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Russia didn't do "“invisible hand” and optimism", they did laissez faire "no rules" capitalism and rapacious (eventually oligarchic) cronyism at scale. The han

by zeruch 5y ago

Russia didn't do "“invisible hand” and optimism", they did laissez faire "no rules" capitalism and rapacious (eventually oligarchic) cronyism at scale. The hand was an administrative machine that changed the appearance but none of the core substance of how the nation ran; Putin's very existence as a scion of that very machine bears that out. I still suspect that should he fall from power before he wishes to, it will be because a bunch of unknown "Putins" in a bureaucratic machine that do the actual heavy lifting will decide he's a become a liability, much as he did when rising to power in the first place.

r00fus 5y ago
> Russia didn't do "“invisible hand” and optimism", they did laissez faire "no rules" capitalism and rapacious (eventually oligarchic) cronyism at scale. Can you tell me what the difference is?
- zeruch 5y ago
  the former can take any number of forms, the latter is a very specific set of political arrangements that leverage the former, but aren't bound by it either (hence why so many Russian oligarchs were putting their money in various other jurisdictions, in any number of legal, if altogether off-putting ways...like buying UK football teams, swathes of residential and commercial properties, etc.
- spacebanana7 5y ago
  Most Invisible Hand models sketch that if each consumer is allowed to choose freely what to buy and each producer is allowed to choose freely what to sell and how to produce it, the market will settle on a product distribution and prices that are beneficial to all the individual members of a community, and hence to the community as a whole. In Russian-style cronyism, the freedom of producers in particular was corrupted by the need to pay heed to everyone with political muscle. No sensible producer who valued personal safety would compete with the mining company of an oligarch in a development, for example.

by zeruch 5y ago

r00fus 5y ago

> Russia didn't do "“invisible hand” and optimism", they did laissez faire "no rules" capitalism and rapacious (eventually oligarchic) cronyism at scale. Can you tell me what the difference is?

zeruch 5y ago
the former can take any number of forms, the latter is a very specific set of political arrangements that leverage the former, but aren't bound by it either (hence why so many Russian oligarchs were putting their money in various other jurisdictions, in any number of legal, if altogether off-putting ways...like buying UK football teams, swathes of residential and commercial properties, etc.
spacebanana7 5y ago
Most Invisible Hand models sketch that if each consumer is allowed to choose freely what to buy and each producer is allowed to choose freely what to sell and how to produce it, the market will settle on a product distribution and prices that are beneficial to all the individual members of a community, and hence to the community as a whole. In Russian-style cronyism, the freedom of producers in particular was corrupted by the need to pay heed to everyone with political muscle. No sensible producer who valued personal safety would compete with the mining company of an oligarch in a development, for example.