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I agree in principal but it might not have happened in practice. The West gets a lot of blame for what happened in Russia in the 90s, and it's not unfair that i
by jemmyw 3y ago
I agree in principal but it might not have happened in practice. The West gets a lot of blame for what happened in Russia in the 90s, and it's not unfair that it should get some of that blame. However, the plan wasn't that Russian companies and resource rights were sold at a knock off price to Russian oligarchs. The idea was that on the open market they would have been worth an enormous amount and that Russians would have benefited from both the injection of cash and the follow up investment to modernise their industry.
Of course, pretty easy for those in power in Russia to make a big deal to people there about their industry being bought by foreign powers, to make that unattractive or even illegal, and to then snap it all up for next to nothing. The West should have foreseen this and had an alternative plan, more like local partnerships or whatever.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> plan wasn't that Russian companies and resource rights were sold at a knock off price to Russian oligarchs In the first century B.C.E., Julius Caesar implemented a series of redistributionist land reforms [1]. One component was a minimum-hold period to prevent the aristocrats from just going and buying it all back up again. The re-concentration was absolutely foreseeable. Classical history is no longer fashionable in American elite education, so I get how this was overlooked by the bankers. But it points to a lack of a give-a-shit-factor which, in my agreement with you, does not confer responsibility, but does represent a massive missed opportunity. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Triumvirate#Caesar’s_consulship_(59_BC) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Triumvirate#Caesar’s_c... search Lex agraria
- nsonha 3y agoif classical history is required to be able to foresee such a thing, then maybe people've lost their common sense.