Loss in terms of money or efforts. Could be recent or ancient.
What are some notable blunders in history that resulted in huge loss?
3 years ago by Bady to c/asklemmy
BigBootyBoy 7 points 3 years ago
Like how Florida is going to teach how slavery benefited black people
bady 29 points 3 years ago
One of the best examples of unintended consequences, aiding in one of the largest human caused disasters.
ActualShark 15 points 3 years ago
I like to call it "The Great Stumble Backwards"
Noughmad 24 points 3 years ago
The great leap forward was such a colossal clusterfuck that you can't blame it on any one thing (although most of them would be prevented without the authoritarianism). Literally everything was wrong. Sparrows, lysenkoism, forced collectivization (basically, and perhaps ironically, farmers not owning the means of production), Mao just being evil, backyard burners, rigid chain of command that gave the chairman absolute authority but at the same prevented him from knowing what was going on, everything.
Tippon 16 points 3 years ago
I vaguely remember reading about that when I was younger. I don't know if it's true, but this is what I read.
The peasants and farmers were made to stand in the fields throwing stones at the sparrows, preventing them from landing. The thinking was that the sparrows would die from exhaustion, if they weren't killed by the stones.
What actually happened was that the existing crops were either trampled or broken by the stones, and as the farmers weren't working the fields, nothing grew the following year either.
Like I say, I have no idea whether it's true, or if it was just 80's anti communist propaganda, but it's stuck in my head ever since.
grabyourmotherskeys 13 points 3 years ago
The "why don't we just..." school of public policy.
CanadaPlus 7 points 3 years ago
I'd be shocked if they could actually throw that many rocks, but the basic idea is that the policy didn't work as intended, and that's correct.
landsharkkidd 4 points 3 years ago
Sounds similar to what we did in Australia.
floofloof 33 points 3 years ago
Once the campaigns were underway, yes. But the opportunity came from a huge blunder by David Cameron. He called the referendum expecting an easy win for the remain side that would silence the anti-EU faction in his party and shore up his position as PM. Instead, the anti-EU faction won, prompting his own resignation and causing damage to the UK's economy, a loss of global influence, the loss of British people's right to live and work in the EU, and reopening difficult issues in Northern Ireland that had been laid to rest for years. It also arguably sped up the Conservative Party's lurch to the right and its embrace of UKIP-like policies, disempowering Conservative moderates and leading to the spiral of ever less competent governments we have seen since then. In particular, Boris Johnson's rise was a direct result of post-referendum power games among Conservative politicians.
CanadaPlus 12 points 3 years ago
So what's David Cameron up to these days? I'm sure such a massive and unnecessary screw-up has landed him in dire personal straights. /s
floofloof 16 points 3 years ago
Using his position to make tens of millions through corruption, as is traditional for former PMs.
new_acct_who_dis 8 points 3 years ago
I didn't keep up with this at all (I'm from across the pond) and I wondered why Brexit was even thought up in the first place.
It's so sad to see conservatives fucking things up over there too.
floofloof 7 points 3 years ago
Well, I'm in Canada and our Conservatives are pretty active in making this a worse place to live too. Currently they run almost all of the provincial governments, but they may take the federal government after the next election. Not something to look forward to.
famousringo 103 points 3 years ago
We’ll there was that time Kublai Khan tried to invade Japan with the largest amphibious assault in history (until D-day) and got absolutely wrecked by a typhoon.
Then tried again a few years later, with an even larger force, and got wrecked by another typhoon.
CanadaPlus 5 points 3 years ago
This kamikaze was far more effective than the later one, though.
SilverFlame 13 points 3 years ago
Their blunder was using disgruntled Chinese labor to build their ships. It turns out that conquering people makes them rather upset.
CanadaPlus 4 points 3 years ago
It turns out that conquering people makes them rather upset.
