Reddit mentions of Anthropocene or Capitalocene?: Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism (KAIROS)

south korea also got a 99.x% literacy rate after they were colonized by japan... that's how colonization works.. an empire colonizes, brings it's technology and literacy standards and state institutions and all that... you're literally giving me arguments in defense of colonialism right now with these kinds of statistics that are the same ones used to justify nation-building, colonizing, democratizing missions by USA, Britain, Russia, Japan etc.. of especially the past centuries.

afghanistan, on the other hand, it could be argued, has a much lower literacy rate than the surrounding region, perhaps precisely because it's so geographically isolated, and no empire has successfully conquered it in history.

so yeah, just a friendly heads up, post-colonial theory is decades ahead of where you are thinking right now. if you wanna check out something fairly current, i'd really recommend this short collection, from 2016. anthropocene or capitalocene? you don't really need to be familiar with the concept of anthropocene at all, as this book is a critique of it, and describes it in very good detail.

to answer your more direct question "what did USSR/Russia get out of it", the got most of central and all of norther n east asia under their sphere of influence. that's a gigantic part of the world, with so many diverse cultures and peoples..

just saying, russia did pretty much the exact same thing as the US did, expanded east/west- ward, killing native peoples, and bringing them under their control. both countries are STILL engaged in this enterprise to some degree or another.. and i guess, the question i ask myself a lot, is which one of these empires, right now, in the current world.. has more forward inertia? (a decent formula for measuring this being ehrlichs I=PAT (Impact = population x affluence x technology) and, trying to calculate that formula, the answer is in every case russia...

>P - russias population is about half that of US, but if we calculate the entire russia sphere of influence, which includes most of asia, lots of eastern europe, huge swaths of middle east and africa.. and well, also china, since the two of them are still very much playing in concert together.. that hugely outweighs the US 300 million plus western europe and maybe south korea and part of japan (japan can't be considered to be full vassal state of US like germany can, as Japan is currently very much in the process of refitting it's own imperial war engines)...

>A - if we take affluence, russia kills US on every measure. their budget is balanced despite the sanctions while almost half of US assets are owned by china.. the russian gov't currently hold huge sway on all three branches of the US government, and look very much poised to politically and economically dominate the united states in the coming decades..

>T - if we take technology, it's well known that US has a very advanced tech sector, especially having defeated the nazis in WWII and gotten their hands on the most advanced tech every created.. but, while the US is using that tech legacy to make 5th generation fighter jets and aircraft carriers it doesn't even need, basically pissing the military budget into the sea, so that wealthy lobbiests and bureacrats stay wealthy... Russia are managing their military much, much more prudently... neither they nor china have an operative aircraft carrier or an operative 5th generation fighter jet (US have 2 operative 5th generation fighters and over 2 dozen state of the art carriers)...
so, while it may seem that US has the slight edge here in tech, in that the US military of the 1970s could probably take on both Russia and China in a full scale war and win.. it's not quite the case, i'd say
russia and china may not have carriers or high tech jets, but russia and china (soyuz) still have the only viable human spaceflight craft currently in operation. and they have gigantic tech sectors that are huge economically out competing the US.. especially in future models..

>I - I think we can judge from that analysis, that without a doubt Russia's impact is more forceful currently than the US, and this trend will only continue to increase if other circumstances do not.


so yeah, US is pretty much fucked either way we look at it... question is, what do we do, how to allow for the best results from this sunset period of US empire in the world, going into a long period of chinese hegemony (or rather, the world snapping back to it's usual state of chinese economic and imperial hegemony after a 5 century or so break caused by contact with europe)?