4 ms·

You're assuming at one time. Russia's overall incarceration rate is 0.522%. You're right however, the 3 million figure seems very high. Russia is a lost cause

by rorrr 14y ago

You're assuming at one time. Russia's overall incarceration rate is 0.522%. You're right however, the 3 million figure seems very high. Russia is a lost cause. Police/government can (and regularly do) take over any business, especially any small business. Russia is so corrupt, only a full scale revolution will have a chance at fixing the country.

corin_ 14y ago
Not only is it not 3 million at one time, there's also no definition provided of what it means for them to have been locked up. It could presumably be a whole load of one week sentences, or maybe even a night or two in jail?
its_so_on 14y ago
>Russia is so corrupt, only a full scale revolution will have a chance at fixing the country. So you're saying there's a violent class struggle between the populist system and the oppressed business class - and that the only way the downtrodden business owners can rise up and free themselves from their chains is through full scale revolution? This sounds like it's straight out of Monty Python - but hey, good luck with that.
- unimpressive 14y ago
  > This sounds like it's straight out of Monty Python - but hey, good luck with that. While I'm not supporting his assertion that this is the case, if such a thing were to happen anywhere, well...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_russia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_russia
- rdl 14y ago
  The corruption, like corruption in other countries (including the US), hurts the poor and wage-earning directly and indirectly as well. It's not like it's the populace vs. business owners, it's the powerful and capricious vs. everyone (including other powerful people), using the state and security apparatus as a tool. Aside from a few people who made a lot of money a couple decades ago from rapid deregulation, I don't think business owners in Russia are worried about taxes, reasonable regulation, etc. hurting their businesses -- they're worried about totally random extortion. Very few businesses would rather operate in Equatorial Guinea or Somalia instead of (heavily regulated country of choice: depending on context, could be Germany, the US, Denmark, ...).
- chrischen 14y ago
  He didn't say there is a class struggle. He said a full scale revolution may be the only way the country can be fixed. Conditions will deteriorate until the point where there will be a class struggle though.
- rorrr 14y ago
  Stealing businesses is a much smarter idea than stealing money. Russian government thugs have figured it out. I do see why it may seem funny and Monty-Python-like, but it's extremely sad. It's a huge country ruled by thugs and talking heads, and they want more and more for themselves, while talking about helping the population.
raverbashing 14y ago
>> Russia is so corrupt, only a full scale revolution will have a chance at fixing the country Thank communism, because corruption was the only way for business to do any kind of transaction
- valisystem 14y ago
  While I agree that it probably did not help, you don't need communism to have such large scale problems, all you need is just a badly run country.
- pyre 14y ago
  Communism as we know it? Yes. Communism as Marx envisioned it? No. It's all just semantics really: 1) In the US, 'socialism' is a dirty word, but don't you dare mess with Social Security or Medicaid. 2) China's 'communist' regime is called the "People's Republic of China." 3) Burma is now called "Republic of the Union of Myanmar" after a military coup. 4) China and the former USSR are both referred to as "Communist," but the governmental structures seem vastly different. 5) The Khmer Rouge were known as the 'Communist Party of Kampuchea,' but referred to their country as 'Democratic Kampuchea' even though they implemented forced relocation and confiscation of private property.
  - danenania 14y ago
    I think all these semantic contradictions reveal a much more important truth: what -ism your government operates under or claims to operate under is about 1/1000th as significant as whether it aims to serve the people and respect the law. A corrupt communist state has much more in common with a corrupt capitalist state than with a respectable and well-run communist system, and vice versa. We should really focus a lot less on ideology in our politics and a lot more on basic ethics and accountability. Once we start getting those figured out, we can worry about the -isms.
    - ajuc 14y ago
      Agreed, execution matters. But it's hard to miss the pattern - we have yet to see well run communist (not socialist) state. Every country that tried communism failed, and either are poor backwater countries (Kuba, North Korea), reverted to capitalism (Central and Eastern Europe), or kept communism on banners only, changing most of economy to capitalism under the hood (China). We even have a few case studies, where one country is divided into 2 parts, and one half is made communist. Both in East/West Germany, and North/South Korea the differences are quite obvious. Maybe it has sth to do with the system itself, after all?
yaakov34 14y ago
Yeah, absolutely. Revolutions have worked out so well before, especially in Russia. What Russia needs right now is some serious destruction and civil war, followed by a few decades of rule by hard men who know that their Cause comes before anything. Oh yeah.
- PGenes 14y ago
  A revolution is not guaranteed to fix it. Unfortunately a revolution(of some sort) is the only thing that has any chance of fixing it.
- rdl 14y ago
  I think they'd be best off with a "revolution" in thinking by the government and public security services. If they put rule of law as a high priority, and are able to extract enough. Everyone would be better off with Putin and the FSB crowd having their own licit and overt wealth, power, and perks, but then using their power to enforce fair laws on everyone else in exchange, vs. the system where they officially don't get as much benefit from their jobs, but extract personal benefit through corruption, and where others in society can use the state as a tool against other people. (which is why it makes sense to pay police, judges, etc. quite well, and to give them high social standing, in exchange for competence, professionalism, and lack of corruption) You could probably get that from the top echelon (I don't think Putin is at all corrupt, in the sense of taking bribes or anything like that, and would be surprised if his direct reports did), but it's hard to get that down to the lowest level of law enforcement.
  - cousin_it 14y ago
    > I don't think Putin is at all corrupt, in the sense of taking bribes or anything like that, and would be surprised if his direct reports did Haha. Here's a little about Putin: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8175406/WikiLeaks-Putins-secret-billions.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8175406/... And here a little about his former minister of health: http://en.novayagazeta.ru/society/8682.html http://en.novayagazeta.ru/society/8682.html There's much more where that came from. You can pretty much pick any high-ranking official in Russia and start digging.
ajuc 14y ago
Or maybe low level stats are falsified in each prison/police station to show better "effectiveness" of cops. Only when it's aggregated it's stuppidly big number. The same happened with recent elections to Duma (over 100% people voted in many regions of Russia).

