Russian Economy General News: #2

NationalRus wrote:every non stratigic sector is better run in free hands, strategic sectors are also mostly run better in free hands but i would prefer ther state control for security and geopolitcal reasons, that would enclude the "heavy" military industry, natural resources, and "partly" telecommunication and electricity, but thats it! not more, maybe less

Mike E wrote:

sepheronx wrote:You guys make a good point. But what about things like street cleaning or public transit equipment maintenance? Surely those things can be done by private without it going to total shit. No?

But of course you make good points. I just think that having private schools and clinics in conjunction to public ones can help reduce costs, especially the fact Rich Russians already put themselves or their kids into private institutions (school on Skolkovo as example). Many of them probably leave to go to hospital elsewhere to spend money on better service. I say they can do that at home but still keep socialized mesical care for everyone else. Something like if you make $XXX,XXX a year, you will need to use private medical care, pay insurance.

Just a thought.

Actually that is very funny that you are talking about this.... The whole basis of my political ideology is privatizing services. - It has been tried in practice before, and having a "couple" services privatized wouldn't change much anyway.

sepheronx wrote:

Mike E wrote:

sepheronx wrote:You guys make a good point. But what about things like street cleaning or public transit equipment maintenance? Surely those things can be done by private without it going to total shit. No?

But of course you make good points. I just think that having private schools and clinics in conjunction to public ones can help reduce costs, especially the fact Rich Russians already put themselves or their kids into private institutions (school on Skolkovo as example). Many of them probably leave to go to hospital elsewhere to spend money on better service. I say they can do that at home but still keep socialized mesical care for everyone else. Something like if you make $XXX,XXX a year, you will need to use private medical care, pay insurance.

Just a thought.

Actually that is very funny that you are talking about this.... The whole basis of my political ideology is privatizing services. - It has been tried in practice before, and having a "couple" services privatized wouldn't change much anyway.

All depends on the services.  For smaller things like garbage collection, waste processing, alternative energy, street maintenance and maintenance of the transit system can be privatized where it wont bog down the state and some can actually make taxable income.

Werewolf wrote:Not a single factor or aspect of the social sector should ever be in private hands. We can see it today in europe what privatization of social sector brings.
In Portugal the water and sanitation was privatized now they pay 400% higher money just to have water, while they only had to pay for purification of water not for consumption itself, same now happens in germany only the left party said no in a vote while it was like all decision a non referendum and now there is already work and preparation and lobbyism to privatize the water.
Hospitals go more and more to private sector due lobbying (oligarchy), Prisons becoming americanized and more and more aspects of Prisons become integrated into private companies, schools is the same almost every social important sector for a countries future is getting in private hands which has always negative outcomes since private companies don't have interest in future of many but only in future of minority which includes themselfs.

Privatization is hazardous and is dooming any future of any country.

NationalRus wrote:how sad, people dont know the diffrence between a real free market economy, real capitalism and what 98% of the world has today = a beurocratic, neopitistic, kleptocratic corporatist-wellfare system, was also called fascism befor the term got bad end 40's  

how sad

kvs wrote:

NationalRus wrote:how sad, people dont know the diffrence between a real free market economy, real capitalism and what 98% of the world has today = a beurocratic, neopitistic, kleptocratic corporatist-wellfare system, was also called fascism befor the term got bad end 40's  

how sad

How sad that there are no actual examples of the utopian vision you are pushing.   Instead I have seen with my own eyes the rot in Canada over the last 30 odd years that this neocon ideology brings.   Contracting out services means you get companies who are

1) connected to the politicians so they do not actually compete for government business

2) try to maximize their profits to the limit, so they hire the cheapest labour and charge the highest fees

The result is decay and not flowering of utopia.  

