For the Russian invasion of Ukraine, that may have had more to do with Ukraine’s budget and economy of the time: Ukraine had a massive trade deficit with Russia in the 2000’s and early 2010’s, and the government was running a huge deficit.
Faced with cuts to state pensions, Ukraine started using gas from the pipeline which connects Russia to Western Europe, without paying for it. That understandably annoyed Russia (that’s not a justification for war!), who couldn’t turn off gas to Ukraine without also turning it off for their main customers in Western Europe.
These events seemed to have kicked off the norstream pipeline (legal) and invasion of Crimea (illegal).
The pipeline thing may have annoyed Russia, but it was the Maidan revolution which resulted in the invasion of Crimea. Russia simply doesn't like having neighbours that aren't its puppets. When Ukrainians got rid of Yanukovych, Ukraine stopped being a Russian puppet, which annoyed Putin very much.
Russia has a long, long history of being mean to its neighbours that choose to pursue independent policy. As an example, Finland and Baltic states have been subject to countless of intentional airspace violations since the collapse of the Soviet Union, even before the Ukrainian war.
My belief was that many analysts at the time considered that the justification rather than the cause, as alluded to by the Ukraine counter claims in the guardian article.
Similarly, Trump isn't saying he wants to invade Venezuela to distract from domestic issues, but it's all about the "drug boats".
> but you don't prove that it's impossible for any other system of ownership or of mediating access to resources/"things" to allow that.
You can’t prove a negative, so the onus is actually on you to show an example of a working alternative that does not rely on property.
And it has been tried in the 20th century. Several times, in fact. Despite all the industrial espionage committed by the Soviet Union (which saved them the resources to do the research themselves) and the slave labor of people who spoke or wrote about the “wrong” ideas (which surplus was given to the rest of the population), ordinary people in the USSR had much worse lives than those in the West.
The Soviet Union won the space race, but I'm not sure if they had property or not. They were a dictatorship, anyway, so we probably don't want to repeat that.
Yes, it did[1]! Because they rather quickly discovered that you can’t build complex things without it. Which brings us back round to the original point!
[1] But… they did make a go of it without property before discovering that it wouldn’t work. It turns out (shockingly!) that indentured serfs (who make the food) like the idea of land reform when it means they own the land. But they don’t like it so much when it means nobody owns the land. And when they are not happy then you have no food. And then those quotes about “x meals until y” start to have some salience. And then you start to think about the most effective way to use the number of bullets you have on hand (which is smaller than the number of mouths you need to feed).
You aren’t thinking this through. If a startup defaults, it is because they have no money left (which is because they do not have a viable business yet). So there is nothing of value to repossess.
This is the same reason the bank asks for an independent valuation of a house (and requires the buyer to maintain insurance) before releasing the money to pay for it: The value of the collateral needs to plausibly match the value of the loan, so that the value of the loan can be recovered in case of default.
The only way this works is for the founder to personally guarantee the loan. Which means the founder needs to have sufficient personal assets to keep the bank happy. It also means the founder risks personal bankruptcy if those assets are not enough to cover the loan if the startup defaults.
The company will have some value left on default. E.g if it's a software company it will have the IP for the software etc pp
Now wherever that's enough for anyone to be willing to take that risk with the loan is another story and thus I could now quote my previous comment in its entirety
Failed startups don’t have value left at the end. They go until they run out of money. Then they liquidate the office furniture to make the last payroll. Sometimes they don’t wrap up early enough and the founder and board members are personally liable for it.
Nobody wants to buy the custom software needed to run “The pets.com for GenAI” because it would be cheaper to start from scratch than to understand the codebase and make it do what you want.
Companies like 23-and-me that accumulate valuable data while going bankrupt are the rare exception… but banks/VCs do not know a-priori which ones will be that exception! If they did, they just wouldn’t make the bad loans in the first place!
> Now wherever that's enough for anyone to be willing to take that risk
Well, but it clearly isn’t, right? So everything else you wrote is sort of irrelevant.
