Where is this imperial core you keep mentioning?

Probably start with where all the giant battleships come from: https://www.businessinsider.com/magnitude-of-us-naval-dominance-2013-11

Why does the USA need all those battleships if they're not doing imperialism? Are they just cosmetic battleships? Just for shits and giggles?

... Do you think workers in a car factory don't get paid until someone actually buys the car they helped build? All the devs have already been paid!

The constant revamping of the production process, the uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, and the everlasting uncertainty and agitation of society distinguish the bourgeois era from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relationships, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away. All new-formed relationships become outdated before they can solidify. All that is fixed melts into air, all that is sacred is profaned, and people are at last compelled to face with sober senses their real conditions of life, and thier relations with each other.

-Some guy, in some manifesto, in 1848

one of these states is an authoritarian piece of shit, and it's definitely not Taiwan.

Tell that to the indigenous people of Taiwan. I bet they'd love to hear about how they genocide was "non-authoritarian".

Lib - "Markets make everything cheaper, which is good."

Leftist - "But if there is a labor market, won't that make labor cheaper?"

Lib - "Yes, and that is good."

Leftist - "How is that good?"

Lib - "It leads to more profits."

Leftist - "But why is it good to have more profits?"

Lib - "Because a good country is when corporations make profits, and the more profits the corporations make, the gooder the country is."

Markets have brought more people out of poverty than anything.

Yes, just like the Irish people who were "helped" by the free market in the 1840s. Or the Indian people who were "helped" by the free market in the late 1800s. You might be interested in this book by the late, great Mike Davis which completely refutes your ideas with hard evidence that the free market can be used (and has been used) as a tool of genocide: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/7859

You should e-mail that to the presidents of Cuba, Venezuela, and China, to show them the error of their communist ways.

If you are more angry against some poor people addicted to opioids than you are against the billionaire oligarchs who made their money off of addicting millions of people to opioids... you might have a severe case of myopia.

Tech-wise Russia has nothing to offer

Oh no, their Twitter and Facebook exports are too low. They'll have to scrape by on checks notes one of the world's largest supplies of oil, precious metals, and other natural resources. Surely, the Russian economy will collapse any second now!

"I am not debating you."

"Here, now let me debate you."

IDK man. You're basically saying "Why are you stuck on that environmentalist shit? It doesn't matter to me. Go worry about climate change somewhere else, stop bothering me."

My brother in christ. Climate change will affect you whether you want it to or not. Capitalism will affect you whether you want it to or not. You can't just be "out" of it. You can't not take a side in whether the earth gets destroyed or not (environmentalism) or whether 90% of the world's population is plunged into neo-feudal slavery. You're either with the slave-owners or against them. You gotta pick a side!

"Tankies are bad."

Do you believe that that because you genuinely believe that capitalist nations like the United States and Russia are doing good things for the world, while "tankie" countries like Cuba and China are doing bad things for the world? Or do you believe that because you have been tricked by 100 years of racist propaganda that says socialists like Fidel Castro, Albert Einstein, and Martin Luther King were subhuman scum?