It can, but sometimes they hated the old bosses even more than your imperial ass.
csfirecracker 14 points 3 years ago
You may be confusing the Las Vegas Loop and the Hyperloop. Las Vegas Loop is the shitty tunnel you drive teslas single file through in Las Vegas, Hyperloop was the "vacuum tube frictionless train replacement" that was used to reduce excitement about the high speed rail proposal.
MystikIncarnate 0 points 3 years ago
You mean X?
nickhammes 87 points 3 years ago
King Pyrrhus of Epirus. He was known for winning battles against superior armies, at the cost of taking heavy losses. He was once quoted as saying "If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined."
He was so famous for this, that the term for a victory that devastates the victor bears his name, a Pyrrhic victory.
NakedGardenGnome 10 points 3 years ago
I would have expected to see this story way higher in this thread!
Imgonnatrythis 83 points 3 years ago
Do you guys remember that time u/Spez took the reddit API away from third party apps?
StarkillerX42 1 point 3 years ago
I hope the Redditors that didn't care about the whole thing never find their way here. I can't imagine being that apathetic about something you use daily.
jacktherippah 4 points 3 years ago
Eh. I wouldn't hold that against them. Reddit or Lemmy is just social media. Just one small aspect in people's lives. Pretty hard to care about something like Reddit taking away API access when you've got much more important things like a job, a social life and a family to care for. Even harder when you only use the official apps.
Piecemakers3Dprints 5 points 3 years ago
Oh wow, that really takes me back. 🤌🏼
rjthyen 13 points 3 years ago
I'm by no means brushed up on my world war knowledge, but didn't WWI help set the stage for the nazi party's rise in Germany? Still a horrible event, but may have benefited someone even if the wrong someone?
pungunner 30 points 3 years ago
Kinda. The winners of WWI decided to leave Germany be, but took most things of worth and some land. The reparations were brutal. I think Germany finished paying of the reparations a few years ago. Additionally there was military propaganda that the reich was "undefeated in battle, stabbed in the back", because the civilians negotiated the harsh peace treaty and ignoring the fact, that the war was going badly.
I will not go more into details because I do not know exactly. But the combination of a very depressed economy, the feeling of being treated unjust and the desire for revenge led to a disgruntlement -> rise of populism -> rise of extremist parties.
I am missing a ton, but when things are unstable it is easierfor radical forces to emerge and succeed.
Hitler literally was tasked to spy on the NSDAP and joined them. You have to see: at the time two major parties in the reich were anti constitutional.
That is why a lot of people in Europe look worringly at trump or at least at the whole movement. The USA has issues that need fixing. There is a large disgruntled part of the population and people start to radicalize.
I may generalize, but the start of WWI was mostly a series of pride, miss communication and bad luck.
Mpolmanteer 78 points 3 years ago
Knight Capital - They were biggest equities trader in 2012. They manually deployed code and didn't get configuration right and it reactivated "Powder Peg". They lost $460 M in 45 minutes and went bankrupt.
PhantomPhanatic 36 points 3 years ago
The program was called "Power Peg" for those googling for it. It was a test program not intended to be used on the live market.
The Power Peg program was designed to buy a stock at its ask price, and then immediately sell it again at the bid price, losing the value of the spread.
The Worst Computer Bugs in History: Losing $460m in 45 minutes
Mpolmanteer 3 points 3 years ago
It's actually a good case for why you needed devops and an automated build/release
Etterra 77 points 3 years ago
When the Spanish were raping the New World in the 1500s for gold, they dumped enormous quantities of platinum into the ocean because it was the wrong kind of shiny metal. Nobody in Europe had any clue how valuable the stuff was, only that it was often used to counterfeit gold. But since it wasn't gold, or even silver, everyone thought it was worthless. This was exasperated by the fact that nobody could melt the stuff until the 1800s. But mostly it was just not yellow enough for the idiots at the time.
collegefurtrader 2 points 3 years ago
HODL
fiat_lux 77 points 3 years ago
Napoleon's invasion of Russia. It led what might be the first great infographic ever though. Charles Minard’s Infographic of Napoleon’s Invasion of Russia from 1869 (Carte figurative des pertes successives en hommes de l’Armée française dans la campagne de Russie en 1812-1813)
Tan colour line from left to right is the trip from France to Moscow, 1mm line weight = 6000 soldiers, black colour line from right to left is the trip back to France. The line slowly thins and diverges like a tree branch until 422k soldiers are whittled down to 10k returning. Not quite the outcome Napoleon had intended.
