in russia, which is why they increased pensions to match it, meanwhile inflation is skyrocketing in the west, gasoline is going up, energy is going up, and because of those two, everything else is going up in price as well, in germany they are starting to ration products, eg. you can only buy one box of pasta at the grocery store. and all of this is going to get worse, especially by novemeber when it starts to get cold and europeans will have to burn sticks to stay warm.

The Russian economy is floundering at around the same point it was when putin was elected 20 years ago, big surprise - it's been completely in the dumps and the world is about to completely transition away from all of the forms of energy that provide them income in the first place- sure they might get 5-10 years of high prices of oil, but then the transition will seriously begin to kick in and if they're not in a position to adapt their economy could see some very serious issues. (Not to mention a simultaneously shrinking population)

Wonder how he became the 'richest man in Russia' - while playing corruption theater with the previous oligarchs lmao.

Yeah more like he just took all of the corruption, and siphoned it all to himself

I have no idea why would anybody think that "Russia will win".

Even conceptually.

How would that "win" looked like?

Even if they managed to kill Zelensky, his wife and the government.
Even if Ukrainian army surrendered.
Even if they appointed some puppet government (traitors like Medvedchuk, Yanukovych) and imposed martial law.

Even then, how could they possibly win?

The Ukraine would still fight for the freedom, even under these conditions. And I'm not talking only about the well equipped and trained guerrilla warriors. I'm talking about all people of Ukraine.

The Kremlin aparatchiks would like Ukraine to be "neutral" or even "a part of Russia".
I don't think that they can comprehend that people are voluntarily risking their lives to make sure that it will never be the case.

@TheMuffinMan2000 said in #11:
> you can pretend to be naive, but the ukraine conflict is a proxy war between NATO and russia
> this is just cope. people have been saying "the russian economy is gonna collapse any day now!" for the past 3 months, meanwhile their currency is stronger than it was in a decade, and the russian government is increasing pensions by 10%

In other words, Russia illegally invaded another sovereign (non NATO member) nation in order to try to provoke NATO into attacking Russia?
Your decision to argue Economics with @clousems is, as Sir Humphrey might say, courageous.

@WildTiger said in #13:
> I have no idea why would anybody think that "Russia will win".

easy answer, you just have to not fall for propaganda.

> How would that "win" looked like?

russia would achieve the goals it outlined for the special military operation. it is pretty straightforward.

> The Ukraine would still fight for the freedom, even under these conditions. And I'm not talking only about the well equipped and trained guerrilla warriors. I'm talking about all people of Ukraine.

the same way the afghan people would fight against the taliban for feminism and democracy and bakabazi? the fundamental issue is that this world view is incorrect. nobody, except people in the west (even then it's arguable) actually want freedom (whatever that means), people do not die for abstractions like "freedom" or "democracy", people don't even want to be inconvenienced for abstractions, the idea that anyone in ukraine is thinking about sacrificing their lives for freedom is so far removed from reality that i don't even believe we are talking about the same thing.

regardless you are wrong about the ukrainians fighting a vietkong style for against the russians, what will probably happen is that hostilities subside, and then ukrainians find out that the reason they suffered was to keep russian separatists in donbas a part of the country, and will either move on with their lives or overthrow the government.

@TheMuffinMan2000 said in #15:

> the same way the afghan people would fight against the taliban for feminism and democracy and bakabazi? the fundamental issue is that this world view is incorrect. nobody, except people in the west (even then it's arguable) actually want freedom (whatever that means), people do not die for abstractions like "freedom" or "democracy", people don't even want to be inconvenienced for abstractions, the idea that anyone in ukraine is thinking about sacrificing their lives for freedom is so far removed from reality that i don't even believe we are talking about the same thing.

The obvious parallel is the mujahideen and taliban fighting against the USSR/US foreign invaders, not Afgans fighting against Afgans.

@obladie said in #14:
> In other words, Russia illegally invaded another sovereign (non NATO member) nation in order to try to provoke NATO into attacking Russia?

duuuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrr

> Your decision to argue Economics with @clousems is, as Sir Humphrey might say, courageous.

economists are the most ignorant of all the professionals, a study was done about knowledge retention among economics students and it found that graduates lose two thirds their knowledge of economic principles after 5 years. and frankly you don't even need that, if being an expert in economics gave you a special insight into things then all of the economists would be rich, but they are some of the poorest, because their "education" has no impact on their predictions about the economy.

the results speak for themselves, how many experts on the economy predicted the ruble being worth more than it did a decade ago? how many predicted that inflation is so under control that the russian government can afford to raise pensions? how many predicted rationing air conditioning in italy and spain, and rationing flour and pasta in germany?

@TheMuffinMan2000

An economist is more like a scientist/theorist - the practical application of economics is business and finance lol.

@twighead said in #16:
> The obvious parallel is the mujahideen and taliban fighting against the USSR/US foreign invaders, not Afgans fighting against Afgans.

I am saying that people are not willing to die for the values of the american government, like feminism and democracy. the afghan army collapsed in front of the advancing taliban, none willing to sacrifice their lives for abstractions. if you think it is going to be any different in ukraine you are in for a rude awakening.

@TheMuffinMan2000 said in #17:
> duuuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrr
>
>
>
> economists are the most ignorant of all the professionals, a study was done about knowledge retention among economics students and it found that graduates lose two thirds their knowledge of economic principles after 5 years. and frankly you don't even need that, if being an expert in economics gave you a special insight into things then all of the economists would be rich, but they are some of the poorest, because their "education" has no impact on their predictions about the economy.
>
> the results speak for themselves, how many experts on the economy predicted the ruble being worth more than it did a decade ago? how many predicted that inflation is so under control that the russian government can afford to raise pensions? how many predicted rationing air conditioning in italy and spain, and rationing flour and pasta in germany?

A statistician would have done that.
The russian ruble was worth shit 10 years ago..it is now worth a tiny bit of extra shit.