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On the tribulations of an expatriate in Europe
Saturday, April 26, 2025
The Beauty of Repentance
Friday, April 25, 2025
What would happen if the U.S. joined the Ukraine war?
I’ve spent too long considering the strategy here. What divisions would be moved in- what units would be deployed? I think this is a topic nobody can really shed light on because it varies based on the situation.
My best guess is that US forces in Europe would converge on Ukraine. There are about 60,000 US troops in Europe spread throughout the continent but focused in the East. Most of these guys and gals are support troops but many of them are combat-ready. Additionally, the US has a significant number of military aircraft and naval groups in Europe. These forces would be more than enough to defeat Russian forces in Ukraine. That said I suspect a large number of US carriers and perhaps a few Marine Divisions to get involved as well.
Understand that these US forces in Europe have been training for 1 purpose and only 1 purpose- fighting Russians. These guys are well-armed, well-trained, and specifically equipped to counter Russian forces. Russia has been struggling to fight irregular Ukrainian troops. Throw in some elite US support personnel, US Aircraft, and US infantry, and Russia would be doomed.
So what would happen?
Option 1: Russia retreats
Putin knows full well what US intervention means. Russia has failed miserably against Ukraine so you can guess how Russia would do against the very well-equipped, supplied, ad trained US military.
At full strength Russia is a paper tiger with no real teeth- now severely weakened Russia simply couldn’t even really put up much of a fight. This makes me think they will just back down right away.
I suspect if the US announces its intent to get involved Russia will make one last massive push for victory hoping to achieve some measure of success and force Ukraine into a negotiated peace. This will fail and Russian troops will abandon the front in a full retreat before US troops arrive.
This allows Putin to avoid the humiliation of a significant defeat to the US. Additionally, it saves Russia from facing significant and irreplaceable military losses to the US. Putin can claim Russia wasn’t beaten and make the US look like the bad guy to try and secure his position.
Option 2: Nuclear war
I do not think Putin would launch nuclear weapons. In fact, I am 100% sure he won’t. It would be murdering your wife because you cannot decide on where to go to dinner- it’s just too wonky.
If nukes were launched the US would respond and annihilate Russia from the face of the planet. Moreover, even loyal Russian allies or neutral countries like China and India would be firmly against Russia because of this. Such an action is so far over the line of acceptability it’s hard to even explain. Literally, every single nation on earth would universally oppose this action to a point where even if Russia survives they will have no future. It’s an unthinkably stupid decision and I don’t think Putin is a stupid man.
However, I do think there is a way that nuclear war can start. Putin could give nuclear weapons to his frontline generals and give them the authorization to use them at will. This means if a General is about to be overrun he will either have to use the nuke or risk it falling into enemy hands.
Putin may distribute nukes to his frontline troops if the US gets involved as a way to keep the US at bay. If US forces attack Russian troops will be overrun which may trigger the launch of at least a few nuclear weapons. Putin can sit back and claim “it wasn’t me” and blame the US for the entire thing.
What would the rest of NATO and the EU do if Trump abandons Ukraine to Russia?
Lived in Ukraine (2014–2024) Feb 14
Trump may just. Sadly.
NATO, with the EU, should step up and help Ukraine. EXCEPT Ukraine MUST start doing more to help herself! Remember NATO is a defense treaty group. EU is an economic group. Therefore, the EU can do something but NATO, as a “unit”, would have to show a valid threat of Russia similar to we did for Iraq and Afghanistan after 9–11 happened. Let’s be honest - the connections were tenuous.
Trump has normally been a step ahead with intelligence. With Ukraine he is saying things that just are illogical, nonsensical, idiotic and just dishonest.
I have family fighting on the front line. I also have family who refuses to help do anything except live for themselves! You DO NOT win a war of invasion by having a society that merely “live for themselves”! You DO NOT have the RIGHT to DEMAND help from others when YOU are unwilling to do more than “live for yourself”!
Remember Trudeau has already removed most of Canadian troops from NATO. Germany has been on the fence to helping Ukraine. Poland, US and UK have done a lot to help with Zelensky, at times, coming out harshly against all three of these nations.
I am definitely NOT saying some of the off-hand comments by Zelensky aren’t correct; the beggar on the street has the right to give you the finger if you didn’t give enough money but it sure wouldn’t make you want to give MORE money to that beggar? Sometimes, even though I am VERY SUPPORTIVE of speaking your mind, but sometimes the better part of valor is to bite your tongue. It is a lesson my father had a very difficult time teaching me but one Zelensky (and TRUMP!) has given me a YUUGGE boost of education.
Vance said he is afraid of the retreat of fundamental values in Europe. But he is willing to allow Ukraine fall to an invading horde? To let a country fall that is trying to become free.
