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Comment by vaadu | Hacker News Reader

I'm glad this attitude didn't exist in the 1940s. Otherwise we all might be speaking German.

It may have existed - but it wouldn't have mattered since the US government essentially controlled the production of critical industry and companies through the OWM, under threat of price controls, seizures, and establishing government corporations.

Not quite the iron-grip that less democratic nations had on their economies during war-time, but not what you would call a free-market economy nowadays.

Clearly. This is probably the reason half of us are speaking Korean and the other half is speaking Vietnamese.

What's the existential, Germany&Japan-level threat we're facing right now?

China and Russia, and the general lack of democracy in certain oil-laden countries.

China is not a threat. Russia, North Korea, and certain Middle East countries are.

If the Middle East is a threat the easiest solution is switching to renewable energies. Many of the wars in the Middle East can only be fought because of money coming from oil. Any increase in renewable energy lessens that.

That is, to a certain degree, also true for Russia. Revenues for NAtural Gas and Oil are crucial for the state, they'd have to cut expenses significantly if oil prices were back at $30/bbl for more than just a few years.

Why do you think so? China is pretty much the only one that may be a threat. North Korea is a blip on the radar at worst. Russia is fading away and fast.

> Russia is fading away and fast.

How can you say that? They have more active nuclear warheads than U. S., plenty to overwhelm any current AB system. Do you count on the AB system getting better so as to eliminate MAD?

I wonder how many of their warheads are in as good condition as their airplane carrier...

China could be a threat in the next 10 years, but it isn't a Germany-and-Japan-in-1941 level of threat, not even close.

Russia and whatever jihadi wannabe idiots in HiLuxes in the middle east don't even rate. There are street gangs in the US that are more worrisome.

They are a threat to U. S. in the sense they do not align themselves well to U. S. interests and have lots of nukes. But they are no Germany&Japan level threat; sure, their actions and demands need to be taken seriously, they cannot be labeled as 'terrorist', but at the same time, decades after 2nd world war, they did not begin any large scale military attack on the West, and there is no indication they desire/plan to do so.

It certainly did. Isolationist sentiment was quite strong in the US in the 40s. Hence the Neutrality Act of 1939, for example.

You mean 'anti foreign war involvement' sentiment. It did exist, the U. S. power structures were divided on the question of involvement in the war in Europe.

The sentiment of the opposing ex-Googlers is about something different: arming post-Iraq,Afghanistan,Syria U.S. government with more weapons to do more of the same, when there is no comparable war going on.

On the other hand, what if this attitude had existed in Nazi Germany?

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