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South Africa and Third Reich historically used some of these methods when they had a need for it. If i remember right the talk of them will start seriously once oil prices get stuck above roughly 150$ a barrel level for good, adjusting for inflation of course. Otherwise the investment in the...

"Shit that burns" is something that can be made in many ways. Fossil hydrocarbons are just the cheapest and most convenient with current economy and technology. But currently and historically, other ways to procure them were used. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biofuel...

No we can't. This is a take straight from the two brain cells of environmentalist Malthus wannabes (which ironically the modern status quo is quite fond of). We will never "run out" of atoms to build stuff out of. However they are used, the exact same mass of a given element is still somewhere...

You would have had a good point for most time before the industrial revolution, and many of the absolute monarchs, emperors and the like of the time would think it a great point. Now since the time when the west went so ahead of China that UK could bully it, China is not doing that well in...

All sorts of ideas did from various places. But they are successful in far less places. They won't let you stay isolated. Taking an example from certain aggressive foreign minorities and countries in strife is a better idea. You need to make the other guys want to let you be isolated. In the...

Become the ones who count the votes or watch those who do. Which by such specific designation should affect non-western cultures even less. They absolutely can, even if only because they are the only ones left standing. Are they? The zealots suffer from a pathological inability to...

Them we need governments that will see leftists, islamists, foreign aggressors and the like as problems. Was it? There were quite a few countries that fell to communism long before they have experienced much modernity. Some still didn't, see: North Korea. Families, unlike the Church, are not...

The left, certain foreign influences, the big corporations and so on. Let's be realistic, in the more crowded, competitive, "smaller", world with its dynamic threats is just not conductive to such near anarchist fantasies. I'd focus more on orienting the full scale of government's power more...

That is such an obvious obviousness. States have more resources and technologies to manage complex organizations than ever, of course everyone interested in taking or keeping power will use them, and that includes those who shouldn't be in power. No, the right needs to have its own idea of...

These two points are a direct consequence of economic and technological situation changing over the last few hundred years, it has nothing to do with any political ideology. Of course a frontier settler country of 1800 had far smaller government than a superpower of 2000. Bureaucracy overgrowth...

How are these gains permanent? That's a pattern with more holes than Swiss cheese. If that is so, why the poorest of post-communist countries still democratic, while oil monarchies, Venezuela and the like despite having more money than sense turned to authoritarianism or monarchy instead? Not...

OTOH those are not aligned with the west, and have far worse problems than a minority of light progressives.

Of fucking course all gains and setbacks are temporary, as this is an ongoing conflict. Battles are won and lost, but none of them are nearly decisive enough to decide who won the war. I don't share your monarchy fanboyism at all. You are comparing idealized monarchies of the world half a...

They did have a fair bit of humiliations and disasters. The disillusionment with Soviet promises after WW2, setbacks of socialist policy under Thatcher and Reagan, fall of Soviet Union and resulting end of communism in Europe, fall of Arab socialism, compromising away of Swedish model...

They are sure trying, but its hard to tell how well will that work out in the future. The progressives are pushing all sorts of things in all sorts of places since a very long time, but that never necessarily means success. It is potentially more successful, but also more unstable and more...

Ukraine would get a shitload of money from EU's welfare schemes, many EU countries dodge the common currency and migration with success, bureaucracy many countries grow beyond EU minimum anyway, and austerity, well, don't bankrupt yourself like PIGS and you won't have it. But the same is true...

This is patently untrue. There are clear military and economic benefits to be had there, especially for a country like Ukraine. In the long run these organizations can fall apart and be formed again differently ten times over. There is enough political pressure around Ukraine's application...

Of course this process is as applicable to random countries as to countries who already belong to western organizations like EU or NATO since many decades, hence in conclusion the question of belonging to these organizations has little bearing on whether the country is ruled by western...