UnverifiedAPK 20 points 3 years ago
Also the temperature at the bottom showing how cold it was on the way back. It explains why everyone died in the river.
Zoboomafoo 1 point 3 years ago
Saddam?
CanadaPlus 3 points 3 years ago
I've heard that if he hadn't ordered the retreat, they probably would have succeeded.
fiat_lux 1 point 3 years ago
Given the Russians burnt out everything they left behind, which is one big reason the line keeps thinning, I doubt they would have survived very long on the land they occupied. But I'm no Franco-Russian war historian, I just like data.
CanadaPlus 1 point 3 years ago
I think the idea is they would have caught up with the Russians and defeated them in battle, and could have taken supplies there. By marching back through the scorched earth they actually maximized their exposure to it.
Lemmylefty 63 points 3 years ago
Since December 1982, the O-rings had been designated a “Criticality 1″ item by NASA, denoting a component without a backup, whose failure would result in the loss of the shuttle and its crew.
Richard Feynman[:] “… [the shuttle] flies [with O-ring erosion] and nothing happens. Then it is suggested, therefore, that the risk is no longer so high for the next flights. We can lower our standards a little bit because we got away with it last time. You got away with it, but it shouldn’t be done over and over again like that.”
Taken from an excellent writeup of the fatal 1986 Challenger flight.
AlmightySnoo 60 points 3 years ago
Elon acquiring Twitter for $44B in the first place, not taking into account the subsequent blunders. He not only overpaid too much for a social media company without even understanding it, he also wrecked Tesla's stock price as investors saw he was clearly spending too much time on Twitter and he had to panic sell Tesla shares to fund his Twitter adventure. He easily wiped out hundreds of billions from Tesla's market cap during that time.
traveler01 -21 points 3 years ago path: 0 2068395 2075647, hotness: undefined, score: -21, children: 8
Ryumast3r 8 points 3 years ago
The value of "X" has been repeatedly downgraded. It's estimated at around $15b by fidelity. They've demolished their own brand by renaming themselves and how you interact.
This is before you get into the whole "twitter has been loaded with debt from the purchase of twitter and so is even more unprofitable than it was before" part of the debacle.
traveler01 -10 points 3 years ago path: 0 2068395 2075647 2098217 2099379, hotness: undefined, score: -10, children: 5
some_guy 6 points 3 years ago
It's easy to check a fact before putting your foot in your mouth.
Twitter.com's unique visitors declined 3.3 percent YOY in March 2023.
One of my favorite aspects of Lemmy is that bootlickers are very easy to spot and don't have loads of other bootlickers to support them.
untracked4167 1 point 3 years ago
It's been almost a year.
AphoticDev 60 points 3 years ago
The Jan. 6th insurrectionists who thought Trump was going to pardon them all because they were heroes.
Piecemakers3Dprints 24 points 3 years ago
Or that they were doing the middle class any favors by fucking up the nation's credit score (as it were) with their smooth-brain fuckery. 🤦🏼♂️
shogun5000 -5 points 3 years ago path: 0 2078323 2079651 2084889, hotness: undefined, score: -5, children: 1
Piecemakers3Dprints 26 points 3 years ago
path: 0 2078323 2079651 2084889 2085859, hotness: undefined, score: 26, children: 0
mintiefresh 58 points 3 years ago
Buying Twitter for 44B and renaming it to X.