The Mystery of the Resurrection
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Thursday, April 24, 2025
What is now the most likely way for the Ukraine conflict to end?
Visited 24 European countries 2y
This is an answer I wrote earlier, and I stand by it. Sure, it’s difficult to make predictions, especially about the future, but there you go.
I’m going to stick my neck out now.
I’m going to say that this will play out exactly as it did in 1917.
Within a few months, probably this year, the current leadership will somehow be made to step down over their complete failure and incompetence.
The next leadership will be one of hawks. They will try to double down on the war, since they have delusions of competence.
This will not make any difference whatsoever. The Russian state is impotent to wage a war; the incompetence runs too deep and nothing that can be done in less than a decade can fix this. Their hands are just as tied as Putin’s, by the lack of manpower and industrial base in Russia, Ukraine’s friends all over the world, and the conundrum posed by how any escalation will only lead to Russia losing faster.
Then, there will be a new October Revolution. A different faction will come to power, carried on the back of unrest in Russia. Like in 1917, they will win the day by promising an end to the war, no matter what the cost is. At this point, the Russian people will be so sick of the war that they will agree to just about anything.
The wildcard here is nuclear weapons. If the hawk faction uses them, they will lose the war so fast that maybe the war will end before their opposition has time to organise.
It’s just one guy’s guess. It’s a forecast worth exactly what you paid for it. But that’s what I guess will happen.
How can we accomplish sustainable prosperity for everyone?
Sharing Reconomy.net Updated Feb 27
It’s a simple and long-overdue upgrade of the most powerful technology in human history, to resolve our complex global resource crisis, providing the resources to reverse global warming, end poverty, and much more.
This simple upgrade of money — Reconomy — is completely legal and free to every nation and community, placed in the public domain in 2011.
How did things get this bad?
Today’s complex global emergency evolved in spite of our seeking a better future for ourselves, as we repeated with good intent the same destructive action since the dawn of civilization. The destructive action is competing for low prices to win in the marketplace without rewarding good stewardship equally — disastrously rewarding consumers and producers for avoiding the added costs of good stewardship.
Reconomy introduces a new kind of money that rewards good stewardship without taking the old kind of money away.
We can empower and reward ourselves — literally, pay ourselves — for sustainably developing local human and natural resources everywhere through simply adding a second kind of money that pays for good stewardship and circulates locally forever, resulting in sustainable prosperity for everyone everywhere.
LOCAL EMPOWERMENT TO STEWARD RESOURCES IS THE ONE PROVEN SOLUTION TO OUR GLOBAL “TRAGEDY OF THE COMMONS”, for which proof
(above:Elinor Ostrom was an unusual choice for the 2009 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.)
Elinor Ostrom’s excellent summary in her Nobel lecture:
The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2009
Ostrom describes the trap we are in as analogous to “the prisoners dilemma” in game theory, in which prisoners are isolated from each other, because when groups can not communicate they are more likely to exhaust and pollute common resources. Our separation from our actual neighbors by the global marketplace results in huge hurdles to effective regulation of local resources everywhere. Empowering local connection is proven to result in collaborative stewarding of local resources.
Solution: Empower and reward good local stewardship everywhere.
Specifically:
We can accomplish this most easily the way it’s been proven to work:
UPGRADE MONEY to create powerful local currency that works right beside global currency: Reconomy (this strategy is in the public domain).
How:
There are far more than 250 million persons around the world seeking decent work (unemployed, involuntarily underemployed, etc),
and more than two billion hectares of land requiring restoration to be productive.
Those are the two greatest wastes in all of human history.
With this second, powerful local money, we can combine these wasted resources, to make them our greatest asset, so communities anywhere and everywhere can truly engage anyone and everyone who wants the work in local sustainable development of all human and natural resources.
Focusing this new money on development of local marketable commodities, from food to education, and backing it with what it produces, as it circulates locally forever in virtuous circuits of sustainable production and consumption, creating a self-funding, self-managing, and self-scaling path to sustainable prosperity everywhere.
The results include (but are not limited to):
- restores all human and wild habitat that can be restored
- prevents further damage that can be prevented
- prepares us as quickly as possible for the consequences of what can neither be repaired nor prevented, nor even predicted, such as possible loss of global access to some essential resources…and here is how:
- accomplishes the fastest possible solution to poverty, hunger, unemployment, and homelessness
- accomplishes global reforestation and restoration of two billion hectares by midcentury, by funding continuous sustainable management of all forests, limiting loss to fire, reversing climate change ,and ending the Anthropocene Extinction, without taking any resources away from other needs
- accomplishes a permanent and more equitable redistribution of wealth without taking wealth from anyone
- funds and completes transition to renewable resources everywhere as soon as possible
- empowers communities everywhere to create local self-reliance to provide the most resilient protection from regional and global disasters such as flood, pandemic, and war
- creates a resilient supply line of sustainable resources to the global marketplace from everywhere to provide the most resilient foundation possible for global civilization and deepest resources for global response to local emergencies
- creates the compassionate civilization we practice being
- leaves no one behind
(above: view of sunset from El Cerro de la Muerte in Costa Rica)
How does this new kind of money accomplish all this? How is it produced? How does it circulate?