Just like we have ideologue theoreticians on the left, we have them on the right and both are idiots who make this world a miserable place.

kvs wrote:

NationalRus wrote:how sad, people dont know the diffrence between a real free market economy, real capitalism and what 98% of the world has today = a beurocratic, neopitistic, kleptocratic corporatist-wellfare system, was also called fascism befor the term got bad end 40's  

how sad

How sad that there are no actual examples of the utopian vision you are pushing.   Instead I have seen with my own eyes the rot in Canada over the last 30 odd years that this neocon ideology brings.   Contracting out services means you get companies who are

1) connected to the politicians so they do not actually compete for government business

2) try to maximize their profits to the limit, so they hire the cheapest labour and charge the highest fees

The result is decay and not flowering of utopia.  

Just like we have ideologue theoreticians on the left, we have them on the right and both are idiots who make this world a miserable place.

1) connected to the politicians so they do not actually compete for government business

2) try to maximize their profits to the limit, so they hire the cheapest labour and charge the highest fees

NationalRus wrote:

kvs wrote:

NationalRus wrote:how sad, people dont know the diffrence between a real free market economy, real capitalism and what 98% of the world has today = a beurocratic, neopitistic, kleptocratic corporatist-wellfare system, was also called fascism befor the term got bad end 40's  

how sad

How sad that there are no actual examples of the utopian vision you are pushing.   Instead I have seen with my own eyes the rot in Canada over the last 30 odd years that this neocon ideology brings.   Contracting out services means you get companies who are

1) connected to the politicians so they do not actually compete for government business

2) try to maximize their profits to the limit, so they hire the cheapest labour and charge the highest fees

The result is decay and not flowering of utopia.  

Just like we have ideologue theoreticians on the left, we have them on the right and both are idiots who make this world a miserable place.

ther are 3 countrys who come quite close, and about another 5 who are very decent in that direction, but when peple come with western europe as examples and say look, thats capitalism.... i mean WOW, we might give austria and switzerland a pass with 2 eyes closed but thats it.

Mike E wrote:

NationalRus wrote:

kvs wrote:

NationalRus wrote:how sad, people dont know the diffrence between a real free market economy, real capitalism and what 98% of the world has today = a beurocratic, neopitistic, kleptocratic corporatist-wellfare system, was also called fascism befor the term got bad end 40's  

how sad

How sad that there are no actual examples of the utopian vision you are pushing.   Instead I have seen with my own eyes the rot in Canada over the last 30 odd years that this neocon ideology brings.   Contracting out services means you get companies who are

1) connected to the politicians so they do not actually compete for government business

2) try to maximize their profits to the limit, so they hire the cheapest labour and charge the highest fees

The result is decay and not flowering of utopia.  

Just like we have ideologue theoreticians on the left, we have them on the right and both are idiots who make this world a miserable place.

ther are 3 countrys who come quite close, and about another 5 who are very decent in that direction, but when peple come with western europe as examples and say look, thats capitalism.... i mean WOW, we might give austria and switzerland a pass with 2 eyes closed but thats it.

Have come close to what? So far, no country has ever gotten close to "true" privatization... Most of Europe uses the Keynesian school, which isn't even close to..... Modern day "Capitalism" is nothing more than a cover for the Corporatism found in most "developed" countries today. - Either that or the often-mentioned "Crony Capitalism". Austria and Switzerland are two of the most liberal countries in all of the world, only a few (NORWAY! ) are more so. - If you meant a good mix of both govt. and privatization, that has also never existed. Most of the time, Statism comes out on top, which is very unfortunate.

kvs wrote:Everywhere that water delivery has been privatized has been a total disaster.   Instead of applying the same cookie cutter "solution" to every situation a reasonable degree of pragmatism needs to be applied.   The Canadian model of the 1970s was good enough.   The other grotesque thing is that so-called fiscal conservatives are total frauds when it comes to being fiscally responsible.   In the USA it was Reagan and George W. Bush who ran up the debt like a junkie on crack.  Clinton left office is budget surpluses.   In Canada, Mulroney tripled Trudeau's debt and ran away leaving Kim Campbell to unload a huge deficit on Liberal Cretien who fixed this mess.   The debt has been a great racket for pushing a certain economic agenda.