I mean, why don’t you lend a startup $1000 on the condition they pay you back $1500 in two years[1] if they succeed and nothing if they fail? Pass the hat around your neighborhood and I bet you could fund a few real startups!
Except that.. oh.. when it’s your money on the line, suddenly you realize those are very stupid terms. You lose the whole $1000 90% of the time, break even 5% of the time and make a +$500 profit 5% of the time. The math isn’t mathing here.
So you’ll want to very carefully vet the founders and their plan. Be very picky about who you fund. Maybe you’ll ask them to personally guarantee some fraction of the loan. Suddenly, your highly moral terms look exactly like the business loans that approximately 0% of startups use because VCs offer them a better deal.
[1] Any more than that would be usury, which is immoral, right?
Take a deep breath and reread my comment please, you're interpreting things into it that I never said, and I'm not sure how you could've gotten the impression were in there - I merely pointed out that this behavior is core to capitalism, because the people with money own said money - and are in no way responsible to create a "fair" (from the perspective of the person receiving money) playing field
> Why should they get ownership of the business? When you get a mortgage for your house, the bank doesn’t permanently own part of your house after you pay it off.
Because the VCs are funding the startup on extremely favorable terms?
If the startup fails, the founders can just walk away. They are not personally liable for anything. They can (and often do) subsequently form another startup, often funded by the very same VCs who funded the one that just failed!
If, OTOH, you fail to pay your mortgage, the bank takes your house. And they make hard for you to get another mortgage from any bank by reporting the foreclosure to credit ratings agencies.
You absolutely can keep the equity (and surplus) for yourself… but you will need to personally guarantee the loan. You may need to declare bankruptcy if the startup fails, and all that entails.
VCs are happy to throw away money on 99 failed startups precisely because they are entitled to the continued surplus from 1 successful startup. Banks are happy to make failure to pay extremely unpleasant for you because they are not entitled to any surplus from business loans which lead to successful outcomes.
> VCs are happy to throw away money on 99 failed startups precisely because they are entitled to the continued surplus from 1 successful startup.
And why is this a good thing? I think the past decade and the current bubble point to this being a bug, not a feature. What I mean to say is that VCs seem far too eager to throw money at ventures with untenable business plans or that lack any edge over competing firms, which is a waste.
Ok, well, I personally really like driving a car with zero tailpipe emissions, and the cleaner air that comes from it (Tesla).
I think it’s awesome having a little rectangle in my pocket that sends text messages from anywhere on earth and summons an encyclopedia (Apple, Google, Starlink, Intel).
I enjoy talking to (and seeing) my friends and family while they are thousands of miles away (Cisco, Apple, and many others).
I think it is fantastic that we continue to find new labor-saving methods of farming so that fewer people need toil in the fields (the current batch of ag-drone and ag-AI startups).
This is like asking “well, why do we need that science mumbo jumbo anyhow?”
What do you mean "a bug"? A bug in what? If to someone it makes sense to pour money into an apparently non-viable business on the off chance that it succeeds, what exactly is it that you're saying is not functioning properly? The person's mind? So what do you want to do about it?
You're only reacting to a part of the system. You're starting from the axiom that businesses need a level of risky funding that only VCs will provide, and then congratulating VCs for swooping in and saving the day. But would it be possible to have a system where startups to require less funding? For example, by UBI, or normalizing bootstrapping?
Sorry, but your reply is so utterly disconnected from my question that I'm just going to assume you replied to me by mistake and ignore it. If it wasn't a mistake then you've completely missed the point.
You said this: "If to someone it makes sense to pour money into an apparently non-viable business on the off chance that it succeeds, what exactly is it that you're saying is not functioning properly?"
But this comment only makes sense when starting from a whole bunch of assumptions, which happen to be true right here and now, but are in no way universal.
Let me make a comparison: "If to someone it makes sense to carry a flamethrower to the grocery store to defend against thieves, what exactly is wrong with that?" What's wrong is a society where that kind of defense is necessary! We shouldn't be debating whether the individual should carry a flamethrower to the grocery store, we should be discussing how to improve society so they don't have to.