Reconomy’s new money works right beside the old money but stays in communities:
We can back the guarantee of the value of the new money in a variety of ways initially, until it is backed with what it produces. For fastest implementation, back the new money with acceptance in payment of taxes so everyone immediately trusts and uses it. The taxes paid with new money can be returned to local community development organizations. Alternatively, guarantee local community currency against default with a secured deposit of national currency (from donations, sale of art prints of local currency designs, etc) to exchange for local money if local system closes for any reason.
More details on implementation and related issues are posted in the public domain at the Reconomy website and through posts linked from the Reconomy Quora space. And implementation of Reconomy from the ground-up is now in development, including design and installation of a glocal art contest to design local community currency at Kind.Voyage open to everyone under 18 years of age, with a weekly prize of up to $1000.
Q. What does sustainable development look like in a general sense?
A. Good stewardship of human and natural resources.
Q.What does sustainable prosperity look like?
A. Sustained and sustainable ecological and economic growth. Yes it IS possible, through virtuous circuits of production and consumption!
Q. How do we accomplish good stewardship of resources if our marketplace rewards people for ducking the costs of good stewardship?
A. Create a new money to empower and reward good stewardship.
Q. How do we empower communities to create this new kind of money?
A. Communities pay people to implement and manage the new money using the money they create.
Q. What does the finished system look like?
A.The new money is used beside the old — with same face values — and by practicing good stewardship we become the caring civilization we practice being.
Q. How quickly can this new local economy be initiated?
A. It’s already legal almost everywhere: almost any community, state or nation can follow this strategy immediately.
Q. Has this been tried successfully?
A. (1) Yes, during the Great Depression, a substantially identical local system was installed in Wörgl Austria where it quickly ended hunger and destitution and spread to neighboring communities so quickly and successfully that the Austrian National Bank shut it down because it feared it would lose its monopoly on money. The closing of that local system was simply a power play, not legally justified. (2) A good recent and comparable example of a currency created to fund sustainable development — and backed by local production but not precisely by what it paid to produce — happened in Curitiba Brazil, which municipality was honored with the United Nations’ highest environmental award, granted by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). (3) And a new and ongoing community currency was created by the people in a slum of Mombasa Kenya, where the national government is helping to scale it to every community in the nation, and thus illustrates the potential of any nation to create local currencies that can thrive due to such national government support, although this currency is not backed by what it produces nor secured in circulation and may therefore fade.
Curitiba: Unilivre / Free environmental University:
Q. What has caused most local money systems to fail to achieve sustainable prosperity?
A. Most local money systems fail to produce prosperity because:
(1) most make the error of backing their local money by redeeming it for national currency, so it’s continuously redeemed out of circulation by persons who need national money to spend in the global marketplace, thus continuously wasting the costs of placing it into local circulation and disrupting the local circuits of production and consumption; or
(2) some local systems are introduced as speculative crypto (Ponzi) schemes that generate volatile trading value that results in hoarding and dumping, and experience eventual decline and collapse of value and systems; and
(3) the most widely employed local money systems are mutual exchange systems (MES), such as local employment trading systems and other forms of time banks, that struggle against unsecured debt. These involve credits (of local money or hours of time, etc) recorded in the accounts of members when providing goods and/or services, and debits recorded in the accounts of members when consuming those goods and services — thus a mutual exchange. These types of systems can be easy to implement because they are self-funding (by definition), but they are generally backed only by the debt of members and thus may stagnate or wither due to default on unsecured debt. MES can do well when the debtors are obligated in some way to repay. Perhaps the best example of a successful mutual exchange system is Fureai Kippu in Japan, in which members trade time spent on elder care, which has extraordinary success due to deep cultural roots related to ancestor worship, high value of community, and dishonor to those defaulting on debt.
In contrast: Reconomy creates local money by paying for sustainable development of goods and services, and thus can guarantee the money with the value of what is produced, (not leaving it as unsecured debt like MES) establishing secure and continuous circuits of sustainable production and consumption.