People in the former Soviet realm don't really understand how things are run in the west.   The model America projects is a fiction.   Instead of having social welfare, it has military industrial complex welfare and trickle down.   Spending $1 trillion on weapons and imperial force projection is still big, bad government spending.   France is routinely maligned as being full of unionized slackers, but it actually has functional health care system and shows no evidence of sinking into some morass after decades of "socialism".   The health care system in Canada is going to hell in a hand basket as Canada tries to live according to the vision of the scumbag theoreticians.   Back in the bad old days of the 1970s we did not have these problems.

Russia is also an example of why theory should be kept on a leash.  Both the 1917 theory and the Yeltsin era theory.   It was interesting how Primakov managed to stop the economic collapse of 1998 by adopting policies not conformant to monetarist ideology.   Putler also did not subscribe to the shock therapy witchdoctor medicine.    See what that has resulted in.   And Russia has amongst the lowest debt levels of the developed (more or less) world.   Meanwhile the USA has $17 trillion in government debt.   Shouldn't the USA be the country with the low debt level?  It is living according to its economic beliefs, no?

Well then, we clearly have different views... Here I believe that Statism kills a country, and you believe that the opposite kills a country... IMHO, they are very similar ideologies, the difference is that the power is all spread out in privatization, versus all clumped together in one, most likely corrupt, government. Having a competing government and privation at the same time might not work very well, to be completely honest. However, the other advantages of privatization are numerous....

A) Less "power clumped together".... That is what our (US's) Founding Fathers were trying to prevent.

B) Competition is good for the consumer (citizen in this case) and privatization will lead to competition.

C) Unlike governments, private organizations don't create problems, just to later try and (fail to) fix them.

D) It prevents lobbying of a central power, the opposite of this is what the US and many other countries have turned into.

The private prisons are a terrible example Werewolf.... They are just some popped-up prisons that oligarchs own in order to get profit. Don't forget it is the GOVERNMENT that sends prisoners there and allows the to exist. If anything, they are a direct result of what happens to a desperate government that has no money and too many laws to count... With govt., these insinuations wouldn't need to exist in the first place!

Yeah, cause governments "really" care for all people!

NationalRus wrote:

Mike E wrote:Have come close to what? So far, no country has ever gotten close to "true" privatization... Most of Europe uses the Keynesian school, which isn't even close to..... Modern day "Capitalism" is nothing more than a cover for the Corporatism found in most "developed" countries today. - Either that or the often-mentioned "Crony Capitalism". Austria and Switzerland are two of the most liberal countries in all of the world, only a few (NORWAY! ) are more so. - If you meant a good mix of both govt. and privatization, that has also never existed. Most of the time, Statism comes out on top, which is very unfortunate.

of course, i meant not comming close to a true liberterian economy but lets say "the least damaging" same with austria and switzerland, i by any means didnt say they have a capitalist system, of course i know they are corporatist in ther fundamentals to the core but at least the amount of beurocracy etc. is low enough not to be worth putting them in the same closet as rest of europe, lichtenstein could be also added to them but its so unimportant in size that i dont like mentioning it

only hongkong and singapour are in ther own league since ther goverment was commited without a STOP and political swings to a freemarket for dacedes but yes they are mostly keynesian also.... just less then everybody else

Mike E wrote:

kvs wrote:Everywhere that water delivery has been privatized has been a total disaster.   Instead of applying the same cookie cutter "solution" to every situation a reasonable degree of pragmatism needs to be applied.   The Canadian model of the 1970s was good enough.   The other grotesque thing is that so-called fiscal conservatives are total frauds when it comes to being fiscally responsible.   In the USA it was Reagan and George W. Bush who ran up the debt like a junkie on crack.  Clinton left office is budget surpluses.   In Canada, Mulroney tripled Trudeau's debt and ran away leaving Kim Campbell to unload a huge deficit on Liberal Cretien who fixed this mess.   The debt has been a great racket for pushing a certain economic agenda.

People in the former Soviet realm don't really understand how things are run in the west.   The model America projects is a fiction.   Instead of having social welfare, it has military industrial complex welfare and trickle down.   Spending $1 trillion on weapons and imperial force projection is still big, bad government spending.   France is routinely maligned as being full of unionized slackers, but it actually has functional health care system and shows no evidence of sinking into some morass after decades of "socialism".   The health care system in Canada is going to hell in a hand basket as Canada tries to live according to the vision of the scumbag theoreticians.   Back in the bad old days of the 1970s we did not have these problems.

