I've often wondered why there isn't some small turbogenerator, or internal combustion based module for dropping into existing drone platforms to replace large lithium ion-packs, especially for long duration flights.
Heck, even a fuel cell would be far better energy/weight ratio, wouldn't it? And since they would be single or few use, you don't have to worry about poisoning the electrodes anywhere near as much.
Battery efficiency is _broadly_ linear; 10kg will give you 100x the capacity of 0.1kg of batteries. This isn't the case with generators.
Under 5kg of batteries, engines basically can't compete. The smallest viable petrol engines (you want engines made in large quantities) are around 4kg and need fuel, and so you end up in a situation in which 4kg of engine and 1kg of fuel is as useful as 5kg of batteries (for motors of that size), but every subsequent 1kg of fuel is then also as useful as 5kg of batteries. But you can't really drop this down much, as a 1kg engine is much less useful than 1kg of batteries, and a drone with 5kg of batteries is really a very large drone.
Drones are additionally typically very small and light, with mass at an absolute premium. A typical quadcopter will weigh under a kilogram and have maybe 200g of batteries for 20-30 minutes endurance. A drone with a 2.5m wingspan will typically have room for maybe 1-2kg of extra payload, and an engine will not fit into the battery slot.
Furthermore, they are extremely sensitive to weight balance issues.
This is to say, once you're in the world where you want chemical fuel, you might as well design a drone for it, rather than trying to retrofit. The mass of retrofitting will mess up your prior drone design, and petrol changes the dynamics of what you're trying to do enough that you might as well just do it all differently.
Essentially, if you're making a 1-10kg drone, you want battery. If you're making a 10-20kg drone, you might want battery, you might want petrol. Above 20kg, you probably want petrol.
Os that due to some thermodynamic scaling trade off or just a matter of fault tolerance (i.e. we cant machine them well enough at that scale to be as efficient)?
1. Scaling. You want to reap the rewards of someone else investing billions, and while billions of ICE engines are built every year, most of them are much bigger than 50cc.
2. Tolerances, as you say. I know for example that jet engines have low efficiency at small sizes due to efficiency being driven by the gaps between certain rotating parts, which are relatively larger.
3. Certain parts that need miniaturisation are more expensive on smaller engines. For example, a 50cc would typically have a carburettor, a bigger engine fuel injection. A fuel injector would be significantly larger per unit.
4. Some parts are just harder to miniaturise. For example, small turbochargers have to work harder and at much higher RPMs to achieve the same boost due to area scaling quadratically with diameter.
There are ICE powered drones, but they aren’t strictly better.
Batteries do a lot of things very well such as ramping up and down power output drastically with sub second response times. This allows quadcopter to be very simple mechanically making them scale down really well into a tiny package someone can carry several of them without significant issue. As a bonus tiny drones can be reasonably quiet and cheap.
This startup Radiant is working on portable nuclear reactors, one application being forward operating bases [1]. After watching that video I’m really hoping they succeed both for military purposes but also for civilian municipalities!
Fuel cells are ultimately just fancy batteries, they could electrolyze their output water when they "recharge". But in practice, our cars are all lithium BEVs, not FCEVs. There are some hydrogen forklifts, whose niche is that they're used 24/7 and hydrogen refills are faster than recharging batteries, but ultimately fuel cells make no sense at car-scale or below.
I don't know where I read this, but ISTR that one of the motivations of the (failed) JTRS military radio consolidation project was that US infantry were carrying around insane amounts of weight, partly in batteries for various radios.
Can't find a reference now - maybe someone here knows.
I knew that the JTRS project wasn't going to work when they decided that the best way to make portable SDR was to use - drumroll - CORBA.
(they should have asked for something broadly like vulkan or perhaps CUDA. CORBA doesn't solve a relevant problem)
Don't know about JTRS specifically, but backpack type radios and their batteries are very heavy, so it's plausible. Weight is indeed a big issue for infantry, SOF, etc.
> In addition to limiting China’s battery complex, the free world, especially the United States, must strengthen itself by expanding its own battery capacity and capabilities.
I just realized that western countries use the term "the free world" to describe themselves above other countries.
This guy wants to talk about something nebulous like freedom.
Let's talk about how we can bring domestic battery manufacturing to America so that we can use that to crush Chinese and Russian military opposition with the eventual goal of seeing proper democracy brought to those regions.
We need domestic battery production for so many things, and it needed to happen yesterday.
