Re: What after Year2000 -- MIDRANGE-L

DAsmussen@aol.com wrote:

>  What DOES concern me is
> the impact of Y2K in the former Soviet republics.

I forsee problems, not as gloomy an outlook as you may predict, but
bigger than ours.
I suspect, though, that locally run businesses rely less on computers
than the average US busineses, and the foreign owned ones will bring in
their own solutions.

The Russians were, are, and I suspect always will be, very resourceful. 
After all of the joint space missions between them and nasa, some of the
russian "secrets" are coming out - their spacecraft are decidedly
"low-tech" by nasa standards, but remarkably functional and inovative in
design.  They have had to do more with less thoughout history, and they
are very good at it.

> The latter were old "cold war" analogies (and I shudder to
> realize that there are actually people that would take them seriously as a
> whole), but an economy totally collapsed by Y2K issues would be fertile
> ground for an insane nationalist to take power.  Pure conjecture and somewhat
> paranoic, but food for thought.  Germany wasn't doing so well when Hitler
> took power...

I always took the cold war seriously.  I was also sure that they were
just as afraid of us as we were of them.   and, yes, this gave me some
measure of comfort.

But problems will occur, and I'm sure this will only bolster the
ultra-nationalists.   

Russia is already fertile ground for insane nationalists.  I don't
remember his name, but a few years back a general who advocated taking
Alaska back from us, and nuking another neighbor (again my memory is a
little fuzzy), got a very significant portion of the popular vote, and
it was only after a third candidate quit and endorsed Yeltsin, was the
election outcome certain.

This scares me more than some glitch in the software that will cause all
of the missiles to launch on jan 1, 2000 - I doubt very seriously that
they would overlook something so important.   If the Russian people
decide that their "experiments" in democracy and free market economics
are a failure, and decide to throw the reformist out due to this
percieved failure, this would be a real threat.

> Any knowlegeable insight (Dave?) would be appreciated.

Just my .02 worth, definately not inside info.

Regards, 

rick
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