Russia is also an example of why theory should be kept on a leash.  Both the 1917 theory and the Yeltsin era theory.   It was interesting how Primakov managed to stop the economic collapse of 1998 by adopting policies not conformant to monetarist ideology.   Putler also did not subscribe to the shock therapy witchdoctor medicine.    See what that has resulted in.   And Russia has amongst the lowest debt levels of the developed (more or less) world.   Meanwhile the USA has $17 trillion in government debt.   Shouldn't the USA be the country with the low debt level?  It is living according to its economic beliefs, no?

As I said, privatization and government do not mix... Also, your typical "privatize" ends off being a government-cause problem. - Go read what I said on "private prisons". Yeah, typical conservatives tend to be rather stupid at times (depends), but IMHO they still have a better economic awareness than Keynesians and/or Socialists... The problem actually isn't within the system itself, but inside of big money, corporations, statist governments, and most of all, LOBBYISTS!

Our MIC is a direct result of our large government, as everything proves... France isn't Socialist for crying out loud! They are liberal, boosted by artificial inflation and the IMF much like the US. - Most here in the US are huge fans of the "universal" Canadian healthcare system, guess they are wrong...

Did you just call Putin "Putler"? That is a typical Western troll phrase, and not something I expect coming from you... The US has a boatload of debt because of the Keynesian Fed, IMF, QE you name it. 

Mike E wrote:

NationalRus wrote:

Mike E wrote:Have come close to what? So far, no country has ever gotten close to "true" privatization... Most of Europe uses the Keynesian school, which isn't even close to..... Modern day "Capitalism" is nothing more than a cover for the Corporatism found in most "developed" countries today. - Either that or the often-mentioned "Crony Capitalism". Austria and Switzerland are two of the most liberal countries in all of the world, only a few (NORWAY! ) are more so. - If you meant a good mix of both govt. and privatization, that has also never existed. Most of the time, Statism comes out on top, which is very unfortunate.

of course, i meant not comming close to a true liberterian economy but lets say "the least damaging" same with austria and switzerland, i by any means didnt say they have a capitalist system, of course i know they are corporatist in ther fundamentals to the core but at least the amount of beurocracy etc. is low enough not to be worth putting them in the same closet as rest of europe, lichtenstein could be also added to them but its so unimportant in size that i dont like mentioning it

only hongkong and singapour are in ther own league since ther goverment was commited without a STOP and political swings to a freemarket for dacedes but yes they are mostly keynesian also.... just less then everybody else

In that case, I don't really know what you're trying to imply... Did you mean that they are "successful" economies or no? - If that is the case, they are successful, but some of that success is due to, once again, artificial inflation. The same thing with Lichtenstein, except that they are a much smaller country that is only successful becuase of their ridiculously rich inhabitants. All mentioned countries are very liberal, as it is in most of Europe.

KomissarBojanchev wrote:

Well then, we clearly have different views... Here I believe that Statism kills a country, and you believe that the opposite kills a country... IMHO, they are very similar ideologies, the difference is that the power is all spread out in privatization, versus all clumped together in one, most likely corrupt, government. Having a competing government and privation at the same time might not work very well, to be completely honest. However, the other advantages of privatization are numerous....

A) Less "power clumped together".... That is what our (US's) Founding Fathers were trying to prevent.

The founding fathers had much more important things to prevent back then, keeping their slaves at bay being one of them...

B) Competition is good for the consumer (citizen in this case) and privatization will lead to competition.

Oh stop that fallacy. We have competition here as far as yours can see here in bulgaria and all we get is massive adverts(and artificial outright poisonous crap as far as the food industry is concerned), with bad overpriced products and services. The same applies for the US. Old companies regularly outcompete new ones with a better or equal product due to outdated trademark reputation.

