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Comment by iLoch | Hacker News Reader

Invasion of the US would be a lot more difficult than you make it out to be. A large portion of the US is surrounded by water, so Russian and China would have to overcome the two largest navies in the world (the US Navy and the US Air Force) in order to even set foot on land if they were to come that route. Of course the other option is to come over the top through Canada. But then you have to defeat the largest Air Force in the world: the US has 2x more aircraft than Russia and China combined.

I'm Canadian so I'm not a patriot of the US by any measure, but I think it'd at least be a pretty fair fight.

Russia and China understand their losses would be devastating, so I doubt they'd wage that war. Not to mention they'd likely be waging a two-front war with Korea and Japan as US allies.

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"the two largest navies in the world"

I think you have this upside down. The US has the two largest air forces in the world: the USAF and the US Navy. The USAF hardly has any ships, though.

In addition the US Navy isn't just the biggest navy in the world, it's the biggest by a landslide. Any way you measure it whether by supercarriers[1] or water displacement it's larger than the worlds other navies combined.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercarrier

Whoops, yes that's correct.

The US has already been invaded by millions of socialist third world immigrants since the passage of this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_...

And I welcome them with open arms, as do a majority of the rest of the citizens of the US.

My only reservation is that I don't personally think they're being treated well enough.

Anyone who comes to the US with plans to make a life here and obey the laws are exactly the kind of people I want in the US. Even if they're only here long enough to wait out a horrible regime back home, I welcome them.

Then you must also embrace the resulting socialist policies in the US.

Some of the "socialist" programs the US has? Sure. I'm guessing you don't know the difference between a US "socialist" program and the "USSR" kind of socialist, though.

What is the difference, in principle?

Socialism in the USSR was actual socialism (the government owned the companies, dictated exact salaries, completely regulated supply, etc), whereas in the US the government goes through all kinds of steps to determine which private company (non-profits) gets funding to perform the tasks.

The difference, in principle, is a spectrum, with actual socialism on one end, and US social programs (not socialism) on the other.

Would you say that control of currency was centralized in both the USSR and the US?

Would you also say that there is a degree of central planning in both the US economy, and that of the former USSR?

Would you also say that forced reallocation of resources occurs in the US economy, and occurred in that of the former USSR?

Yes, the USSR and the US had/have central banks.

Yes, "degree of control" is not at question, it's the "degree" itself that's at question. The USSR had a much higher degree of central planning for the USSR's economy than the US does. This question is worded explicitly to draw a parallel when there is none, another example of which would be, "Do both Obama and Stalin read books?"

Yes, but again, this question is not about a boolean yes/no, but rather the degree to which it happens. There's also a strong question of what "forced" means in this context. Does the US force resource allocation to the growth of corn? No. Does the US encourage the growth of corn in the form of subsidies? Yes. The USSR simply would have started growing corn, as the agriculture business was directly under the control of the government, whereas the US has no mechanisms to legally force farmers to grow crops of any kind.

Of course it wouldn't be simple. The Russians want faith in society and government to break down so that any government effort against the invasion is stagnant: our soldiers won't want to fight for our do-nothing government that's not helping the middle class. The hard part will be defeating the organizations that form in the wake of intervention, Russia will have their own Al-Qaeda to deal with in the form of American ultra-nationalist militants.

>Russia and China understand their losses would be devastating

It's not about human life, the elites in charge of these world power nations just care about power and money. I see them making much more money without US intervention in places like the south china sea or Africa. It's in the interest of Russia and China to see America as a super power fail. To watch our infrastructure fall apart. To come in and change our regulations so they can ship us even cheaper goods that are considered unsafe by current standards (exploit us).

All I know for sure is that I'm moving close to the Canadian border soon so I can escape this mess when it all goes down.

The US has the highest gun ownership rate in the world. There are literally enough privately held small arms to arm every man, woman, and child in this country. The territory is so large as to be impossible for all but the Chinese [EDIT: and Indians, however no one ever suggests that India will be a potential invader] (with mass conscription) to try to hold with manpower.

The only effective way to invade would involve some combination of nuclear/chemical/biological agents and subterfuge leading to a coup of some sort in multiple regions so that people were peaceful to the invaders.

Given the paranoia present in US culture, and its general xenophobia, this second part seems unlikely.

Instead, you'd end up with a massive, bloody war with low chance of success (at least, the US may be wiped out, but the cost of conquering would decimate the invaders resources).

As for an effective economic coup, that's more feasible. But I'd say the US will do it to itself without needing anyone to push us along. We've been pretty shortsighted about our relationships with other countries for most of our existence, but the past 50 years or so in particular. And we're fucking up our next generation by weakening our education system, driving them into debt for college, and poor mentorship/apprenticeship practices for beginning careers.

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