canastrophee t1_j271wxc wrote on December 30, 2022 at 2:51 AM

Reply to comment by palmej2 in Zelensky Ready to Join WEF Meeting in Davos as Ukraine Seeks Post-war Funds by mulitu

I mean, every list I've seen of the causes of WW2 has included economic instability worsened by punitive reparations for WW1. Ukraine needs to be compensated, but bleeding Russia dry to do it will probably only bring round 2 in thirty years as a new generation tries to secure resources.

scummy_shower_stall t1_j27y7sp wrote on December 30, 2022 at 7:54 AM

If they bleed the oligarchs’ foreign bank accounts dry, let them. There’s billions upon billions there.

daniel_22sss t1_j29n5oe wrote on December 30, 2022 at 5:29 PM

"WW2 has included economic instability worsened by punitive reparations for WW1"

I've always wondered - how "bad" those punitive reparations were, that Hitler managed to gather one of the strongest armies in the world with some of the best tech in the world?

canastrophee t1_j29vdnq wrote on December 30, 2022 at 6:20 PM

The answer is fascism! It's real easy to raise money when a) your citizenry and their families are punished for disobeying and b) you're targeting an established ethnic group for systematic extermination and can steal and/or sell off all of their accumulated wealth. See Japanese-Americans on the west coast circa WW2 for greater detail on the second point.

Fascism as a political ideology is inherently based in fear and hate. Economic fear is very easy to motivate into ethnic hate with a little application of job-stealing propoganda -- in fact, it's the popular choice for totalitarians everywhere, including Putin. Also, money isn't real, in the sense that money is an approximation we've all agreed to value. Germany still had mines, schools, factories, and a lot of hungry people willing to be soldiers in order to be sure their family could eat, alongside the true believers and opportunistic Nazis.