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There is one more move for Putin's regime in terms of economy if he wants to keep going. It's to shift into conquest mode and burn up your system. It's a non-s
by adventured 5y ago
There is one more move for Putin's regime in terms of economy if he wants to keep going.
It's to shift into conquest mode and burn up your system. It's a non-sustainable move, and if you're going to do it, then typically they go for broader conquest (Moldova would be an example of expanding the conquest, as would formally taking Belarus). In normal times the economy is sustainable: you have $n GDP and $n tax revenue coming in, and you can do certain things with that stream. Sanctions crimp that heavily of course. So Putin can move to an unsustainable model, which means it'll collapse on him eventually, but people in his situation often do it anyway.
You do it by forced labor, labor gulags, forced building of manufacturing, total war mobilization of the large Russian population like it's WW2 again. Over time this would break Russia, near-term it would be a potent spike in their potential to march and conquer territory. The Germans did this during WW2, shifting out of sustainable economy to burn-it-up mode. It can't last indefinitely and it involves killing large numbers of citizens in the process. You have to redirect your economy into a command funnel, which starts to destroy all sorts of structures as you shift your resource allocations to war efforts (so for example Putin shifts labor resources to manufacturing tanks, and as a consequence there's not enough labor to operate grocery stores or repair potholes in the streets or whatever).