Yeah, a contributing factor for sure. Just like whatever company produced the pencils used by Einstein was a contributing factor to the theory of relativity. Not a sole factor. No, not a sole factor but a factor. Yes

you’re attributing a state of fact to a cause that has nothing to do with it. I’m not nitpicking, i’m pointing out a fallacy: the effect doesn’t prove the cause, it only works the other way around

what relevance would that have over the time span discussed here?

And no, whatever you read about agile, the development speed comes down to people not to procedure. That’s true even if we disregard the fact that very few companies claiming to use agile actually understand what agile is

The project management approach does not dictate the feature priority. The business dictates the priority. Project management is just a tool

I disagree, this has nothing to do with software development models, It’s all about purpose. If your website must start making money quickly, then you can be sure it will have a payment model regardless of how things are developed. Social media business (and others) translated user growth into investment models: you give us this much money at this “completely made up valuation” and we’ll use it to grow our user-base by this much.

This was possible because interest rates have been very low for the most of the 2010s. This meant that investors would be losing money if they held on to it so they just threw it at “the new tech” hoping something would stick. In the past few years, inflation has driven the interest rates very high and it means that money is not cheap anymore so all these businesses now have to transition to a money making model. That’s all.

haven’t all UI changes in most product made things worse lately? The “2010s generation” of software solutions has been growing up on investment rather than profit for a long time and we’ve experienced a weird decade in which getting users was more important than getting money from them. Now we’re seeing the other side in which squeezing profit form each user is more important than retention. All solutions are getting crappier because they not meant evolved for their intended purpose anymore.

Are… are you a prenatal brain surgeon?

moderators were highly skilled workers in a very, very small niche.

Let’s not pivot 180 degrees here. Mods were not the chosen ones by any means. In fact some other breaches of trust that Reddit plagued its users with were specifically because of how much power mods had and how they abused those powers. Maybe some mods were actually knowledgeable about the field, but there isn’t really any reason to extrapolate.

That data isn’t available unless Reddit publishes it. Since they’re not a public company yet, there is nothing forcing them to do so.

You’re obviously taking pleasure in debating an idea. Obviously so do I. However, you need more training. You have to add more support to your arguments and contradict the opposing arguments with facts that hold up. You have to concede points and counterpoint when possible. And most importantly, you have to bring datapoints to your claims.

At the moment you’re only putting out ideas with very little data. When I asked for examples of sanctions and international pressure, I was expecting something like this which is concrete. The “Killing Hope” is a really bad data point because it doesn’t support your claim directly and it is “fictional” 3rd party data from a biased source.

With the examples of actual sanctions, I would have pointed that USSR and their allies which included China and strong economic ties with India had its own access to resources and economic development and could impose sanctions of their own. In fact, I can point out that USSR controlled by itself a land area comparable to the entire NATO alliance today and that between them and China, they occupy considerably more landmass and have considerably more population.

In fact, those sanctions were not going to make any dent in the actual USSR economy. That wasn’t the goal (since it was impossible to achieve). They were meant to weaken the relationship with the communist buffer states such as Romania, Poland, Hungary and they did to a certain extent.

But, of course, USSR was doing the same thing in what has been the US back yard: South America. Countries like Argentina, Uruguay, Brasil were being aided by the USSR with loans, technology and technical leadership in order to remove them from the US influence sphere. And USSR was more successful than USA at doing this. In fact, Romania, Poland, Hungary only became US allies after the collapse of the USSR while the south american countries were closer to USSR since the 70s.

The discussion from here either goes backwards in history to how Russia had a late start or goes into economic details for a while, but ultimately it always ends in the same place: one model collapsed, one didn’t.

I grew up in eastern europe. I’m intimately acquainted with the philosophy, propaganda and history of the area. More than just 3rd party information. I’m also familiar with the Russian culture and arts. This was the only foreign culture allowed to be imported into my country for obvious reasons before the 90s.

I’ve had similar discussions through my life and I’m frankly disappointed in this one. But keep practicing, you’ll get better at it. A hint: learn from the facts presented by others even if you don’t agree with the interpretation. It helps in the long run

You too. Have fun making excuses for poor witches

Who did your daddy tell you the hungry witch was?

You’re telling me it was the USSR. Poor thing, alone in the woods with nothing to eat… Those kids were so unfair to her

But the poor witch was so hungry… What could she do?

Oh spare me of that song played on the world’s smallest violin. That’s the stupidest take an the whole situation that I’ve ever seen. “Read a book”… yeah, the poor little witch being burned alive by Hansel and Gretel… Is that how you view that story too?

No, I’ve already dismissed the narrative that poor little USSR had a disadvantage against the big bad US when I pointed out that they abusively occupied half of Europe at the end of WW2 and had influence over a lot more of it. If you’re bringing up secret services and you’re saying that the US one was better at its job, then you’re simply pointing out that the USSR one was incompetent.

I asked for examples of international sanctions which USSR & their allies couldn’t match. That book is about CIA and US crappy foreign policy. If you say that CIA actions where themselves sanctions against USSR, then surely KGB should have solved the issue.

Killing Hope’

That doesn’t answer the question. At most, it just shows that KGB were more incompetent or not endowed with literary talent.

The Soviet Union collapsed in 1990 because of the famine in 47?

And let’s circle back around to the far more important concentrated international sabotage if you please.

International sabotage? Do you have evidence of sanctions against USSR and their allies which weren’t matched back by USSR & their allies?

There was no famine in URSS post world war 2. What are you talking about?

I am giving you examples of perfectly functioning nations under capitalism, you’re replying one sentence nonsense. This conversation is over

That’s a very narrow view of what happened after the second world war. URSS occupied half of the European continent. It basically was the last empire in Europe with all the resources and human capital at its disposal to do anything it wanted. Not to mention war reparations.

And it lost. The ideology wasn’t working. It took 40 years for that empire to collapse, but collapse it did because it was built on the wrong principles.