Also, rich people don't get to create a problem and also claim credit for solving it (with money).
>Let me make a comparison: Me: "People should be able to walk to work" You: "If someone can't walk 10 miles to work along the side of a road with cars whizzing by at 100mph, why should they be able to walk to work?"
Yeah, like I said, you completely missed the point of my comment. Here, let me fix the analogy for you:
A: The fact that people drive cars on roads is a bug, not a feature.
B: A bug where? Like, in people's minds for thinking that driving cars on roads is a practical mode of transportation?
C: People should be able to walk to work.
Do you see how C's reply to B is a non sequitur? It doesn't answer the question that was posed, it presents an irrelevant "should", and even if one is generous enough to grant that people should be able to walk to work, it doesn't make choosing to drive cars on roads for other purposes an irrational decision. And, and, it most certainly doesn't make it irrational in the world we actually live in.
EDIT:
>We shouldn't be debating whether the individual should carry a flamethrower to the grocery store, we should be discussing how to improve society so they don't have to.
I don't appreciate being told what is or isn't okay to talk about.
I'm sorry, but it is you who completely misses the point, and have so far failed to engage with your opponent's rhetoric on any meaningful level. (Using latin words like sequitur does not count!)
To borrow your analogy: there is, in fact, major issue in people driving cars on roads. This is why many cities elect to reduce car use by means of policy. This is accomplished because there's a dialectic where "should" translates into "must." It's called governance.
>so far failed to engage with your opponent's rhetoric on any meaningful level.
I have not failed to do it, I have chosen not to do it. I asked a specific question and received as an answer something that's totally irrelevant. I am decidedly not interested in whether "it would be possible to have a system where startups to require less funding, for example, by UBI, or normalizing bootstrapping". It has nothing to do with my original comment, and I'm not going to engage with it.
I am decidedly not interested in whether it's possible to build a society where grandma doesn't need to defend herself with a flamethrower at the grocery store. That has nothing to do with my comment and I won't engage with it. I am simply asking what's wrong with grandma defending herself with a flamethrower at the grocery store.
What if we created a system where startups didn't require as much funding? Is the system set up in such a funding-intensive way in order to benefit VCs, who can swoop in and save the day? If so, rich people don't get any credit for solving a problem rich people created.
> Unions can't defeat the forces of supply and demand
Oh, but they do! A core part of most union contracts is figuring out how to limit the number of people eligible to be hired.
That’s why “union shops” exist. Or: why (in the entertainment industry) a production pays a heavy fine to hire non-union actors. Doctors do a similar thing by having the AMA lobby to limit the number of credentials granted each year.
Ultimately, unions don't want to limit how many people get hired. They want to dictate how much those people have to be paid, and somehow get their cut. Businesses decide that they can't afford more people and find a way to succeed within the constraints imposed by the union. Unions can't force businesses to hire people they can't afford. They also can't stop others from being willing to work for less. That's what I mean about not beating supply and demand.
> IPv6 without a NAT exposes information about different devices inside the private network.
In practice this has not been true for over 20 years.
IPv6 devices on SLAAC networks (which is to say, almost all of them) regularly rotate their IPv6 address. The protocol also explicitly encourages (actually, requires) hosts to have more than one IPv6 address active at any given time.
You are also making a wrong assumption that the externally visible address and port ranges chosen by the NAT device do not make the identity of internal devices easily guessable.
J1772 is significantly more than a single resistor. And, while the signaling is analog, all practical implementations are going to use digital circuitry to generate and detect it.
Faced with cuts to state pensions, Ukraine started using gas from the pipeline which connects Russia to Western Europe, without paying for it. That understandably annoyed Russia (that’s not a justification for war!), who couldn’t turn off gas to Ukraine without also turning it off for their main customers in Western Europe.
These events seemed to have kicked off the norstream pipeline (legal) and invasion of Crimea (illegal).
Here is a contemporary article less than a year before the Crimean invasion: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/29/russia-ukraine...
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kharkiv_Pact#Effects
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