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ButlerianJihad 2mo ago
Being an American citizen, I prefer to do business with American entities, regardless of what shitty opinion her detractors may express. I am loyal to her, more loyal than I would be to Tonga, or Montenegro, just to choose some random examples.
- walrus01 2mo ago
  I don't think you're wrong that tiny pacific island nations are not stable or reliable, at this point they're all either a client state of China, the USA or Australia. But I think it's also unfair and mean spirited to say that a country like Nauru (barely a country, IMHO, population of 12500 people) is "prostituting" itself by allowing 3rd party registrars to sell domains for a profit, since they have basically no other resource with the bird guano originated phosphate mines now being stripped clean. Would I use a Nauru domain? No. Do I go out of my way to insult them on the internet? Also no.
  - shishcat 2mo ago
    Btw, I highly doubt Nauru makes much money selling their ccTLD, they manage it directly on the island and each domain costs a whopping 500$/year. Better examples: Tuvalu (.TV), Anguilla (.AI) Both of these countries (anguilla is not independent though) only get a cut of the money from the domains; all the technical management is done by GoDaddy for .TV and Identity Digital for .AI. In my opinion, very sad. .AI was run by a local guy in Anguilla (Vince Cate) utilizing the https://cocca.org.nz/ https://cocca.org.nz/ domain SaaS, but Identity Digital took over in late 2024.
    - handelaar 2mo ago
      > I highly doubt Nauru makes much money selling their ccTLD, they manage it directly on the island and each domain costs a whopping 500$/year. Yeah, can't imagine anyone buying any of these domains. I mean yes, it's literally the exact word for "naked" in French, but nobody speaks French so there's definitely no chance they make any money
      - shishcat 2mo ago
        "The most common translation for "naked" in French is nu (masculine) or nue (feminine)." NU is the country code for Niue. Not Nauru. Nauru is NR. NU is an interesting story, the control of the domain was granted in exchange for providing internet services to the island, and its operation was later transferred to the Swedish Internet Foundation. The islanders want the domain back
dragonwriter 2mo ago
“Banana republic” is specifically a term referring to countries that are puppets of the United States on behalf of commercial interests (the trope-naming example being Gautemala on behalf of United Fruit Company); in the absence of an imperial power pulling US strings on behalf of that powers’ commercial interests which dominated the US economy, it would be hard for the US to be reasonably described as going the direction of a “banana republic”. What it is more going the way of a major power resenting a weakened position in the world falling into authoritarian and/or kleptocratic nationalist dictatorship leaning on the propaganda of restoring national greatness, somewhere between Hitler’s Germany and Putin’s Russia, which is a very different situation than a banana republic.
- echoangle 2mo ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_republic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_republic Banana republic isn’t specific to US control and it’s actually not that unreasonable to call Russia a banana republic
  - bdamm 2mo ago
    Because their economy is almost exclusively oil? Quite a few countries of the world would qualify if that's the case.
    - echoangle 2mo ago
      Yeah, is banana republic meant to be a rare thing by definition?
  - ray023 2mo ago
    [flagged]
- gnabgib 2mo ago
  No.. that's not specifically it at all. > dependent on exporting a single product or commodity, often controlled by foreign-owned entities [0] Such countries/regions long existed before the US, although the term was coined by a US writer (William Sydney Porter), and the Banana industry (specifically) has a lot to answer for (in the US specifically). A region making money from.. foreign-owned chips, oil, IT-consultants or Sardines has the same status. The term has a terrible history (surprising the Gap hasn't rebranded). [0]: https://www.britannica.com/topic/banana-republic https://www.britannica.com/topic/banana-republic