Another thing I've been wondering about is this: Who is the JLPCB or PCBWay of America? When is low cost rapid turn around PCB manufacturing in America going to be a thing? How can I be a part of that?
I'm not sure American democracy is in place to be a system we might want to see in the rest of the world. If we're speaking idealistically, I think there's a far more reasonable idea than hegemony. Imagine a multi-polar world, with certain limited global rights.
For instance we could have a guarantee of free emigration: If a person, of no real criminality, wants to leave their country (perhaps because they feel oppressed or whatever) then their government cannot prevent them, if another country is willing to accept them. Alongside this there should also be a global agreement for countries to not interfere, directly or covertly, in the matters of other countries. That would include things like funding or otherwise providing support to various groups within other countries.
It seems this would be a zillion times more viable, effective, harmonious, and productive - than trying to Americanize the rest of the world, which seems more likely to lead to the end of the world than anything else.
Of course "real" would need to be defined, because the typical behavior of tyrannical governments is to charge their political opponents with "real" crimes, roughshod them through kangaroo courts run by cronies of the political establishment, and then imprison them. The general idea is to ensure you don't allow something like genuine murderous terrorists from being able to emigrate to a hostile country.
I don't know what you are implying with the CO2 stuff.
This agreement would not prevent countries from agreeing to cooperate on whatever issues that matter to them. What it would prevent is other countries from trying to covertly overthrow, manipulate the elections (in countries with them), etc in other countries in an attempt to put a new government in power that would agree with them on issues.
> For instance we could have a guarantee of free emigration: If a person, of no real criminality, wants to leave their country
One should be a be able to live a fulfulling life anywhere, not be forced to emigrate just to be able to live...
> than trying to Americanize the rest of the world, which seems more likely to lead to the end of the world than anything else.
When you see injustice somewhere else, a good answer is action, better is pre-emptive. Autocracies are fundamentally bad for humanity (otherwise we're going to repeat the past with countries like russia and china repeating ww2 germany)
Don't you have the empathy to see how your comment would look to people in the overwhelming majority of the world? Think about what's happening in Gaza and how people see that? Or for that matter consider our decades of absolute brutality all throughout the Mideast including backing terrorists when convenient, overthrowing governments all around the world (including democracies that voted the 'wrong' way) often to replace them with the brutal and unpopular autocracies, centuries of exploitation in Africa - which is still ongoing if you were not aware, and so on endlessly.
So if you think the proper response to "injustice" is action, then you largely just explained endless war and violence because one person's just and righteous nation is another's den of tyranny and villainy. This is why a mutually respectful multipolar, where countries stop screwing around in the matters of others', is likely the only way we can ever create anything even remotely like a stable and peaceful world order. The right of emigration ensures the worst possible scenarios are largely limited.
> Don't you have the empathy to see how your comment would look to people in the overwhelming majority of the world?
Oh but I do.
I was born in a country behind USSR iron curtain. I am very grateful for whatever help was provided to destroy USSR and topple russian placed dictators. (even if indirect)
A multi-polar world that you suggest was the case before 1989, and for the countries within russia's control it was hell.
Perhaps for your parents, but many people who lived through such times still look with fondness at the USSR. Wiki oddly enough has an article on this exact topic. [1] 79% of Armenians believe that life was better under the Soviet Union, 69% of Azeris, 54% of Belarussians, 61% of Kyrgyz, 70% of Moldovans, and so on.
This is precisely why the right of emigration must also be a part of this system. Like the old joke goes, 'What do you call a Soviet musical duet? It's a musical quartet that went abroad.' Countries should never be able to trap "their" citizens within their borders, for any reason, at any time.
On top of all of this I would add that this era obviously was also directly contrary to the entire spirit of the idea I'm proposing here as well. That wasn't a multipolar world. It was a world with two hegemons seeing how many countries they could make completely subservient, using any means possible. And in the end it caused nothing but self harm for both powers. Myopia.
> Perhaps for your parents, but many people who lived through such times still look with fondness at the USSR.
Because for most, that was their youth, of course you're going to have nostalgia for that, even if you and everyone you knew were starving, you had your life assigned to you by the party, women were treated like cattle, any sign of discontent you got secret service torturing you, you got killed for protesting... that second part you forget or were part of privileged classes and actively profited from it and it was indeed better.
Were they actually able to unite with Romania like east germany they would be much better, but they were dragged back into misery...
I am not knowledgeable enough about the rest to comment.
> This is precisely why the right of emigration must also be a part of this system.
Why are you saying emigration is a solution?