And  competition in evil red statism is absent? Because  sukhoi and MiG didn't compete, KAMAZ and KRAZ also didn't , and also Tupolev and Ilyushin totally didn't compete.
Man, how can these corporate millionaire libertarian think tank shills blind with their shit splattering?

C) Unlike governments, private organizations don't create problems, just to later try and (fail to) fix them.

Because it was the government that caused the 1929 and 2008 depression , right<sarcasm>
Well, the US government(and most western capitalist govs for that matter) definately have a problem concerning the working class, and guess what, it hasn't done jack. Think again about who really controls the government, but you'll just keep blaming the mythical welfare queen, the legendary right wing punching bag.

D) It prevents lobbying of a central power, the opposite of this is what the US and many other countries have turned into.

What has the evuhl commi FED lobbied this time against the good rich job creator? Last I saw the stats private enterprises and banks of all sizes and types have been given continuously massive  priviliges in the last 34 years.

The private prisons are a terrible example Werewolf.... They are just some popped-up prisons that oligarchs own in order to get profit. Don't forget it is the GOVERNMENT that sends prisoners there and allows the to exist. If anything, they are a direct result of what happens to a desperate government that has no money and too many laws to count... With govt., these insinuations wouldn't need to exist in the first place!

Because in the fluffy treaded rattlesnake libertopia without muh evuhl cominazi FED, private prisons would without a doubt have less inmates and better conditions...  

Yeah, cause governments "really" care for all people!

If the government is ruled by the working class, for the working class, then yes it is possible.

NationalRus wrote:

Mike E wrote:

NationalRus wrote:

Mike E wrote:Have come close to what? So far, no country has ever gotten close to "true" privatization... Most of Europe uses the Keynesian school, which isn't even close to..... Modern day "Capitalism" is nothing more than a cover for the Corporatism found in most "developed" countries today. - Either that or the often-mentioned "Crony Capitalism". Austria and Switzerland are two of the most liberal countries in all of the world, only a few (NORWAY! ) are more so. - If you meant a good mix of both govt. and privatization, that has also never existed. Most of the time, Statism comes out on top, which is very unfortunate.

of course, i meant not comming close to a true liberterian economy but lets say "the least damaging" same with austria and switzerland, i by any means didnt say they have a capitalist system, of course i know they are corporatist in ther fundamentals to the core but at least the amount of beurocracy etc. is low enough not to be worth putting them in the same closet as rest of europe, lichtenstein could be also added to them but its so unimportant in size that i dont like mentioning it

only hongkong and singapour are in ther own league since ther goverment was commited without a STOP and political swings to a freemarket for dacedes but yes they are mostly keynesian also.... just less then everybody else

In that case, I don't really know what you're trying to imply... Did you mean that they are "successful" economies or no? - If that is the case, they are successful, but some of that success is due to, once again, artificial inflation. The same thing with Lichtenstein, except that they are a much smaller country that is only successful becuase of their ridiculously rich inhabitants. All mentioned countries are very liberal, as it is in most of Europe.

yes i mean they have low enough beurocracy and just enough freemarket to be successful in comperison to the rest of europe, liechtenstein has a very good devoloped financial market and the few industrys that operatet ther are competetive and efficiant to the core

by the way austria is one of the most conservatives countrys in west europe, FPÖ is even not just conservative but far-right, and they got 20% switzerland is deep devided, many liberal areas, mosty big citys and many conservative ones, i small region was even so conservative they introduced woman's votin right in....1994! and that by demand not own vote, with a true federalist system you can move ther in a conservative region without being afraid of the central goverment

Mike E wrote:
As I said, privatization and government do not mix... Also, your typical "privatize" ends off being a government-cause problem. - Go read what I said on "private prisons". Yeah, typical conservatives tend to be rather stupid at times (depends), but IMHO they still have a better economic awareness than Keynesians and/or Socialists... The problem actually isn't within the system itself, but inside of big money, corporations, statist governments, and most of all, LOBBYISTS!

Our MIC is a direct result of our large government, as everything proves... France isn't Socialist for crying out loud! They are liberal, boosted by artificial inflation and the IMF much like the US. - Most here in the US are huge fans of the "universal" Canadian healthcare system, guess they are wrong...

