They frequently didn't allow me to use copy/paste around 10-15 years ago and I never forgave them for robbing me of such a basic feature. I switched to Android as soon as my iPhone died.

Fuuuuck, they cover the walls of our science buildings with those now. It's like, how much are you spending on this shit, but you can't fix the fucking HVAC in the building?

Any chance you'd be willing to provide answers to any of my questions based on what you saw?

Good points. It's difficult to find a clear answer to how important lend-lease was to the Soviet war effort. During the war, the USSR and US obviously had good things to say about the program, but the start of the Cold War soured this discussion, leading to the US overstating and the USSR understating the impact. Here's an excerpt from a paper by a British scholar exploring the topic. Emphasis is the author's:

It is neither possible nor fruitful to try and put a precise measure on the material value of allied aid to the Soviet war economy, if only because of the unavailability of many Soviet production data. Whatever the value of western aid, the Soviet war effort was measured in human life and suffering incomparable with material aid from outside. Further, the Soviet economy became much more of a war economy than other combatant nations. Nonetheless, it seems that the contribution made by deliveries from the USA and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Canada, played an important part at crucial times and in crucial areas. First, and above all, was a vital margin of food supplies, second was the provision of specialist or deficit products such as aluminium and copper, specialized tools, high quality steels. In this respect lend-lease supplies overcame bottlenecks. However, it must be stressed that the major impact came after the Soviet counterattack and the beginning of German retreat. Such aid directly and indirectly helped defeat the German forces, and was in such a way a substitute for a second front, but it did little to defend the USSR from the initial onslaught. Third, some of the raw materials and more especially machinery and transport equipment was of positive value to the Soviet economy after the war. For this, the tyre plant is the best but not the only example.

It is nonsense to repeat the figure of four per cent of Soviet wartime production and disingenuous to disparage western aid - a feature evident in Soviet literature and one criticized even by Khrushchev. It is nonetheless true (and this is a point repeated in some Soviet works) that Britain and the Empire received far more than the USSR from the United States. Lend-lease, in this respect, may be seen as a temporary substitute for foreign trade. Britain was a major trading nation, highly dependent on imports, especially for food and raw materials. The USSR, on the other hand, was an economy with little trade dependence whose foreign trade turnover had fallen steadily during the 1930s...

The part left off at the end compares repayment of aid sent to the British vs the Soviets. A fairly short read that will give some more context to the conclusions I shared above.

One of the main points the author makes is that lend-lease was used by the US as a stand-in for entering the war and opening a new front in 1942 as the allies (and Stalin in particular) were requesting. In this context, lend-lease was a replacement for reopening the Western front in 1942, an action that could have been far more impactful. The US provided material aid in lieu of entering the war, shifting the human burden of the war onto the other Allied forces and particularly the USSR from 1942 to least at 1944 (note that lend-lease aid extended wider and was provided from 1941-1945).

Overall, the impression I've gotten from sifting through academic writings on the subject is that while lend-lease certainly helped take some of the pressure off of the USSR (mainly in the form of producing food, trucks, and raw materials), it's most likely that the result would have been the same. That said, wondering over historical what-ifs, while fun, should really be constrained to recreational musing and shouldn't be taken seriously.

Got it figured out, thanks!

Communism is when capitalism.

I swear it's an official rule that reviewer 2 is required to be a huge pain in the ass.

I will try this, thank you for the advice. Normally I end up contacting the authors when I don't have access. Some are great and respond within the hour, some never respond.

Also, thanks for carrying this community. I enjoy your posts.

They should choose someone more in their tier of technology to fight, like themselves. Pit every branch of the US military against themselves. Whoever wins gets to retire.

No more US military.

It's only stupid if you don't address the root causes of the problems that you are listing. If you don't do anything to lift the people out of their desperation and end the cause of that desperation, then of course they will sell it.

Your middle paragraph is the first part of what I'm talking about, do what is needed to help people lift themselves back up. Only a small part of that is helping with housing. The bigger problem is the second part, if you do nothing about the conditions that contributed to their downward spiral, then that first part will only be a temporary relief.

This second comment made it much more clear that you weren't just saying, "nah, fuck them," but covering all of the nuances of what needs to change just isn't a realistic expectation for text comments online. Frankly, I have a feeling you and I agree a lot on that first part of what is needed to help people, no clue about how you feel about the second part. I appreciate you coming back with a thoughtful answer instead of trolling, because I expect trolling.

Lemmy Main or 2.0?

The government shutting down a strike only worked because the union capitulated. It worked because when the government said no, they listened.

The rail workers could have held a strike anyway, legal consequences be damned. The government would likely escalate in retaliation: strikers would be jailed and potentially forced back into that labor while incarcerated. Strikers could then give in to the government's demands or further escalate on their own end. This could take the form of sabotage, armed conflict, or other methods of dissent. This is the history of labor struggles and it has often been a bloody history.

At the end of the day, it becomes a matter of how desperate each group is. If the risk posed by the government retaliating is greater than your desperation to improve conditions, then workers are more likely to back down. This doesn't address the consciousness of the workers though. They hold the true source of power (labor) in this neverending struggle and have the most to gain by taking action to exert that power over those who wish to exploit them.

Part of the problem is that taking revolutionary action isn't easy and it's much more comfortable to capitulate anywhere along the road to changing these dynamics.

What is to be done? Educate yourself and those around you. Organize yourselves against your oppressors and prepare for the fight ahead. Take action and persevere by supporting one another in this struggle.

The only thing that authority respects is a greater authority. The ones in power maintain their authority because we allow them to maintain that authority. Nothing happens without the labor of the masses and when they act in solidarity, nothing has the power to stop them.