mild_deviation 5 points 3 years ago
They lost almost half their ad revenue. I'd call that recent. Of course, it hasn't actually killed the platform...
shinigamiookamiryuu 54 points 3 years ago
The Gunpowder Plot. Guy Fawkes and his friends were about to blow up parliament, and on the week it was supposed to happen, one of his accomplices sent a letter to a noble. In what was probably the worst example of "asking for a friend" in history, it asked "hypothetically, what would happen if someone went into the basement and blew up parliament". The noble did what nobody expected he would do and, get this, responded to the letter. People searched the palace basement and found Guy Fawkes, he was arrested and killed, and we have Guy Fawkes Day. The reason this led to a loss is because the king of England at the time used it as an excuse to persecute Catholics and make the holiday which is used as a taunt.
maporita 10 points 3 years ago
Guy Fawkes wasn't just killed though. He and his fellow conspirators suffered greatly before they died, and even after death their executioners inflicted torment on the corpses.
"They were to be "put to death halfway between heaven and earth as unworthy of both". Their genitals would be cut off and burnt before their eyes, and their bowels and hearts removed. They would then be decapitated, and the dismembered parts of their bodies displayed so that they might become "prey for the fowls of the air".
shinigamiookamiryuu 5 points 3 years ago
Based on his orders, the king sounds like he had a bone to pick.
some_guy 4 points 3 years ago
What I know of it is mostly from the HBO mini-series that aired a few years ago. Did it really have that much impact on the fall of the USSR? My understanding was that the gradual attrition of competing with the West was the ultimate cause. I'm interested to learn more. Gonna go read some wikipedia on it.
raubarno 7 points 3 years ago
It was one of the reasons, as it required huge spending on extinguishing the reactor, draft up to a million personnel, dosimetry equipment, helicopters, thousands of trucks, then cleaning the zone around the reactor, building the sarcophagus on rush, evacuating people from the exclusion zone, digging up upper layer of dirt in a radius of several kilometers, patient treatment, and keeping everything in secret.
It wouldn't be an exaggeration that the costs of the liquidation compare to costs of a small war. Besides, the Soviets were involved in a harsh Afghanistan war.
MystikIncarnate 1 point 3 years ago
I was going to say something like the Hindenburg, but I think you have me beat.
tvbusy 48 points 3 years ago
Russia invasion of Ukraine. They used to be number 2 army with sophisticated weapons. Now they are number 1 world laughing stock with weapons that works exceptionally well for invading Mars but not on earth.
PRUSSIA_x86 13 points 3 years ago
Briefly number two in Russia even.
Fissionami -30 points 3 years ago
You still believing that? Wow
SigloPseudoMundo -1 points 3 years ago path: 0 2052367 2066805 2090831, hotness: undefined, score: -1, children: 2
SigloPseudoMundo -1 points 3 years ago path: 0 2052367 2066805 2090831 2112948 2122981, hotness: undefined, score: -1, children: 0
WtfEvenIsExistence 46 points 3 years ago path: 0 2045079, hotness: undefined, score: 46, children: 16
Alivrah 8 points 3 years ago
This is why I never felt comfortable enough to use one of those. A have a formula for generating passwords for each account so I only have to remember that instead of individual passwords. I know password manager might be more convenient but I'm too used to the way I've been doing things all these years...
Have you had any luck recovering your Bitwarden?
foo 19 points 3 years ago
What's more likely: forgetting the master password to your password manager or one of the many passwords you have memorized? I totally get not wanting to trust a hosted service with all of your passwords in case it disappears (having an offline backup would remedy that), but not using one out of fear of forgetting a master password is overblown.
mosiacmango 9 points 3 years ago
You can always do the mostly sane thing of having a master password to your main vault as the only saved password of different password vault, i.e bitwardens master password saved in an encyrpted keepass file. You have 2 passwords to remember, but also a fail safe if you forget one.
