I guess my question is who gave the Americans the right? I say this as an American. But would not the world be a better place if we just minded our own business and quit nation building and stoking non existant fires?
Pretty much when the US was the only super power to survive WWII unscathed.
Also, having developed atomic hellfire, and the will to use it (twice), kinda makes you the big kid on the playground.
They love to take credit for WWII while completely ignoring the part Canada played
Many countries played an important role, not just Canada. And no, not all of us take credit for it.
Canada’s role is adequately acknowledged, our Nederland brothers send flowers every year
The US taking credit at all in Europe is silly but they did help with the Japanese theatre
There will always be a Nederland Canada bromance.
There are privileges to being an empire and the capitalists in the US continue to use that empire to get access to those privileges. Favorable trade, commercial, and financing terms are a big one.
Also the US war industry pushes the country to intervene. You can see how there are interventionist and isolationist movements in the US fighting right now over how much the US gets directly involved in Iran-Israel.
Because people in power only want one thing - more power. They only fear one thing - loosing power.
*Losing
It’s not about USA, it’s about (powerful) countries in general. China, USA, more restricted also Russia, Iran, … If someone has power (or wants to have it looks on North Korea) they also want to keep it.
They want more power, they don’t just want to keep it. I don’t get it, isn’t it absolutely exhausting?
What exactly has China done militarily over the past 45 years that leads you to compare it to the US? China is predominantly a peaceful world power which hasn’t invaded any country over the past half a century.
Also definitely not genocidal. /s
Nor threatening any country.
Huh? China isn’t genocidal, what are you talking about?
lol
I want Finland to rule the world.
I also want that, but only for the future generations to know that “we were Finnished”
The last time Finland invaded a nation, they did it together with the Nazis. I don’t think you want Finland to rule the world.
It was either surrender to Soviet Union (legendary dicks) or ally with Nazis (had no reason to stay and conquer us). We picked the lesser evil.
If “the lesser evil” to you are nazis, you’re a nazi
If the lesser evil would’ve been Soviet Union, we would’ve been a) communists and b) not independent anymore.
You famously lost the war, and you’re still an independent nation. Finland obtained independence in 1917 because of the communists, namely the Bolshevik constitution, allowing for the first time in human history the right of self-determination and secession. If it hadn’t been for the communist you’d be a province of Russia.
Okay but in a hypothetical scenario where Finland ruled the world (as it exists today), I highly, highly doubt they would be siding with fascists. I don’t see your point. Thanks for leading me to some Wikipedia articles to read though.
Finland currently doesn’t recognise Palestine as a country, they’re currently, as it exists today, siding with the genocidal maniacs in the Israeli government.
That is unfortunate. However, I don’t see why you’re so insistent. You appear to be taking my original comment more seriously than I did. Sorry I didn’t do research on Finland’s position on Palestine or of their involvement in World War II. It was not relevant at the time. I just happen to appreciate Finnish art and culture.
Edit: Sadly, my country doesn’t recognize Palestine either. There isn’t a whole hell of a lot anyone here (excluding our corrupt leaders obviously) can do about it.
Perfection is the enemy of progress
I mean, yeah, sure. But if perfection is two steps to the left and you refuse…why?
But they had the guts to change sides mid-war.
The citizens, in general, don’t. We want to do the same thing every other country’s people want - live our lives and hopefully give our kids a good or better one.
I have no fucking clue what the government is doing to make these decisions.
We were unspoiled by WW2. This gave us an unnatural ability to pull ahead economically while other nations rebuilt. We taught our citizens that this was deserved and the propaganda has stood until pretty recently. This unfair advantage is slowly then quickly unwinding.
“America is the best! Nobody could match our manufacturing!”
Well no, you were just the only hevay industrial country that wasn’t bombed in the 40s. America didn’t rocket ahead through the 60s, they just helped kneecap the competition.
And for the god damn 10th time, Mexico and China didn’t take the manufacturing. They didn’t raid the US and deport Ford to them. Ford walked it all over very politely.
US manufacturing was dominant through the thirties and forties. It really shone in the 40s under a war time economy. It was a sleeping giant and the world knew it. Pennsylvania outputted more steel than Japan and Germany combined. Audacious goals set by President Roosevelt were mocked by Hitler as audacious Hollywood goals. The US easily surpassed these goals.
It was an amazing display of competence. The only other countries to match the intensity of growth would the USSR during the five year plan and the PRC during the eighties. But both of them were starting from an agricultural economy. The USSR never reached the American manufacturing peak and China has surpassed.
The unprecendent dominance is due in no small part because the rivals needed to rebuild. But under representing America’s position with regards to labor, capital, resources and state coordinated mobilization would be a serious error.
After WW2 the US became addicted to being the world police and many other countries were happy to have the US cover the cost of their defense or income from hosting US bases. Selling arms is also big business and the DOD justifies it by saying that it keeps personnel and manufacturing lines for weapons running.
I have an answer different from the others.
US economy depends on the US intellectual property system, a few US monopolist companies and the US dollar, and the financial system.
Especially the intellectual property system. However different laws can be in various countries, in fact everybody tries to follow US law.
It means that a lot of things produces elsewhere mean royalties to US companies, and a lot of things can’t be produced without permission, control of markets, planned development of microelectronics and tech in particular, yadda-yadda.
So - if, in some hypothetical situation, that IP system is undone, with some countries having similar laws, some more like USSR’s “public domain by default with some fixed payment to patent holders”, and all the intermediate variants, then you’ll just have a second depression. Because a huge part of the economy will shrink.
US foreign debt is a meme subject, but honestly, if USD stops being the world’s most reliable currency, you’ll also probably have a default.
