Thread: О тех, кто в России у власти

Originally Posted by Hanna

Would have been better to reform slowly, if people were genuinely fed up and were sure that they wanted a market economy.

I'm not sure that is a fair approach. I think people didn't really know what they wanted and especially how their dreams should be approached. In fact, there are pros and cons in the planned economy vs. the market economy. As much as I dislike the communism/socialism, I can't deny the obvious pros of the planned economy. The founders of the planned economy in Russia had no means to know the cons until they built it and it was thoroughly tested with time. It's easy to be wise now, but back then in the early 20th century it wasn't clear which way is better. Many believed the market economy is the past and the planned economy is the future. Also, the term "fed up" is relative: some people were fed up, others thrived on that. Also, the term "market economy" wasn't used up until later. Rather, the term "хозрасчёт" was coined to denote a payment ABOVE the set up government salaries. (Yes, both ought to be paid, so nobody really knew what is that supposed to mean, and how is that going to work. What happened as a direct result of more money paid without the substantial change in the output was that the money was devalued.) The "market" economy was viewed very negatively those days since many people were able to get their first-hand experience buying on the local markets. The prices were way above the government-set prices and no competition was to be seen. Rather than that, the sellers agreed with each other in advance on the price and kept it high regardless of whether the product was sold or not because they knew they would be beaten and expelled by the other sellers (and/or militia-police officers paid by those sellers) so those individuals who wanted to sell for cheaper were forced into that price. Of course, there was a lot of corruption among the officials responsible for "overseeing" the markets as well as the open criminals connected to that process. There was nothing new in the 90s - it was the same old mechanism on the larger scale. So, if you assume most people were fed up and wanted a market economy, that would by all means be an overstatement.

Originally Posted by Hanna

Another thing is that it is not easy to create democracy where it has never existed.

We had democracy between February 1917 and October 1917.

Originally Posted by Hanna

In Western Europe it happened more slowly, and things like corruption has been quite common in many countries until fairly recently. Not sure how much democratic Western Europe and the US really are though (it varies) but at least there is less obvious corruption.

That's an interesting topic. What do you think might be the reasons? What's the recipe to fight corruption?

Originally Posted by Crocodile

That's an interesting topic. What do you think might be the reasons? What's the recipe to fight corruption?

Yes, I think that freedom from corruption is a major factor for building a successful state.
If you can't trust that the state is going to behave according to the law, then there is nothing that you can trust in society.
If people can't trust that they will get good healthcare when they are sick, that their co workers actually have the skills that their degree would indicate.... that state officials will certain tasks within a prescribed period....

In Northern Europe it has not been a major problem for the last 100 years, maybe never, I am not sure. For me, it's almost impossible to imagine a corrupt policeman, judge or university staff member. They can be annoying or unpleasant, but not corrupt.

One thing that Northern Europe (West) has in common is Lutheran/protestant Christianity. Maybe there is something from that religion.
Surely it helps if the police is quite well paid, and there are less social differences between people; i.e. the policemen don't need the bribes and people couidn't afford to pay a lot of bribes anyway.

In Sweden the idea is that we are too good and honest people to be involved with such corruption, that is something that less evolved nations do. People simply wouldn't do it. However with recent immigration, there have been incidents of corruption - always with immigrants.

Singapore was a totally rotten society when it became indpendent. Everyone was corrupt. The leader there hated corruption and put in place really strict punishments for corruption and made it hard to get off clean for those who got caught. The punishments were so strict that people simply did not dare...
Of course, as a dictator , Lee Kuan Yew had the power to implement these changes just on the merit that he thought they were good. In a democracy, too many people would be against.

I think corruption ought to be a top priority to combatin Russia. The state can never be successful as long as it exists.

I just read that Ikea started production in Belarus, for the Russian market. The reason was that they have an extremely strict policy against using bribes, and they found that they couldn't get anything done in Russia without bribes. Logically the production should have been in Russia, it would have made better economic sense. But they simply could not do it, but in Belarus, no bribes were needed (but lots of paperwork and bureacracy, I would guess!)