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In eastern EU I am sure that everyone that is rich is because of "connections," nothing works unless you kiss the ring. You can work all your life and die penni
by onetimemanytime 7y ago
In eastern EU I am sure that everyone that is rich is because of "connections," nothing works unless you kiss the ring. You can work all your life and die penniless, others will get to buy acres by the beach or lease them for 99 years for small change. Or get major contracts to build roads, infrastructure, health care etc. Unless you pay your overlords, your business will be shut down
- mmsimanga 7y agoYou should come visit us in Africa. It will probably make you feel better. Some in Africa have become rich from NGO money meant for the poor. Working for an NGO is now actually a profession. I always had in it mind NGOs should be temporary, provide relief during a natural disaster. Donors do try set strict rules on how the money can be spent but there is always a way to game the system. The participants of a workshop will stay at a connected individual's lodge and pay inflated prices. Cars used to ferry people at a charge and so on.
- cft 7y agoSame is for example is true for the city employees in San Francisco. They don't become rich, but they are essentially tenured, and there are more than 30,000 of them, in a city of less than a million. In the meantime, the city is in utter decay by Western standards, semi permanent homeless encampments, BART with its 1970 trains and infrastructure, permanent garbage on freeway shoulders, terrible road surfaces with no snow.
- buboard 7y agoi m seeing an opening for corruption-squashing technoloty, although i have no idea how it would work
- markvdb 7y agoTech is one sector in which some eastern EU people strike it rich without connections to the oligarchs. One example from Latvia: MicroTik CTO Arnis Riekstiņš [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MikroTik https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MikroTik
- krzyk 7y agoWhich countries do you mean by easter EU? I would understand if you mean former USSR, but EU countries? I don't see such things in Poland (which is in central Europe - Europs center is in the center of Poland, but some Westerners think it is in Eastern).
- angry_octet 7y agoWith respect, only Poles think Poland is the center of Europe. It's on the western side of the East.
- Mirioron 7y agoOr people who know that Europe goes on until the Urals, which most definitely does not put Poland on the eastern side.
- angry_octet 7y agoSince when does continental geography come into this? By that definition most of Europe is in Russia.
- krzyk 7y agoWell, East, West, North and South are pretty geographical names so expect people to put geography here.
- bonoboTP 7y agoDoesn't matter. I'm Hungarian and we (education system, media, govt etc) are also big on this Central Europe thing (we are in "the heart of Europe" is a common phrase). This is okay if we're talking about culture and history or geography. But economically speaking there is East and there is West. Grouping Germany, Switzerland, Hungary, Poland etc. into a Central Europe surely makes us feel good, but economically it's ridiculous.
- cosmodisk 7y agoThese kind of comments make me sad. Yes,there are some people who made themselves extremely rich by exploiting their political connections, using dodgy deals with criminal world and etc. However,most made their money in legal ways working their socks off to make it work. Those may not be the usual zillionaires,but they are pretty rich. This is like saying that everyone in the US live like those in Bel Air.
- onetimemanytime 7y agoat least Bulgaria Romania Macedonia Albania Serbia Montenegro Kosovo
- Viliam1234 7y agoThat comment goes too far, but I was happy to see some opposition to all the comments "hey, it's actually the same in USA" which are completely ignorant of the situation with the oligarchs, and of the post-communist countries in general.