That or just write it down somewhere safe and sane.
deadbeef79000 9 points 3 years ago
Bitwarden effectivly uses your master password to encrypt all the other passwords.
Without the master password all the data is gibberish. Even if you reset your master password, you get back nothing.
WtfEvenIsExistence 5 points 3 years ago path: 0 2045079 2045516 2045670, hotness: undefined, score: 5, children: 2
Speculater 4 points 3 years ago
I used the last sentence of a book in my collection for this reason. Then I add a sequence of special characters I use for all my passwords.
linearchaos 1 point 3 years ago
I used to do this, there's always a slight worry that some place will get a couple of your passwords and be able to figure out your formula the chances are pretty slim. Were the real pain came from me, when a website forces you to change your password, or they require some limit to the letters numbers and punctuation that wouldn't allow me to use my formula. I had a growing list of websites that had more exceptions.
linearchaos 1 point 3 years ago
I started out using LastPass because it's what work used which was obviously a bad idea. When it came time to leave them I moved to bitwarden which has been pretty fantastic but I mainly use it because I need to share passwords amongst my family and I really like the TOTP integration.
If I didn't have that need I would probably use KeypassX and throw it's database into a Dropbox or Syncthing.
Spaghetti_Hitchens 5 points 3 years ago
You have my deepest sympathies
WtfEvenIsExistence 4 points 3 years ago path: 0 2045079 2046621 2046622, hotness: undefined, score: 4, children: 0
ram 35 points 3 years ago
Didn't really result in a loss, but a huge missed opportunity, when AT&T turned down an offer for them to purchase the early internet.
bady 21 points 3 years ago
At least something we can all cheer about :)
This also reminds me of Yahoo turning down the offer to buy Google in their early stage! https://finance.yahoo.com/...
wth 9 points 3 years ago
The thing to remember with these examples is that those companies would have royally fucked up their purchases. Big companies always impose a culture and a mindset.
AT&T would definately have crushed the internet with a monopoly - we would have had to use AT&T approved internet devices, and they would have brought long distance type charges to it. Oh so your email is going overseas? That’s an extra 10c.
Same with Google and Netflix. They were all able to continue with the founders vision and create something special.
CanadaPlus 7 points 3 years ago
Or Blockbuster turning down a $50 million offer to buy out Netflix.
visak 5 points 3 years ago
That one really wasn't as obvious at the time. Netflix was in huge debt and hadn't really built their streaming platform yet. In fact streaming was barely possible. Blockbuster should have been able to out-compete Netflix at both dvd by mail and streaming but they screwed it up. Netflix won, but may now end up getting killed by the big studios.
CanadaPlus 4 points 3 years ago
That one really wasn’t as obvious at the time.
It never is, that's how the investment market works. Blockbuster thought it was still ludicrously high for an ailing niche competitor. That's arguable, but I don't think anyone could guarantee Netflix was actually going to achieve their (at the time very sci-fi) vision.
Mr_Blott 22 points 3 years ago
Walmart's attempt to break into the German market is hilarious
Burger King tried to open up in France and literally nobody would eat their muck. So when McDonald's tried, they had to completely change their menu and service style. Hence, "McDo's" in France is actually quite good
Mr_Blott 4 points 3 years ago
Yes, BK lost a ton of cash, so learned from Maccies and reopened. The way they pronounce "Boorgehr Keeng" in the adverts make you want to cut off your fuckin ears with an angle grinder though
yads 4 points 3 years ago
Ah I see. The ads I saw were on billboards so thankfully didn't have to hear them. They were advertising some kind of "Louisiana" style chicken sandwich, which was ironic because the French find black pepper spicy. I can only imagine how mild it must actually be.
Crazazy 15 points 3 years ago
Wendy's tried to get into the Netherlands, but couldn't, because there was already a snackbar (think small fastfood place but greasier) that was registered under the name "Wendy's" at the chamber of commerce. This spawned a lawsuit. You had Wendy's, a local snackbar who claimed rights to the name because they were already established, and Wendy's, a franchise coming from America. They claimed right to the name because they were a franchise, and not just a single fastfood joint.