It won't work since there won't be anybody to enforce it. (good luck emigrating from NK right now)
It's not moral, why should someone leave everything they've ever known behind. Economic reasons?, help their region be more productive. Social reasons, help their region be better. Persecution?, destroy the mechanisms for that. Getting rid of those factors would remove the need for emigration and everyone would be better off.
It's not sustainable, what would 10B people just in EU/USA look like?, what would be left of bad places?, just the dictators?
It's not good for the future when we'll likely reach for the stars and earth just consolidates in a single political entity (hopefully democratic).
Did you actually think through implications of your idea?, or is it born out of your personal experience and just think that since it worked for you it would work for everyone else?
The problem here is that you're simply assuming near global agreement with your personal values. That is very much not the case. No, those 70% weren't just some privileged elite, it's people who simply think differently than you, or your parents, might. And this is true for the overwhelming majority of the world. People value different things in life. And there's no single system that can really embrace and fairly represent all views.
Emigration, as a component, works out of simple self interest. In this proposed system the cost of emigration would be relatively low, yet the benefits would not.
> No, those 70% weren't just some privileged elite
You just cherry picked one number of one country, I can do the same to reach opposite conclusion if you want to argue in bad faith.
> In a 2017 survey, 75% of Estonians said the dissolution of the USSR was a good thing, compared to only 15% who said it was a bad thing.[10]
Mirroring your argument, 75% of people say it was a good thing for what happened. (to quote you those 75% are people who simply think differently than you might.)
> People value different things in life. And there's no single system that can really embrace and fairly represent all views.
Are you actually arguing that dictatorship and oppression should be respected because some people like them?, I'm sure everyone in NK absolutely loves Kim and their system.
> Emigration, as a component, works out of simple self interest. In this proposed system the cost of emigration would be relatively low, yet the benefits would not.
So what do you do if all 10B people living everywhere want to move to the US tomorrow?
I'm not cherry picking anything. The point I am making is that people see things differently. I was aware you obviously know there are plenty of people that have less than fond views of the USSR, and there are plenty which have extremely fond views of it. This is the nature of humanity, which is the point.
And tolerating these different preferences, desires, views, systems, values, and so on is the only possible way we might ever achieve something resembling a more stable and desirable world order. The right of emigration does not mean countries are forced to accept people. Accepting migrants would be up to the nation people are seeking to move to.
> And tolerating these different preferences, desires, views, systems, values, and so on is the only possible way we might ever achieve something resembling a more stable and desirable world order.
How can one tolerate the abuses that went on behind the iron curtain and other dictatorships?
Even if some people are still fond of them, it's unacceptable for such systems to exist and those people are morally reprehensible.
Well the USSR no longer exists, and so I think that specific question is a nonstarter. But generalizing? This gets back to what we were talking about earlier. Look at any country with power and you're going to find quite a lot of the world would think the world would be a better place without that country, in many cases the majority of the world.
And this will never change, because people hold many views that are simply mutually exclusive, and we always will. So we can continue to fight and kill each other until the point somebody finally goes all the way and we end up nuking ourselves out of existence, or we can learn to tolerate one another - even when we really don't like the other guy.
The right of emigration would generally preclude such possibilities. But I want to expand on this more generally, because I think appealing to the past is generally just a disingenuous rhetorical tool. The reason is that the "right" answer is commonly shared. We all know the exact context of how something went down, who ultimately won, history's perception of such, and all of the major details. But in the present things lack such clarity and tend to look very different because of such.
Take, for instance Israel. We know that they have directly killed about 2% (~40,000) of all Gazans, mostly civilians, alongside an unknowably large number of indirect (famine/disease/etc) deaths also being caused, with some evidence of intent - all in just 9 months! And we also know they have senior officials making lovely comments like 'Palestinian residents of Gaza should leave the besieged enclave to make way for Israelis who could make the desert bloom.' [1]
And so now what, would you say, is the right way to respond to this? Suddenly things are not so clear, and many people expressing this value or that will tend to directly contradict it after some fanciful mental gymnastics. This is why I largely think self interest, realpolitik, should be the prevailing guidance in political relations - not virtue. Because the former is very real, while the latter only generally exists up to the point that it becomes inconvenient. It leads to an unstable, unbelievable, and hypocritical world order.
Well we did say idealistically didn't we? But in general I don't really think this idea is so radical. This seems to be one of the very few topics countries of widely different ideological values could see eye to eye on. It's not because of some sort of grander ideological values or whatever, but good old fashioned self interest.
