Everything you wrote is correct. And the problem the author of the original post is addressing has a very simple solution: you and your bosses should eat less and live more modestly. Your medieval cable-bolt-fitters' guild should become less exclusive and demand less money for membership. The ultimate beneficiaries of horribly expensive electricity can easily live without three ranches and two yachts. And then people won't be forced to build this cable-flipping sham.
The same applies to the rest of the construction industry in the US. If they're building houses out of cardboard and sticks, they should be paid enough to buy a cardboard steak. And house prices should be low, not like they are now.
Perhaps you have already paid off your mortgage and saved up a million dollars for retirement? And you're not threatened by dismissal or salary reduction because supposedly "AI will replace everyone."
By the way, you don't need to be a 50+ year old nerd. Nerds are a special culture-pen where smart straight-A students from schools are placed so they can work, increase stakeholder revenues, and not even accidentally be able to do anything truly worthwhile that could redistribute wealth in society.
These were not "colonial possessions". For example, Britain had colonies.
And in the USSR, national republics were financed at the expense of the core of the country, where Russians lived. You can look up (which you certainly won't do) data on the standard of living and level of freedom in different republics of the USSR. For example, in Georgia, small business was allowed, in the RSFSR they put people in jail for it, but in Georgia, for example, you could grow tangerines, transport them on subsidized planes to the north, to all sorts of Norilsk, sell them, and receive in two weeks approximately the annual salary of a Soviet engineer who developed those very missiles, planes, etc. Of course, when the lights went out in the Union in 1991, all this Caucasian prosperity reached a civil war within a year.
By the way, I think that something similar exists in the modern USA, but the locals are blind, just like the Soviet citizens of Russian ethnicity were blind (you may not be aware, but not every successful person of smoked appearance from Russia is Russian), and do not see what is happening. When your Red-Haired Atlas completes his "perestroika and acceleration" in the USA, there will also be changes there, and perhaps people will also begin to see what they did not notice before. Well, that is, if there will be someone to do so.
> These were not "colonial possessions". For example, Britain had colonies.
Would you define Ireland as a colony? It preceded all other British colonies and they used very similar methods to those that the USSR did in its “colonies”, confiscation of land, population replacement, (indirect or direct ) genocide etc. etc.
> which you certainly won't do
If you actually did that would you mind sharing that data?
Of course there is very little accurate data available (due to obvious reasons) and we have to use proxy indicators but still.. can you actually provide any meaningful statistics besides anecdotal claims about a single Soviet state?
> you may not be aware
A lot of projection going on here..
Also I really can’t understand at all what are you trying to say in your last paragraph.
Having a railroad without a highway (and a highway won't come along and serve itself) will mean that you won't get to any city on your own. Wait for the train, maybe the railroad authorities will deign to launch a passenger train once a week, of such quality that you won't want to ride it. Like in some places in the Russian Federation. Or buy an off-road vehicle and go camping instead of traveling.
Less so though, as USA was from the onset a nation of hodgepodge nationalities from everywhere -- and without a much older local culture (except of the Indians, which were genocided away).
It was the constitution/law that held US together as a nation instead of a shared history/culture (well, except WASP culture, which is on the wane).
Well, you already have java formal verification tool named Bandera http://bandera.projects.cs.ksu.edu/people.shtml (which name is obviously choosen by Oksana Tkachuk, one of the tool authors)
As a native Spanish speaker I'm not aware of any negative connotations of the word bandera. In Spanish it just means "flag", so any other meaning is hard to google for. What am I missing? Just curious.
If you want to piss off a clinical... eww, not a russian, but a post-soviet russian-speaking citizen of Russian Federation (with a little putin in his head), you may place a Stepan Bandera photo on your userpic and name youself as ukrainian nationalist.
If you want to piss off a real ukrainian nationalist, you may use a Stalin phono, or any other communist leaders.
From the point of sight of normal people, both of these sides is braindead. "A plague on both your houses".
Kotlin is just an island. This name known from 17th century and have germanic-scandinavian origin - Kettusaari - Ketling inseln - Ketlingen - Ketling - Ketlin - Kotlin.
The same applies to the rest of the construction industry in the US. If they're building houses out of cardboard and sticks, they should be paid enough to buy a cardboard steak. And house prices should be low, not like they are now.