To solve this issue, the local snackbar opened up a second location, making local Wendy's a franchise, and winning them the lawsuit
Zoidsberg 9 points 3 years ago
It was so weird when Target opened in my city. Everyone was pumped for the great deals Americans are always on about. The grand opening comes, and it was basically just a super expensive Walmart with half the products out of stock. Then they closed without notice like a month later. Employees came in the morning to open up and there were chains on the doors.
yads 11 points 3 years ago
Empty stores, somehow, store managers had a perverse incentive to keep store inventory levels low. Their prices were really high as well. A rushed SAP implementation meant that executives didn't have enough insight into business operations. You can read more here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Target_Canada
mewpichu 31 points 3 years ago
In terms of money and business, my fav is how Xerox didn't know how to market/capitalize on what was effectively the first personal computer before personal computers were even a concept, which is estimated to be a $1.4 trillion mistake.
DarkDarkHouse 25 points 3 years ago
Long-Term Capital Management was a hedge fund founded in 1994 that had notable academics and Nobel Prize winners on its board. It was very successful in the early years (while critics warned of the risks) and eventually collapsed in 1998, losing $4.6 billion in a matter of months due to its leverage and impacts of currency crises. The US government stepped in to shore up the financial system. It's taught as a case study in how a strategy can post impressive returns but quickly turn into a wipeout.
Cleverdawny 21 points 3 years ago
The Battle of Manzikert led directly to the end of the Roman Empire, all because of mismanagement.
panggul_mas 40 points 3 years ago
path: 0 2086643 2088541, hotness: undefined, score: 40, children: 2
If I saved one person the 4 calories worth of finger movements required to open a new tab and Google this themselves then I'll go to sleep happy.
SaakoPaahtaa 5 points 3 years ago
Thank you, my bulk is saved
some_guy 3 points 3 years ago
Bah! I'm in the habit of spending those calories (history nerd) and did so before reading your comment. Still, your comment is appreciated. Also, thanks to @Cleverdawny for clueing my into something I hadn't known.
CeruleanRuin 20 points 3 years ago
Coming down from the trees was a pretty big blunder. Nothing but losses ever since.
kilroy_was_here 8 points 3 years ago
And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.
KingJalopy 4 points 3 years ago
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
Cobrachickenwing 19 points 3 years ago
Scotland trying to colonize the Darien gap It bankrupted Scotland and forced the union of England and Scotland to be the UK.
cedeho 14 points 3 years ago
King Mansu Musa was incredibly rich and when he went on hajj to mecca he spent much of his gold in Egypt causing a massive inflation. On his way back to Mali this has caused him needing to spend much more this time on his route through Egypt which is why he needed loans from merchants.
Dunno if this could be considered a big loss?
bady 6 points 3 years ago
Whether many of the answers here count as a blunder or not, I'd like to say that I got way more replies than I expected and came to know about a lot of stuff I would have never heard otherwise. Thanks for sharing.
lazylion_ca 12 points 3 years ago
Cambium stock recently dropped to $10 after the CEO stepped down during their call. A large part of their problems are likely due to the pandemic shortages catching up.
But a high failure rate on their new line of switches, and high prices while starlink eats their lunch isn't helping.
Edit: Used to be over $50.
expatriado 12 points 3 years ago
you may want mention the before stock price, that $10 needs something to compare with
Cabeza2000 1 point 3 years ago
It was around $15.
Cabeza2000 1 point 3 years ago
It was $50 in 2021.
The CEO stepped down 4 days ago when the stock was at $15, as a consequence it lost one third of its value and is now at $10.
traveler01 4 points 3 years ago path: 0 2075603 2076826 2076991, hotness: undefined, score: 4, children: 3
traveler01 2 points 3 years ago path: 0 2075603 2076826 2076991 2077104 2078585, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 1
andthenthreemore 5 points 3 years ago
Ah fellow Brit.
luthis 11 points 3 years ago
Prepare to laugh your ass off.
