this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2025
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No Stupid Questions

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 day ago

America spent a century burning all the other baskets and demanded that everyone store their eggs in the American Basket™. All resistance was met with violence openly or covertly.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago

The US bombed the shit out of much of the world's manufacturing in WW2, and after the war they filled the void and dominated the global markets.

When there was competition that threatened US profits after the war, they assassinated heads of State who didn't enact US policy.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 day ago (1 children)

America demanded the role. America took the role and hoarded it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

Once I got temporarily banned from reddit for saying something like this 😭

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 day ago

America is the cause in the rise in fascism, this is who this country has always been.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

The world? I don't think so, it was mostly their allies I think. America actually suppresses people deviating from the norm, they are trying to dismantle BRICS because of it represents a alternative to the dollar.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

BRICS represents an aspiration to have an alternative to the dollar.

Even that will get America fucking with you.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Yeah, it all built out of WW2. After WW2 pretty much all of Europe was in shambles. Most major cities had been bombed at least once, many far more than that. Infrastructure all across the continent was destroyed. The industrial capacity was destroyed. Armies had marched, pillaged, and destroyed first out of Germany across Europe, then back across Europe into Germany. The US was uniquely positioned as the only world power that didn't suffer massive economic devastation from the war. In fact, due to stuff like the lend-lease act and massive industrial mobilization for the war effort, the US was experiencing a massive economic boom while Europe and east Asia were in a depression.

But in the aftermath of the war the Cold War set in. The USSR and Allied powers (led by the US) drew lines in the sand and established their areas of influence. The US instituted the Marshall Plan in Europe which essentially just shotgunned money at western Europe to rebuild as much as possible as quickly as possible. This had a massive positive economic impact on western Europe, but it also ensured that so much of Europe would be dependent on American products and companies. If your rebuilt power grid was made with American parts, then anything new would have to be compatible with that, ensuring your country is a long-term customer of American products. At the same time, the US and western Europe created NATO as a military pact against the Soviet Union, which further strengthened the western alliance. Again, with the US as the only major western power with a larger and more powerful army after the war than before, the US took the leading role in NATO.

Another major factor that most people tend to overlook was the Bretton Woods Agreement in 1944. This was an effort to stabilize the global economy and monetary system after WW2. It said that the US would readopt the gold standard (we had abandoned it during the war, and would later permanently abandon it in the early 70s), then every other western-aligned country would use the US dollar as the basis for their currency. Think of it like a gold-standard, but instead of gold, they used US dollars. This gave the US enormous economic influence because everybody needed US dollars to maintain their economies, and the only way to get them was to do business with the US.

This created the conditions that the US expanded and exploited over the second half of the 20th century to cement ourselves as the dominant western world power. Through colonialism and Cold War dynamics, the US and USSR forced most of the global south to pick a side, and often forced regime change when they didn't like the choice countries made.

Then the Soviet Union fell and the US was the only global superpower left remaining. Over the 90s and early 00s a lot of formerly Soviet-aligned countries hitched their wagons to the US since it was the only game left in town.

So, yes, much of the rest of the world put their eggs in the America basket, but it wasn't recently, it didn't happen all at once, and, at the time at least, there were other factors that went into those decisions.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

There is such a thing as third world/nonaligned

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

Yeah. It was the easy thing to do so everyone did.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

Yes both of those statements are true

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yes, at least for the Europeans that is very much the case. The Germans, for instance, were always morally appalled by the more overtly violent aspects of US Imperialism, but were perfectly happy to hide under their coattails and let them do the dirty work. The deal was that Europe world accept US hegemony in exchange for military protection. Nobody could ever imagine that the US would just rip up that deal because it will definitely hurt them more than everybody else.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

For further reading on this agreement it's called the Bretton Woods agreement if anyone is interested.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Bretton Woods wasn't about military protection. It was about stabilizing the global economy and monetary system. It absolutely gave the US a ton of economic influence, but it didn't have anything to do with military protection. The Soviet Union even took part in the negotiations that turned into the Bretton Woods Agreement, although they chose not to sign the treaty.

The US' military hegemony came out of NATO, the Cold War, and the Marshall Plan.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

America never suppressed it, it is considered the most right wing western country out there, and there is no left that people seem to believe, center right at most. It was only a matter of time, with the help of Russian propaganda that USA became just like RU, since alt right Christians had significant stranglehold on politics for decades. Half of the time USA has been under their control, with the help of DINOs. They just have a veneer of progressivism, as a way to hide behind

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 day ago

Eggs in a basket??? Jesus!!! How much is THAT going to cost???

[–] [email protected] 132 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Well, South American countries made multiple attempts to put their eggs somewhere else and then found their eggs suspiciously smashed and their chicken appeared to have been replaced by a fascist dictator in the morning and when they asked what happened to the eggs they were put in a plane and quietly dropped over the ocean.

So there was that reason.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

For more info, read Confessions of an Economic Hitman

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 days ago

America made damn sure the world put its eggs here. We've always been the villain.

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