The cost of participation would be less than zero in one case - don't screw around in other people's countries, and negligible in the case of allowing emigration, which near to all countries excepting a handful of places like North Korea, already do. While the benefits of not having others screw around in your country would generally be significantly greater. So violating the agreement would generally not be in one's self interest.
In spirit perhaps, but most certainly not in the implementation. For instance Wilson apparently intended and meant for one of his points to suggest that Danzig (a strategically vital 90%+ German city) should go to Poland. And that, among other absurd ideas, did happen in the Treaty of Versailles. It's difficult to claim you're about respecting the interests of others when making decisions like that.
And again this isn't about ideology or ethics, but simple self interest. Danzig (And other dubious decisions from the Treaty of Versailles) all but guaranteed WW2. In general it's quite interesting to consider how many major conflicts since WW1 can, in one way or another, be tied directly back to WW1. The War to End All Wars was really more like the War to Start All Wars.
yes. Good intentions, maybe, but they induced Germany to surrender but then feel betrayed by the ultimate Treaty. It would have been better to just continue, let everyone in Germany realize they were beaten, and bring the troops home. The Europeans have a lot of experience in diplomacy and they could hardly have done any worse.
>how we can bring domestic battery manufacturing to America so that we can use that to crush Chinese and Russian military opposition with the eventual goal of seeing proper democracy brought to those regions.
What happens in Russia or China if you viciously criticize their leadership?
Most of the “free world” is at least comparatively free compared to the rest. No it is not black and white but it’s definitely light grey vs dark grey or black.
There’s a reason places like the USA, Canada, etc continue to be the most desirable destinations for immigration while you see very few people trying to get into Russia or China. Only people trying to get into those are fleeing much worse places or in the case of Russia have drunk certain brands of kool-aid.
In absolute numbers, the US is the #1, but immigrants as percentage of population has the US as #65 (Canada #41).
Still way higher than Russia or China. While a little over 15 % of the US population are immigrants (defined as not born in the country), only 0.07 % of the Chinese population are immigrants. Roughly 7 % of Russian population is immigrants.
> In absolute numbers, the US is the #1, but immigrants as percentage of population has the US as #65 (Canada #41).
The relevant denominator would seem to be "population outside the target," not "population in the target." After all, the immigrant population comes from outside their destination.
Also, China's battery production is described as a "battery complex" while US battery production is described as a "battery industry" or "battery industrial base".
I mean, "the west" also doesn’t mean much unless there is a bunch of assumed convention. To know what the "western countries" are, basically you need to know more than "west of what" and "go west until when" but actually something more like "post WW2 allied countries with NATO membership", and even that isn't a great way to figure it out.
China is an authoritarian regime without elections, let alone free and open ones.
Equivocating the systems of government of the US or "Western Countries" as you've put it with that of China, is so blatantly false that someone less charitable than I might question whether you are arguing in good faith.
US's president elections are effectively decided by 10k delegates in two parties during primaries, population chooses from two options they are given. It is better than in China(which has one party), but is it really by far better?
Let's also not forget that only 538 people have actual voting rights in US presidential elections. It's mostly a formality, but one of many flaws in the US democracy.
I've often wondered why there isn't some small turbogenerator, or internal combustion based module for dropping into existing drone platforms to replace large lithium ion-packs, especially for long duration flights.
Heck, even a fuel cell would be far better energy/weight ratio, wouldn't it? And since they would be single or few use, you don't have to worry about poisoning the electrodes anywhere near as much.
Battery efficiency is _broadly_ linear; 10kg will give you 100x the capacity of 0.1kg of batteries. This isn't the case with generators.
Under 5kg of batteries, engines basically can't compete. The smallest viable petrol engines (you want engines made in large quantities) are around 4kg and need fuel, and so you end up in a situation in which 4kg of engine and 1kg of fuel is as useful as 5kg of batteries (for motors of that size), but every subsequent 1kg of fuel is then also as useful as 5kg of batteries. But you can't really drop this down much, as a 1kg engine is much less useful than 1kg of batteries, and a drone with 5kg of batteries is really a very large drone.
Drones are additionally typically very small and light, with mass at an absolute premium. A typical quadcopter will weigh under a kilogram and have maybe 200g of batteries for 20-30 minutes endurance. A drone with a 2.5m wingspan will typically have room for maybe 1-2kg of extra payload, and an engine will not fit into the battery slot.
Furthermore, they are extremely sensitive to weight balance issues.
