I think in the long term you are correct. However, in the short term social reform can often engender a reactionary backlash that increases social instability. For a weak state that’s on the defensive against global capital, social reform can be seen as unnecessarily risky. That’s especially true if substantial fractions of the party hold socially conservative beliefs themselves. Personally I agree that not addressing these issues directly is a mistake even if I think care has to be taken to education people and create public support for reform.
KelvinSpace
joined 1 month ago
I think part of the problem is that when faced with external threats countries tend to become more conservative. I think like China today the USSR likely did not want to introduce social instability by addressing various social issues. I think Cuba is a great example of how to do things differently.
I think they have working prototype reactors but that’s about it for now. They have plans to build some pilot plants and hopefully if things go well they’ll expand from there.
Even the whole lead up is similar with years of sanctions intended to weaken the country. Just now there is barely any pretext for the intervention. You would think they would want another 9/11 to blame on Venezuela but nope they realized it doesn't matter.
You didn’t even get to their internal company culture which is strange and totally fucked in its own weird way. The thing that makes Steam different is that it’s privately held. That’s allowed Gabe Newell to ignore all the standard business practices that most American tech companies abide by. However, Newell is just as much of a narcissist as any other billionaire and so Valve naturally became his own little fiefdom.
I think that’s ultimately what a lot of these rich fucks want. It’s why I think there is this trend of billionaires funding their own startups so they can have total control over how it operates. In no way has that ever worked out to the benefit of their employees or society at large.