There are no wars now.

The wars happened when the central government was too weak to deal with them, which supports my point somewhat.

Well, I believe that without Russia, Russian Caucasus will be a worse place overall, and will also have a few wars.

South Ossetia and Abkhazia are also worse off than they would be had they remained in Georgia.

It seems to me that this sort of nationalism is counterproductive.

But is this not irrelevant? It seems to me that you believe that North Ossetia should be independent, despite the fact that Ossetians do not want independence from Russia, and South Ossetia should not be independent, despite the fact that South Ossetians would rather not be a part of Georgia.

You mentioned the invasion of Georgia, and it seems from the context like you believe it to be an injust invasion. Is this correct? Do you believe Georgia is entitled to the land it lost?

Well, yes. Maybe I should have phrased it differently: the “balkanisation of Russia”, like actual balkanisation, will be associated with a series of conflicts and deaths, if it does occur.

Also, genocidal is an overstatement. I do understand that using strong words like “fascism” and “genocide” when they are unwarranted is somewhat in fashion now, but believe it is best not to do that.

Yeah, but it is going to be even worse. Russian Caucasus is going to have a few wars at least, hell, it did happen to an extent when the federal government was weak. There are territorial disputes and conflicts that are only suspended for as long as these republics are a part of Russia.

So my point stands: there are reasons to be opposed to the “balkanisation of Russia” and no reasons to support it, unless you want that because you just want to hurt Russia, but in this case be honest with yourself and do not pretend you are doing it for the ethnic minorities.

I am not sure if you remember but the process of “balkanisation” was accompanied by certain unfortunate events, that included a genocide, the bombing of Belgrade, among others. Corruption is not the biggest problem here.

The Balkans are not exactly doing well, are they?

Even if they did separate, there would still be a Russia, and it would not lose as much as one might think.

And even so, it is a bad idea. There are so many disputes between the nations, that we would likely see a few wars. Something like what is happening between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Also, many of them are too small to exist in a meaningful was as independent countries, and I honestly don’t see the harm in them remaining in Russia.

What should it be then?

Conducting that meeting in that place at such a time seems quite inappropriate and disrespectful.

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A right wing European is also a little too right wing for Lemmy.

If the company fails, the responsibility for that is not on the workers. Why would they care if it does, if they can just extract all of the money for themselves?

The responsibility for managing the company should be on the people that are responsible for the company itself.

This is not to say, that they should not be represented in decisionmaking, they probably should, but since they do not own the organisations that employ them, they have no right to dictate how they should be run.

Quite a lot.

Trump us destroying the international standing of Israel’s strongest ally, this should count for something.

So Trump is a real friend of Palestine, you should say thank you.

Moral objectivism and Rand’s objectivism are two completely different things.

Rand’s philosophy is opposed to traditional morality.

Well, sorry for the accusation. AI usually gives these bullet points when prompted.

Are these AI bullet points, lmao?

I just find this line comical when you pretend Europe was progressive from the Greeks through to modern times rather than seeing the Enlightenment as a return to those values

Progress is a modern idea. The enlightenment was not a return to these values, because it was very different from what came before it.

You might be confusing rennaisance and enlightenment.

You might want to look into that Copernicus guy:

In 1533, Johann Albrecht Widmannstetter delivered a series of lectures in Rome outlining Copernicus’ theory. Pope Clement VII and several Catholic cardinals heard the lectures and were interested in the theory. On 1 November 1536, Nikolaus von Schönberg, Archbishop of Capua and since the previous year a cardinal, wrote to Copernicus from Rome:

Some years ago word reached me concerning your proficiency, of which everybody constantly spoke. At that time I began to have a very high regard for you. …For I had learned that you had not merely mastered the discoveries of the ancient astronomers uncommonly well but had also formulated a new cosmology. In it you maintain that the earth moves; that the sun occupies the lowest, and thus the central, place in the universe. …Therefore with the utmost earnestness I entreat you, most learned sir, unless I inconvenience you, to communicate this discovery of yours to scholars, and at the earliest possible moment to send me your writings on the sphere of the universe together with the tables and whatever else you have that is relevant to this subject.

Also, you should look into that Galileo guy yourself. He and his inquires were favoured by the church, until they weren’t. It was a complicated matter, and to say that the church was opposed to science is just false.

The Enlightenment was only 300 years ago, and it only happened because the printing press (Invented in China, refined by Korea) allowed knowledge to spread outside of their given libraries.

Why did it not happen in China then? Also, as far as I understand, the Gutenberg press was made independently from the Chiense, and in any case this is not the sole reason for the enlightenment clearly.

Europe was not “anti-rationality”, because western Europe has always had a very rationalistic culture it inherited the Greek philosophical tradition, western Christianity is quite rationalistic as well, compared to other religions and orthodox Christianity.

Without the medieval intellectuals, the universities, the scholastics, there would be no modern science. It did not suddenly appear out of nowhere, and it did take 2000 years of the development of conceptual tools for it to emerge.

2000 years not since the enlightenment, but since the beginning of philosophy in Greece, clearly.

This is just absurd. How can you say Europe was anti-science, if modern science did not exist, so it was impossible to be opposed to it? And Europe was literally the region with the most rationalistic intellectual culture in the world.

If you do not know something, do not pretend you do.