This is to say, once you're in the world where you want chemical fuel, you might as well design a drone for it, rather than trying to retrofit. The mass of retrofitting will mess up your prior drone design, and petrol changes the dynamics of what you're trying to do enough that you might as well just do it all differently.
Essentially, if you're making a 1-10kg drone, you want battery. If you're making a 10-20kg drone, you might want battery, you might want petrol. Above 20kg, you probably want petrol.
Os that due to some thermodynamic scaling trade off or just a matter of fault tolerance (i.e. we cant machine them well enough at that scale to be as efficient)?
Probably a few factors.
1. Scaling. You want to reap the rewards of someone else investing billions, and while billions of ICE engines are built every year, most of them are much bigger than 50cc. 2. Tolerances, as you say. I know for example that jet engines have low efficiency at small sizes due to efficiency being driven by the gaps between certain rotating parts, which are relatively larger. 3. Certain parts that need miniaturisation are more expensive on smaller engines. For example, a 50cc would typically have a carburettor, a bigger engine fuel injection. A fuel injector would be significantly larger per unit. 4. Some parts are just harder to miniaturise. For example, small turbochargers have to work harder and at much higher RPMs to achieve the same boost due to area scaling quadratically with diameter.
There are ICE powered drones, but they aren’t strictly better.
Batteries do a lot of things very well such as ramping up and down power output drastically with sub second response times. This allows quadcopter to be very simple mechanically making them scale down really well into a tiny package someone can carry several of them without significant issue. As a bonus tiny drones can be reasonably quiet and cheap.
This startup Radiant is working on portable nuclear reactors, one application being forward operating bases [1]. After watching that video I’m really hoping they succeed both for military purposes but also for civilian municipalities!
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTgS7tOOzsE
Bringing fissionable material near any conflict seems like a bad idea, and a signal on par with positioning nuclear power heads.
Aircraft carriers probably are exempt, since intentionally blowing one up as a dirty bomb amounts to a mass suicide attack.
Fuel cells are ultimately just fancy batteries, they could electrolyze their output water when they "recharge". But in practice, our cars are all lithium BEVs, not FCEVs. There are some hydrogen forklifts, whose niche is that they're used 24/7 and hydrogen refills are faster than recharging batteries, but ultimately fuel cells make no sense at car-scale or below.
What’s going on with fuel cells? It seems like they’re never considered for anything.
What am I missing?
Bringing hydrogen to the front lines is hard. Liquid-based fuel cells are not nearly as energy-dense.
Why can’t we load them with water and run them in reverse to make hydrogen and charge them.
Bigger RC helicopters and RC planes are often fuel powered
>internal combustion
Thing with this is that now you need:
a) Fuel tank plus a pump
b) A combustion chamber
c) Gears or a way to mechanically regulate fuel flow
...of which b and c probably need to be metal. For light & small drones you're not necessarily winning here on weight
I don't know where I read this, but ISTR that one of the motivations of the (failed) JTRS military radio consolidation project was that US infantry were carrying around insane amounts of weight, partly in batteries for various radios.
Can't find a reference now - maybe someone here knows.
I knew that the JTRS project wasn't going to work when they decided that the best way to make portable SDR was to use - drumroll - CORBA. (they should have asked for something broadly like vulkan or perhaps CUDA. CORBA doesn't solve a relevant problem)
Don't know about JTRS specifically, but backpack type radios and their batteries are very heavy, so it's plausible. Weight is indeed a big issue for infantry, SOF, etc.
> In addition to limiting China’s battery complex, the free world, especially the United States, must strengthen itself by expanding its own battery capacity and capabilities.
I just realized that western countries use the term "the free world" to describe themselves above other countries.
It's just funny how they like to fool themselves.
> It's just funny how they like to fool themselves.
They are in essence free compared to russia and china's autocracies.
Do you mind detailing what you mean?
Why take the bait?
This guy wants to talk about something nebulous like freedom.
Let's talk about how we can bring domestic battery manufacturing to America so that we can use that to crush Chinese and Russian military opposition with the eventual goal of seeing proper democracy brought to those regions.
We need domestic battery production for so many things, and it needed to happen yesterday.
Another thing I've been wondering about is this: Who is the JLPCB or PCBWay of America? When is low cost rapid turn around PCB manufacturing in America going to be a thing? How can I be a part of that?
I'm not sure American democracy is in place to be a system we might want to see in the rest of the world. If we're speaking idealistically, I think there's a far more reasonable idea than hegemony. Imagine a multi-polar world, with certain limited global rights.