I'm due for surgery next month to finally get my ass sewn back on after listening to this.
PipedLinkBot 12 points 3 years ago
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=5jDbJbCuKl4
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Ghoelian 10 points 3 years ago
You mean something like Sponsorblock?
It doesn't just skip sponsors, it can skip subscription reminders, as well as a bunch of other stuff.
sanguinepar 1 point 3 years ago
There actually used to be (maybe still is) a Chrome extension for this, applying what's known as the Wadsworth Constant :-)
chase_what_matters 5 points 3 years ago
Wow. I was so annoyed by the prospect of a 20min video but it was chock full of incredible moments of stupidity. Good entry.
sanguinepar 5 points 3 years ago
/c/nocontext
JohnnyCanuck 3 points 3 years ago
I had to brush the dust off after rolling around on the floor.
UdeRecife 11 points 3 years ago
Any history book will be filled with such stories. Depending on the outlook, I'd say all history is like that.
Take any one event. Let's pick any decisive moment in history. Say, the battle of Salamis. Now flip it to the side of the Persians and you have the kind of blunder you're looking for.
rjthyen 9 points 3 years ago
Very true when talking historical events. Say the USA lost the American Revolution and it's now a land mass of Brits that can't believe how foolish the revolutionaries were. (Although if other colonies are any indication independence may have eventually happened anyways)
WtfEvenIsExistence 6 points 3 years ago path: 0 2044939 2047290 2048216, hotness: undefined, score: 6, children: 1
some_guy 1 point 3 years ago
Say the USA lost the American Revolution and it’s now a land mass of Brits that can’t believe how foolish the revolutionaries were.
Futurama imagined this: All the Presidents' Heads
drexy_rexy 9 points 3 years ago
Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg
dutchkimble 0 points 3 years ago
Oil spills, wars, Hiroshima/Nagasaki, not counting for 2 decimal places in employee cheques by a large firm in Metropolis
betterdeadthanreddit -4 points 3 years ago
How about neither atrocity nor blunder? It was the right thing to do and saved lives on both sides by ending the war in the Pacific. Wars still happen but we've gone nearly 80 years without making the world wars into a trilogy since nobody sane wants to invite that level of destruction again.
SulaymanF 7 points 3 years ago
Not this again. Just because you can end a war faster by intentionally targeting civilians doesn’t mean it’s ever going to be moral or ethical. The U.S. government considers that act terrorism by definition.
I’m not going to relitigate the whole argument again. The U.S. government knew women and children were in the cities and the military proceeded to nuke the cities instead of an uninhabited because they wanted to show off the power of the weapon and observe the level of urban damage it could do.
ToastyMedic -3 points 3 years ago
And remind me the estimated casualty counts of operation downfall, along with the civilian casualties and damage. Not to mention a North Japan and South Japan like germany.
You won't. But consider a pragmatic view and not an idealistic view, so be it if you need a show of force for an enemy who refuses to surrender and would rather destroy themselves and all who would try to make them yield utterly and totally.
betterdeadthanreddit -5 points 3 years ago
No need, they were both among a set of legitimate targets. It wasn't terrorism and the only people complaining about it slept through all their history classes.
betterdeadthanreddit 1 point 3 years ago
My bad, didn't realize they'd surrendered between Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
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asklemmy
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A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
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China's Four Pests campaign is a great example. As the campaign says, China had a bit of a pest problem. One of these particular pests was the sparrow. The government decided it would be a great idea to launch an "exterminate sparrows" campaign. The only problem was sparrows ate other pests such as bedbugs and locusts.
In short, they sucessfully curbed the "sparrow problem" and replaced it with a "locusts and bedbugs problem". This ultimately upset the ecological balance and further lowered the rice yields. It was a complete disaster
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