US actual industrial production (what doesn’t shrink as easily) is not so impressive when looking at its size. A lot about US level of life doesn’t really match the efficiency of the economy. Say, if you look at Germany, life there is very different. In some ways better, maybe, but many things normal in the US are not achievable there.
My point is - the American IP laws were spread around by pressure. Not just that, but sometimes the monopoly roles of American companies. Part of that pressure is the military guarantor role.
If that stops being relevant, a lot of things which were a given for your economy for many years will stop existing. And for a few other economies too. It might not look as bad as the USSR’s collapse, but it will probably look as ruined and unpredictable as the 1960s world.
I’m curious what is normal in the US and not achievable in Germany.
German here: just creating and selling something is one thing that jumps to my mind.
The concept of “I have an idea and a bit of money so I’ll just found a company” is … Tiresome. Possible, yes, but the legal hurdles both good and bad are ridiculous. You need way more time than in the US just for the formal overhead and even then you are way more in it with your own private existence.
As founder “beschränkte Haftung” is not as limited as it sounds at first if you’re not firm in legalese for example.
Get your bullshit startup valued in the billions by Wall Street
Food delivery as something normal, I’d think. Plumber coming soon after being called. Appointment with doctor to a close enough date.
Those things affected by actually having labor rights and less dependence on colonial mechanisms.
The main reason is that if we stop being the biggest shark in the tank, the next two biggest sharks (China and Russia) can’t be trusted to not feast on the smaller sharks. And if they do feast, they will become too large for the American shark to deal with.
The US is already feeding on the smaller sharks, and has been for decades. Look at their foreign policy in Central and South America, South East Asia, the Middle East.
The only difference is that they’ve been feasting on other nations and not the West. China and Russia don’t have those restraints. All three of them are horrible, but America hasn’t been horrible to us until just recently.
for decades
Centuries*.
China and Russia don’t have those restraints
I understand why you’d say that about modern Russia, but how on Earth are you comparing China to the USA? In what war has China been in the past 40 years? What countries has it been exploiting?
I’m sorry, this seems to imply the US doesn’t “feast on the smaller sharks”. It went as far as threatening Japan with sanctions because they were considering “digital sovereignty” with TRON OS as opposed to Windows at some point. Japan is almost a non-optional ally.
And also one good solution of preventing someone from doing that is arming the smaller sharks. Yet USA seems even more against more equal spread of technologies and weapons than the “next two sharks”.
And also one good solution of preventing someone from doing that is arming the smaller sharks. Yet USA seems even more against more equal spread of technologies and weapons than the “next two sharks”.
Uhmm what? The US does exactly that with NATO and nuclear weapons stationed in Europe.
No. NATO is an extension of this particular shark. Countries in NATO or allied to it are abusing with impunity those not in.
I think it’s even simpler than this. I think any government/state/group with power wants to hold and expand it. I’m not sure there is a group of people that exist that wouldn’t work to exercise control if they could. And I’m not defending the US, I just think it may be an inherently human thing to do.
I think any government/state/group with power wants to hold and expand it
Then you’d be wrong. Famously, after the Russian Revolution in 1917, the Russian Socialist Federation of Soviet Republics, under the leadership of the Bolsheviks, created the first constitution in history that granted the unilateral right of self-determination and secession to all peoples of the former Russian Empire. This is how Poland gained its independence in 1918, as well as Finland and many other countries formerly part of the Russian Empire. Interesting episode of history.
So how did they get from 1918 to 1968?
In 1918 Poland decided to unilaterally invade modern Ukraine and Belarus because of nationalist expansionist beliefs, you can read about it on the wikipedia article or the Polish-Ukrainian war.
In 1939 the Soviet Union recovered those territories and gave them back to the Belarusian and Ukrainian SSRs, which Poles are still crying about. If you care about seeing maps representing this I can give you sources no problem since I’m arguing from good faith.
After 1945, Poland was forced by the USSR to give reparations in order to compensate for the lack of mutual defense agreement against Nazis before 1939, which was a mistaken policy that led to a lot of insatisfaction in Poland. After the mid-1950s, the Soviet Union removed these reparations and instead started subsidising the Polish socialist nation with cheap resources and industrialising it.
What part of 1969 is relevant to you?
It mostly started with the cold war. The US was obsessed with stopping the perceived threat of communism. In the process, it discovered the benefits of power mongering and war profiteering.
It most definitely did not start in the cold war. The US was happily invading and controlling the politics of as much of the continent of the Americas well before WW2, with stuff such as the United Fruit Company or the Big Stick Ideology. The 1898 invasion of Cuba and establishment of a military junta comes to mind.
We’re taught to compete with each other basically at birth cos that’s what benefits capitalism and no one will break the cycle of this evil shit
Because authoritarians convinced the American people that military interventions prevent terrorist attacks to distract them from the reality which is that terrorist attacks are caused by American interventions.
It’s only possible to convince Americans of that because they are shockingly ignorant of history and they believe whatever the warmongers tell them.
America was the standard for a Democratic Republic after WW2.
after the war we helped most of Europe return to normal and even improved quality of life and living standards. part of that help came with stipulations on how the US had control within those countries that had help.
Had the US not stepped in at the time to stabilize Europe, another war would have likely happened and another, and another.
My guess, most of Europe would have fallen under Russian rule, or at the very least heavily influenced by, if the US didn’t step up.
I suppose European’s don’t look at how bad the war left Europe and often just want to forget the atrocities, but that’s not an excuse for blaming the hand that helped you in your time of need.
The US didn’t step in with the Marshall plan to stabilize Europe against war, the US did so in order to prevent socialist uprisings all over Western Europe, and to create ties between European capital and US capital so that Western Europe would support the US in its imperialism.
I’m German and went to the US for a year as a high school student.
My US history teacher literally told us that the US is the world police. Because of that I believe that many Americans think that way.
Put South Park comment here.