Did you just call Putin "Putler"? That is a typical Western troll phrase, and not something I expect coming from you... The US has a boatload of debt because of the Keynesian Fed, IMF, QE you name it. 

kvs wrote:

Mike E wrote:
As I said, privatization and government do not mix... Also, your typical "privatize" ends off being a government-cause problem. - Go read what I said on "private prisons". Yeah, typical conservatives tend to be rather stupid at times (depends), but IMHO they still have a better economic awareness than Keynesians and/or Socialists... The problem actually isn't within the system itself, but inside of big money, corporations, statist governments, and most of all, LOBBYISTS!

Our MIC is a direct result of our large government, as everything proves... France isn't Socialist for crying out loud! They are liberal, boosted by artificial inflation and the IMF much like the US. - Most here in the US are huge fans of the "universal" Canadian healthcare system, guess they are wrong...

Did you just call Putin "Putler"? That is a typical Western troll phrase, and not something I expect coming from you... The US has a boatload of debt because of the Keynesian Fed, IMF, QE you name it. 

I was being sarcastic.   Yeltsin was feted as some great democrat and Putin is demonized as a tyrant.   The opposite is true.   Yeltsin packed Russian jails and Putin released near 200,000 by introducing proper judicial reform, including probation and jury trials.  

My view is that the government and the private sector don't mix.   Government has no spine when negotiating contracts and gets taken for a ride by colluding contract bidders.   The best solution is to identify which functions should be done by government employees and what should be left to private enterprise.   In the government itself there should be reasonable decentralization of decision making (of course with budgetary oversight) and having to spend all your time contacting clueless idiots in the capital city for every thing from the purchase of a pencil to a desktop computer should not be tolerated.   Unfortunately, in Canada the "Conservatives" are behaving like the Soviets and stripping decentralized decision making power.    

Mike E wrote:

GarryB wrote:The west has a huge ego and thinks if they reject a country it will shrivel and die... 

 Wow, that is a great explanation GarryB....

Werewolf wrote:Not a single factor or aspect of the social sector should ever be in private hands. We can see it today in europe what privatization of social sector brings.
In Portugal the water and sanitation was privatized now they pay 400% higher money just to have water, while they only had to pay for purification of water not for consumption itself, same now happens in germany only the left party said no in a vote while it was like all decision a non referendum and now there is already work and preparation and lobbyism to privatize the water.
Hospitals go more and more to private sector due lobbying (oligarchy), Prisons becoming americanized and more and more aspects of Prisons become integrated into private companies, schools is the same almost every social important sector for a countries future is getting in private hands which has always negative outcomes since private companies don't have interest in future of many but only in future of minority which includes themselfs.

Privatization is hazardous and is dooming any future of any country.

dino00 wrote:

Werewolf wrote:Not a single factor or aspect of the social sector should ever be in private hands. We can see it today in europe what privatization of social sector brings.
In Portugal the water and sanitation was privatized now they pay 400% higher money just to have water, while they only had to pay for purification of water not for consumption itself, same now happens in germany only the left party said no in a vote while it was like all decision a non referendum and now there is already work and preparation and lobbyism to privatize the water.
Hospitals go more and more to private sector due lobbying (oligarchy), Prisons becoming americanized and more and more aspects of Prisons become integrated into private companies, schools is the same almost every social important sector for a countries future is getting in private hands which has always negative outcomes since private companies don't have interest in future of many but only in future of minority which includes themselfs.

Privatization is hazardous and is dooming any future of any country.

I am Portuguese and thats not true, the water is public and the 400% number is ludicrious.
You have any link, or maybe you mistake the country.

The Municipality of Pacos de Ferreira on the sale made a profit only once, now the citizens must live with the consequences. People show us their bills: And indeed, the monthly amounts are horrendous, many citizens now have problems paying their drinking water.
Humberto Brito, civic movement 6th November
Humberto Brito, civic movement 6th November (MONITOR translation): "The consequences of privatization here in Pacos de Ferreira were devastating. We had a 400% price increase in a few years. And then again every year 6% price increase. This is a disaster. "