For instance we could have a guarantee of free emigration: If a person, of no real criminality, wants to leave their country (perhaps because they feel oppressed or whatever) then their government cannot prevent them, if another country is willing to accept them. Alongside this there should also be a global agreement for countries to not interfere, directly or covertly, in the matters of other countries. That would include things like funding or otherwise providing support to various groups within other countries.
It seems this would be a zillion times more viable, effective, harmonious, and productive - than trying to Americanize the rest of the world, which seems more likely to lead to the end of the world than anything else.
> of no real criminality
Just be sure not to let the true Scotsmen migrate!
> a global agreement for countries to not interfere, directly or covertly, in the matters of other countries
Such as interfering with their CO2 emissions?
Of course "real" would need to be defined, because the typical behavior of tyrannical governments is to charge their political opponents with "real" crimes, roughshod them through kangaroo courts run by cronies of the political establishment, and then imprison them. The general idea is to ensure you don't allow something like genuine murderous terrorists from being able to emigrate to a hostile country.
I don't know what you are implying with the CO2 stuff.
CO2 is the obvious example of where it is probably a good thing that countries attempt to interfere in what other countries do.
This agreement would not prevent countries from agreeing to cooperate on whatever issues that matter to them. What it would prevent is other countries from trying to covertly overthrow, manipulate the elections (in countries with them), etc in other countries in an attempt to put a new government in power that would agree with them on issues.
> For instance we could have a guarantee of free emigration: If a person, of no real criminality, wants to leave their country
One should be a be able to live a fulfulling life anywhere, not be forced to emigrate just to be able to live...
> than trying to Americanize the rest of the world, which seems more likely to lead to the end of the world than anything else.
When you see injustice somewhere else, a good answer is action, better is pre-emptive. Autocracies are fundamentally bad for humanity (otherwise we're going to repeat the past with countries like russia and china repeating ww2 germany)
Don't you have the empathy to see how your comment would look to people in the overwhelming majority of the world? Think about what's happening in Gaza and how people see that? Or for that matter consider our decades of absolute brutality all throughout the Mideast including backing terrorists when convenient, overthrowing governments all around the world (including democracies that voted the 'wrong' way) often to replace them with the brutal and unpopular autocracies, centuries of exploitation in Africa - which is still ongoing if you were not aware, and so on endlessly.
So if you think the proper response to "injustice" is action, then you largely just explained endless war and violence because one person's just and righteous nation is another's den of tyranny and villainy. This is why a mutually respectful multipolar, where countries stop screwing around in the matters of others', is likely the only way we can ever create anything even remotely like a stable and peaceful world order. The right of emigration ensures the worst possible scenarios are largely limited.
> Don't you have the empathy to see how your comment would look to people in the overwhelming majority of the world?
Oh but I do.
I was born in a country behind USSR iron curtain. I am very grateful for whatever help was provided to destroy USSR and topple russian placed dictators. (even if indirect)
A multi-polar world that you suggest was the case before 1989, and for the countries within russia's control it was hell.
Perhaps for your parents, but many people who lived through such times still look with fondness at the USSR. Wiki oddly enough has an article on this exact topic. [1] 79% of Armenians believe that life was better under the Soviet Union, 69% of Azeris, 54% of Belarussians, 61% of Kyrgyz, 70% of Moldovans, and so on.
This is precisely why the right of emigration must also be a part of this system. Like the old joke goes, 'What do you call a Soviet musical duet? It's a musical quartet that went abroad.' Countries should never be able to trap "their" citizens within their borders, for any reason, at any time.
On top of all of this I would add that this era obviously was also directly contrary to the entire spirit of the idea I'm proposing here as well. That wasn't a multipolar world. It was a world with two hegemons seeing how many countries they could make completely subservient, using any means possible. And in the end it caused nothing but self harm for both powers. Myopia.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostalgia_for_the_Soviet_Union
> Perhaps for your parents, but many people who lived through such times still look with fondness at the USSR.
Because for most, that was their youth, of course you're going to have nostalgia for that, even if you and everyone you knew were starving, you had your life assigned to you by the party, women were treated like cattle, any sign of discontent you got secret service torturing you, you got killed for protesting... that second part you forget or were part of privileged classes and actively profited from it and it was indeed better.
Another factor is the active propaganda: https://www.reddit.com/r/Romania/comments/1bncqt4/aveam_de_t...
Picture is funny and it actively translates to
"Childhood memories department, at work on the internet, circa 2024"
"Do you remember how we put white animal fat on bread and how good that tasted?, we had it all..."
