It's sad to see how easily westerners are mislead by our own leaders, who ape Soviet contempt for constituents and maliciously ignore voter inputs.
You should at least make an effort to see things from the Russian point of view. To say there's nothing valid in the Russian state's actions, is really idiotic.
1) Are post WW2 borders sacred?
2) The dissolution of the USSR was chaotic, unnegotiated, and basically due to the magnanimity of Gorbachev.
3) Therefore, post USSR space resembles post-colonial Africa: former co-nationals are now minorities, depending on which post-Soviet state one examines. Armenia and Azerbaijan are good examples. Oh, but the news didn't tell you to get upset about it yet, so you have no opinion? That's why these opinions on Ukraine are so unprincipled.
4) The Turks depopulated Ukraine via the slave trade. Russia conquered the land, pushed the Turks back, and colonized E Ukraine for themselves. 18th century stuff. What I want to know is why the wokester position (the official Western "Good Guy" position, otherwise known the Party Line Winston) finds the USA's existence an affront to Native Americans and Mexicans, Israel's existence an affront to Palestinians, but cares not one whit for Poland occupying half of historic Germany, Turkey's ongoing genocide of Armenians (They back Azerbaijan, and Turkey is also a NATO power), and Greeks (threatening to invade... read proper journalists and you'll know)?
5) The West did the same thing to Serbia. The West in fact helped with the Muslim genocide of Serbians. Kosovo is the origin of Serbian culture and the Muslims overran it in the last 400 years. If you weep for the Native Americans and Tibetans, then you should care about what happened in Serbia too. Worse, the precedent is the one that the Russians used as the pretext to invade Ukraine.
6) Crimea was given to Ukraine in the 1950s by Khrushchev. It was Tatar and then it was Russian. HOW IS THAT SACRED? The same international law the US breaks constantly?
7) Remember that post-Cold War Magnanimity by Gorby? Know how people keep saying 'uh oh, if Putin loses, he'll nuke us all?' Do you really think that political shift came from nowhere? The west has been attacking Russia ever since the Cold War ended. If western idiots (sadly, most of us) haven't recognized (or are too ignorant to even know about because you don't read) the damage, that's only because you do the same thing the Russians do: slavishly listen to leaders without actually questioning the fact-stack. The US broke the promise not to move NATO eastward. That was the original sin. That was not nothing. That was as aggressive as attacking Ukraine. The demographic decline of Russia is not war damage? The economic damage of allowing China into the WTO and not Russia (when they were trying to be good) is not war damage? The use of western financial institutions to pillage Russia and financialize and control its mineral assets, while at the same time encouraging the de-industrializing of Russia is not war damage?
8) The Russians stopped the Cold War, but the US and the West did not.
9) Now they are mobilizing. They can't do it like we do: the US uses war to pillage its own people. The Russians are mobilizing the only way they can: the old fashioned way. The Russians are pushing back the only way they can: the old fashioned way.
10) Everywhere I go, supposedly intelligent people act like citizens of Oceana who can't seem to remember what happened the prior news cycle and remember only what the Wokeing class demands. Everything else goes in the memory hole.
11) THE WEST IS JUST AS BAD! CYBERPUNK IS JUST AS SH!T AS FALLOUT!
12) I didn't want any of this. The time to have stopped this was in the 1990s when the Western Trojan horse known as Chubais was busy annihilating the Russian economy. We nurtured China because their slaves were going to make our masters more profits and turn the majority of Americans from a free people with trades into a poor, welfare dependent people from the noblesse oblige of our 'elites' who shipped our manufacturing overseas... Russia has resources, China has slaves. Russia didn't play along when we tried financializing their economy and pulling it into our orbit. So now it's war.
13) To all you stubborn ignorant dummies: Good job. You have caused global starvation, European economic collapse, the annihilation of Ukraine, and it all benefits... you?
14) Hacker News is filled with beneficiaries of US policies. You can rely on a man to not understand something when his paycheck is dependent on him not understanding.
15) Keep on downvoting. The truth is a virus and I hope it destroys your brains.
The centralization has to do with cheap money. That appears to be a topic beyond your pay grade. Hacker News has a low skill base when it comes to economic understanding. VC funded enterprises all have a magic money aspect to them that proper entrepreneurs (bootstrappers) do not have. Your post reeks of it. That was not the issue.
You want to strawman my point, because...?
InCityDreams:
"In a funny kind of way, I'd rather have unsolvable problems than be advertised at.
If the problems actually need solving, ill go looking.
If I'm not looking, there's no problem (to be solved)."
Summary: "If I'm not looking, there's no problem (to be solved)."
Then Deltree replies:
"Newsflash: There are unknown, unknowns.
The vast majority of the population, they don't even know there are solutions that would change their life.
E.g: In a world of 8,000,000,000 how many people know that there is Coursera which has top-level courses that can change their lives, improve productivity and make impact?.
"I know everything, don't tell me. I'll ask" is exactly the attitude that prevents learning (and prevents people from knowing about coursera). You are just advertising that personality to the rest of the world"
Summary: ""I know everything, don't tell me. I'll ask" is exactly the attitude that prevents learning."
Me: "Seems obvious. I agree. However I think you're not going to get through to those with central planning biases. By which I mean, the notion that perfect planning can beat the market.
The Palace Economy central planner says, "give me wheat." The Soviet central planner says, "more steel comrades." The American style technocrat planner says, "we will tell you what you want and then deny market alternatives."
I think there's no reasoning with these people"
Summary: Yes, I know everything don't ask people can't be reasoned with. Same as Soviets or Palace economists. Same as American duopolies, which have gotten worse and stronger as government spending and share of national economy has increased. I took for granted that this is obvious, as others in the thread seemed to instinctively grasp this point.
Not you though.
Duopoly exists from too much government influence so solutions involving more government influence are doomed to failure.
Let's teach you to fish anyhow: the duopoly only mirrors the power structure of the government which allows it. More regulations to enforce what is advertising and what is art, means lawyers are then involved with case uses of the English language. An area that is a known incompetency for the trade.
Any individual who says, "I know everything. If I don't, I'll ask." How did they know anything in the first place? From the government schools? From their parents? Parents can't know everything. And AHA! Government schools are influencers and NOT AT ALL institutions of learning. Any learning done is incidental.
This is Kuhn's argument: you cannot revolutionize a flawed paradigm inside the flawed paradigm. If you prefer, you could say it's the Dunning-Kruger effect.
You're a jack@ss. I addressed my interlocutors arguments directly. You do not. Eff off, you MF.
EDIT: And as a concluding point, because you're so daft, this means that only influence from outside a power structure can possibly change the decision control flow. Ie Art, the child of which is applied symbol, the child of which is advertising.
We're talking about advertising, not monopolies. That's your first fail.
Second, you present a false binary that we have either the duopoly, or the self-starting individual.
Marketing is a subset of Influence. Influence is a subset of the Arts. Arts being defined as non-axiomatic symbolic ordering.
You want to ignore all these distinctions, so you can stop annoying advertisers.
In the process of doing that, you either push advertising into the arts, or you kill the arts. Both are stupid. And that shows so are you.
You would dispense with the market, because you don't like that it's a meany.
You conflate because that's the standard tech scumbag method: you interpret 'restrictions' as 'damage' and route around it. Like a virus that crashes the whole system.
How would you find a book that didn't try to influence you? How would you find information that did not exist to influence? You are asking for an invisible pink unicorn. It does not exist. Your whole argument is stupid, sloppy, and sophomoric.