Q. Why haven’t we been able to solve this by paying for sustainable development with the old kind of money?
A. When we pay people with global money to practice good local stewardship, they may do the work, but it fails to produce sustainable prosperity because:
(1) workers spend the earnings in the same old way that rewards people for offering low prices through ducking the costs of good stewardship, undoing the good work,
and
(2) thus the national/global money leaves communities and accumulates continuously into fewer and fewer pockets, rather than continuing forever in virtuous circuits of local production and consumption that build sustainable prosperity for everyone.
Genuine local money continuously circulates locally forever, building local intra-dependent wealth for everyone by continuously funding every kind of sustainable local development because the shareholders (owners of local money) are the stakeholders (the ones affected by it), empowering communities
- to fight PANDEMIC: Pay people with local money to make face masks, which can be sold for local and national money, so there is money for buying imported materials and tools; and the workers can buy the face masks at a significant discount (e.g. 50%) to wear and/or to sell in their own businesses, providing work and a business opportunity for many and face masks for everyone.
- to develop water resources: For example, pay people with local money to dig wells and to pump the water — then sell the water for the local money, establishing virtuous circuits of sustainable production and consumption that create a demand for the local currency — a strategy that leaves no one behind.
- to grow food: Plant gardens and harvest the produce — Proven tactic: offer discounts for the food when purchased with the local currency to multiply the demand for both the food grown with local money and the local money itself, and thus multiplying the empowerment to employ persons in sustainable development of all kinds to earn the money.
- education: build schools and pay teachers.
- renewable energy: build local energy plants that keep energy money local, produce renewable fuels.
- sanitation: build public restrooms and pay for management with local money, and recycle waste for additional profit.
- housing: build with local natural materials using local labor, such as with bamboo and cob harvested/produced and installed locally.
- reforestation: a small percentage of labor to plant and steward forests for food, fuel and other materials.
- child care: build local facilities and use local caretakers.
- elder care: create local networks of support.
- transportation: exchange stuff collected for recycling for transportation tokens.
- local health care programs: network local caretakers.
- and much much more — everything that can be accomplished locally when communities have continuous access to money, energy and a global network of mutual support (Reconomy).Local money recirculates forever…unlike national money that leaves to fetch stuff:
Q. This sounds so obviously great, so why hasn’t it happened everywhere?
A. Because we use only global money: advantage in selling products and ideas goes to the lower cost of economy-of-scale of global advertising, enriching and empowering global corporations and their corporate media.
Q. What happens if we pursue sustainable development instead of sustainable prosperity?
A. Sustainable development can deadend in sustainable poverty for everyone by applying the same failed low-price imperative to accomplishing sustainability. Or, in other words, it’s insane to continue to do the same thing and expect different results. To pursue low-cost sustainability, policy makers use sticks instead of carrots, in the form of state, national and global regulations, which unintentionally reward persons for successfully avoiding the regulations, and thus continuously empower the most corrupt, requiring an ever-greater police force to control.
Sustainable prosperity for everyone everywhere requires only a stable second money to pay for good local stewardship, backed by the goods and services it produces — and we become the compassionate civilization we practice being because we are able to network our communities to share and promote their deep solutions: That’s Reconomy: self-funding, self-managing, self-scaling.
The great strength of the global marketplace is it enables us to combine all the world’s human and natural resources and share them, but its fatal weakness is it impels us to exploit those resources unsustainably to compete in that marketplace. The great strength of local marketplaces is they empower us to protect local human and natural resources, but their fatal weakness is they isolate the communities.
Any community, anywhere, can combine these two marketplaces — global and local — now, by creating a parallel local currency, to enjoy the benefits of both marketplaces as each corrects the fatal weakness of the other, without taking money away from other needs.
As an idea (Reconomy) with a network of support, we are preparing a plan for implementation as a fun and profitable game that everyone wins. The planning, including seed funding, is nearing completion, and it operates exactly as described:
It creates a local currency that combines global and local marketplaces without taking money away from any other needs, and does this by rewarding and empowering individuals, organizations, and communities for their participation in creating beauty and sustainable prosperity. It will be introduced as a functioning system, and everyone will be invited to implement this in their own communities as part of our network.
Q. How else can I help?
A. Please share this post now to join with us in making this happen, and follow us here on Quora to read more details and to hear about emerging opportunities.
Thanks,
We the people of our beautiful Earth
Click here to see Spanish translation of this answer by Kattia Montenegro
Reconomy’s Quora advertising campaign: April 3rd, 2020: This answer has been shown through an advertising promotion on Quora more than 2.9 million times (often to same persons repeatedly) resulting in more than 125 thousand clicks on the link to the answer, more than 1800 upvotes, and more than 80 of the more than 100 shares. The image below shows Quora’s report.
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