> 70% of Moldovans, and so on.
That's funny, there, after 1989 Russia started a war to keep them locked in their influence and constantly meddles with them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transnistria_War
Were they actually able to unite with Romania like east germany they would be much better, but they were dragged back into misery...
I am not knowledgeable enough about the rest to comment.
> This is precisely why the right of emigration must also be a part of this system.
Why are you saying emigration is a solution?
It won't work since there won't be anybody to enforce it. (good luck emigrating from NK right now)
It's not moral, why should someone leave everything they've ever known behind. Economic reasons?, help their region be more productive. Social reasons, help their region be better. Persecution?, destroy the mechanisms for that. Getting rid of those factors would remove the need for emigration and everyone would be better off.
It's not sustainable, what would 10B people just in EU/USA look like?, what would be left of bad places?, just the dictators?
It's not good for the future when we'll likely reach for the stars and earth just consolidates in a single political entity (hopefully democratic).
Did you actually think through implications of your idea?, or is it born out of your personal experience and just think that since it worked for you it would work for everyone else?
> That wasn't a multipolar world.
It was if you had considered China as a separate entity, which you should have, it wasn't just USSR vs USA. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Soviet_border_conflict )
The problem here is that you're simply assuming near global agreement with your personal values. That is very much not the case. No, those 70% weren't just some privileged elite, it's people who simply think differently than you, or your parents, might. And this is true for the overwhelming majority of the world. People value different things in life. And there's no single system that can really embrace and fairly represent all views.
Emigration, as a component, works out of simple self interest. In this proposed system the cost of emigration would be relatively low, yet the benefits would not.
> No, those 70% weren't just some privileged elite
You just cherry picked one number of one country, I can do the same to reach opposite conclusion if you want to argue in bad faith.
> In a 2017 survey, 75% of Estonians said the dissolution of the USSR was a good thing, compared to only 15% who said it was a bad thing.[10]
Mirroring your argument, 75% of people say it was a good thing for what happened. (to quote you those 75% are people who simply think differently than you might.)
> People value different things in life. And there's no single system that can really embrace and fairly represent all views.
Are you actually arguing that dictatorship and oppression should be respected because some people like them?, I'm sure everyone in NK absolutely loves Kim and their system.
> Emigration, as a component, works out of simple self interest. In this proposed system the cost of emigration would be relatively low, yet the benefits would not.
So what do you do if all 10B people living everywhere want to move to the US tomorrow?
I'm not cherry picking anything. The point I am making is that people see things differently. I was aware you obviously know there are plenty of people that have less than fond views of the USSR, and there are plenty which have extremely fond views of it. This is the nature of humanity, which is the point.
And tolerating these different preferences, desires, views, systems, values, and so on is the only possible way we might ever achieve something resembling a more stable and desirable world order. The right of emigration does not mean countries are forced to accept people. Accepting migrants would be up to the nation people are seeking to move to.
> And tolerating these different preferences, desires, views, systems, values, and so on is the only possible way we might ever achieve something resembling a more stable and desirable world order.
How can one tolerate the abuses that went on behind the iron curtain and other dictatorships?
Even if some people are still fond of them, it's unacceptable for such systems to exist and those people are morally reprehensible.
Well the USSR no longer exists, and so I think that specific question is a nonstarter. But generalizing? This gets back to what we were talking about earlier. Look at any country with power and you're going to find quite a lot of the world would think the world would be a better place without that country, in many cases the majority of the world.
And this will never change, because people hold many views that are simply mutually exclusive, and we always will. So we can continue to fight and kill each other until the point somebody finally goes all the way and we end up nuking ourselves out of existence, or we can learn to tolerate one another - even when we really don't like the other guy.
So if one country's government decides to, let's say, kill all the Jews then no other country should interfere? Is that what you're proposing?
The level of strategic illiteracy on HN is breathtaking sometimes.
The right of emigration would generally preclude such possibilities. But I want to expand on this more generally, because I think appealing to the past is generally just a disingenuous rhetorical tool. The reason is that the "right" answer is commonly shared. We all know the exact context of how something went down, who ultimately won, history's perception of such, and all of the major details. But in the present things lack such clarity and tend to look very different because of such.
