Steve Randy Waldman — There is a name for this

Must-read.

Politically motivated riots are a form of altruistic punishment. Look it up. Altruistic punishment is a “puzzle” to the sort of economist who thinks of homo economicusmaximizing her utility, and a no-brainer to the game theorist who understands humans could never have survived if we actually were the kind of creature who succumbed to every prisoners’ dilemma. Altruistic punishment is behavior that imposes costs on third parties with no benefit to the punisher, often even at great cost to the punisher. To the idiot economist, it is a lose/lose situation, such a puzzle.

Lose/lose is also the basis of MAD (mutually assured destruction) as a WMD deterrent. And, yes, it is a strategic "game" (as in "game theory") that has been employed tactically to relatively successful effect by imposing costs, even disproportionately. Russia imposed severe losses on itself in order to make the cost prohibitively high for the attacker.

I had to make a choice when it came dissertation time between doing it on Ludwig Wittgenstein or the ethical implications of the Pentagon employment of game theory in strategy, especially mutually assured destruction as a deterrent strategy. I chose to write on Wittgenstein, but this debate over game theory and a lose/lose strategy was going on decades ago.

Something similar happened in WWII between Germany and Russia, and before that with Napoleon when he invaded Russia and was met with a "scorched earth" response.

It would be well to keep this in mind in dealing with Russia now, especially since the recent publication of Generalplan Ost*. The Russian deep state is convinced that the current policy of the US approximates this plan. The response is to re-establish MAD, potentially by using a doomsday scenario that would completely destroy continental US and possibly Europe through the after effect by using a nuclear weapon to create geophysical destruction of the North American continent.

Rioting may imposed much less cost than war, but it is use of a similar strategy. It is not "irrational" at all.

Interfluidity
There is a name for this
Steve Randy Waldman

*Generalplan Ost [Source]
Rechtliche, wirtschaftliche und räumliche Grundlagen des Ostaufbaus
Vorgelegt von SS-Oberführer Professor Dr. XX, Berlin-Dahlem, 28.Mai 1942

This text is the famous Hitler’s “Generalplan Ost” – Nazi’s project of the Germanisation of Western Europe, which envisioned mass extermination and resettlement of Russians, Poles, Ukrainians. Having been considered lost of a long time, the text of the plan was found back in the 80’s. But it is only now that anybody interested can access it. NTV correspondent Sergey Morozov was one of them.

The publication of these documents is accompanied with apologies. The council of gardening and agriculture faculty of Berlin Humboldt university regrets the fact one of its former directors, SS member professor Konrad Meyer, did so much for the development of “Generalplan Ost”. Now this most secret document which was only know to the top leaders of the Reich is available for everyone.

“The German arms have conquered the areas in the East which we have contested for centuries. The Reich sees turning them into its imperial provinces as its most important task”, the document says.

The text has been considered lost for a long time. Only a six-page extract from it was obtained for the Nuremberg trials. The plan was composed by the Supreme Imperial Security directorate, and the other variants of this plan were burnt in 1945. “Generalplan Ost” shows in most meticulous detail what the fate of the USSR would’ve been had the Germans won. And it becomes clear why this plan was kept in strict secret.

“At the forefront of the German people’s fight against Asiatism there are areas of special importance for the Reich. In order to secure the Reich’s vital interests in these areas it is necessary not only to apply force, but the native German population has to be moved there. It has to be firmly rooted in a completely hostile environment”, the text recommends.

Yevgeny Kulkov, senior research associate of World History Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences: “They planned to resettle the Lithuanians beyond the Urals and to Siberia, or exterminate them. This is all practically the same. 85% of Lithuanians, 75% of Belarussians, 65% of Western Ukrainians, up to 50% of the Baltic states’ population”

While matching the sources, the scholars found out that the Nazis planned to move 10 million Germans to the Eastern lands and move 30 millions of indigenous population from there to Siberia. Leningrad was planned to be turned in a German settlement of 200 000 out of a city of 3 000 000. Millions of people had to die of starvation and diseases . Hitler planned to finish Russia off completely by means of dissecting it into a number of isolated parts.

“Following the directions of SS Reichsfuhrer, these provinces should be settled first: Ingermanland (Petersburg province), Gotengau (Crimea and Kherson province, former Tauria), Memelnrava province (Belostok and Western Lithuania). The Germanisation of this province is already underway by means of the return of the Volksdeutsche”.

It is interesting that the lands beyond the Urals seemed such a deadly territory for the Germans they weren’t even considered in the first place. Still, fearing that the exiled Poles might create their own state there, the Nazis decided to send exile them in Siberia in small groups.

This plan not only had estimates of how many cities were to be cleared for the future colonists, but also how much this was going to cost and who would bear the expenses.

After the war the compiler of this document Konrad Meier was acquitted at the Nuremberg trials and continued his teaching career at German universities. Publishing the original text of this ominous plan in the Web, the scholars commented that the German society hasn’t yet repented enough of the Nazi crimes.The Vineyard of the Saker

Vineyard of the Saker