Take, for instance Israel. We know that they have directly killed about 2% (~40,000) of all Gazans, mostly civilians, alongside an unknowably large number of indirect (famine/disease/etc) deaths also being caused, with some evidence of intent - all in just 9 months! And we also know they have senior officials making lovely comments like 'Palestinian residents of Gaza should leave the besieged enclave to make way for Israelis who could make the desert bloom.' [1]
And so now what, would you say, is the right way to respond to this? Suddenly things are not so clear, and many people expressing this value or that will tend to directly contradict it after some fanciful mental gymnastics. This is why I largely think self interest, realpolitik, should be the prevailing guidance in political relations - not virtue. Because the former is very real, while the latter only generally exists up to the point that it becomes inconvenient. It leads to an unstable, unbelievable, and hypocritical world order.
[1] - https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-minister-r...
>Imagine a multi-polar world, with certain limited global rights.
Who backs those limited global rights?
Well we did say idealistically didn't we? But in general I don't really think this idea is so radical. This seems to be one of the very few topics countries of widely different ideological values could see eye to eye on. It's not because of some sort of grander ideological values or whatever, but good old fashioned self interest.
The cost of participation would be less than zero in one case - don't screw around in other people's countries, and negligible in the case of allowing emigration, which near to all countries excepting a handful of places like North Korea, already do. While the benefits of not having others screw around in your country would generally be significantly greater. So violating the agreement would generally not be in one's self interest.
Wasn't that the idea of the Fourteen Points?
In spirit perhaps, but most certainly not in the implementation. For instance Wilson apparently intended and meant for one of his points to suggest that Danzig (a strategically vital 90%+ German city) should go to Poland. And that, among other absurd ideas, did happen in the Treaty of Versailles. It's difficult to claim you're about respecting the interests of others when making decisions like that.
And again this isn't about ideology or ethics, but simple self interest. Danzig (And other dubious decisions from the Treaty of Versailles) all but guaranteed WW2. In general it's quite interesting to consider how many major conflicts since WW1 can, in one way or another, be tied directly back to WW1. The War to End All Wars was really more like the War to Start All Wars.
> In spirit
yes. Good intentions, maybe, but they induced Germany to surrender but then feel betrayed by the ultimate Treaty. It would have been better to just continue, let everyone in Germany realize they were beaten, and bring the troops home. The Europeans have a lot of experience in diplomacy and they could hardly have done any worse.
>how we can bring domestic battery manufacturing to America so that we can use that to crush Chinese and Russian military opposition with the eventual goal of seeing proper democracy brought to those regions.
Why take the bait, indeed.
What happens in Russia or China if you viciously criticize their leadership?
Most of the “free world” is at least comparatively free compared to the rest. No it is not black and white but it’s definitely light grey vs dark grey or black.
There’s a reason places like the USA, Canada, etc continue to be the most desirable destinations for immigration while you see very few people trying to get into Russia or China. Only people trying to get into those are fleeing much worse places or in the case of Russia have drunk certain brands of kool-aid.
In absolute numbers, the US is the #1, but immigrants as percentage of population has the US as #65 (Canada #41).
Still way higher than Russia or China. While a little over 15 % of the US population are immigrants (defined as not born in the country), only 0.07 % of the Chinese population are immigrants. Roughly 7 % of Russian population is immigrants.
Source: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/immigrati...
> In absolute numbers, the US is the #1, but immigrants as percentage of population has the US as #65 (Canada #41).
The relevant denominator would seem to be "population outside the target," not "population in the target." After all, the immigrant population comes from outside their destination.
Also, China's battery production is described as a "battery complex" while US battery production is described as a "battery industry" or "battery industrial base".
Old USSR joke:
Anti-communist says, "In America, I'm free to stand on the corner with a sign saying, 'Nixon is a criminal' "
Loyal communist supporter, "Here, too, I'm free to stand on the corner with a sign saying, 'Nixon is a criminal' "
I mean, "the west" also doesn’t mean much unless there is a bunch of assumed convention. To know what the "western countries" are, basically you need to know more than "west of what" and "go west until when" but actually something more like "post WW2 allied countries with NATO membership", and even that isn't a great way to figure it out.
China is an authoritarian regime without elections, let alone free and open ones.
Equivocating the systems of government of the US or "Western Countries" as you've put it with that of China, is so blatantly false that someone less charitable than I might question whether you are arguing in good faith.
US's president elections are effectively decided by 10k delegates in two parties during primaries, population chooses from two options they are given. It is better than in China(which has one party), but is it really by far better?
Let's also not forget that only 538 people have actual voting rights in US presidential elections. It's mostly a formality, but one of many flaws in the US democracy.
> the US democracy
which doesn't exist. It's a republic.
Yes
why do you think so?