by rorrr 14y ago

corin_ 14y ago

Not only is it not 3 million at one time, there's also no definition provided of what it means for them to have been locked up. It could presumably be a whole load of one week sentences, or maybe even a night or two in jail?

its_so_on 14y ago

>Russia is so corrupt, only a full scale revolution will have a chance at fixing the country. So you're saying there's a violent class struggle between the populist system and the oppressed business class - and that the only way the downtrodden business owners can rise up and free themselves from their chains is through full scale revolution? This sounds like it's straight out of Monty Python - but hey, good luck with that.

unimpressive 14y ago
> This sounds like it's straight out of Monty Python - but hey, good luck with that. While I'm not supporting his assertion that this is the case, if such a thing were to happen anywhere, well...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_russia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_russia
rdl 14y ago
The corruption, like corruption in other countries (including the US), hurts the poor and wage-earning directly and indirectly as well. It's not like it's the populace vs. business owners, it's the powerful and capricious vs. everyone (including other powerful people), using the state and security apparatus as a tool. Aside from a few people who made a lot of money a couple decades ago from rapid deregulation, I don't think business owners in Russia are worried about taxes, reasonable regulation, etc. hurting their businesses -- they're worried about totally random extortion. Very few businesses would rather operate in Equatorial Guinea or Somalia instead of (heavily regulated country of choice: depending on context, could be Germany, the US, Denmark, ...).
chrischen 14y ago
He didn't say there is a class struggle. He said a full scale revolution may be the only way the country can be fixed. Conditions will deteriorate until the point where there will be a class struggle though.
rorrr 14y ago
Stealing businesses is a much smarter idea than stealing money. Russian government thugs have figured it out. I do see why it may seem funny and Monty-Python-like, but it's extremely sad. It's a huge country ruled by thugs and talking heads, and they want more and more for themselves, while talking about helping the population.

raverbashing 14y ago

>> Russia is so corrupt, only a full scale revolution will have a chance at fixing the country Thank communism, because corruption was the only way for business to do any kind of transaction

valisystem 14y ago
While I agree that it probably did not help, you don't need communism to have such large scale problems, all you need is just a badly run country.
pyre 14y ago
Communism as we know it? Yes. Communism as Marx envisioned it? No. It's all just semantics really: 1) In the US, 'socialism' is a dirty word, but don't you dare mess with Social Security or Medicaid. 2) China's 'communist' regime is called the "People's Republic of China." 3) Burma is now called "Republic of the Union of Myanmar" after a military coup. 4) China and the former USSR are both referred to as "Communist," but the governmental structures seem vastly different. 5) The Khmer Rouge were known as the 'Communist Party of Kampuchea,' but referred to their country as 'Democratic Kampuchea' even though they implemented forced relocation and confiscation of private property.
- danenania 14y ago
  I think all these semantic contradictions reveal a much more important truth: what -ism your government operates under or claims to operate under is about 1/1000th as significant as whether it aims to serve the people and respect the law. A corrupt communist state has much more in common with a corrupt capitalist state than with a respectable and well-run communist system, and vice versa. We should really focus a lot less on ideology in our politics and a lot more on basic ethics and accountability. Once we start getting those figured out, we can worry about the -isms.
  - ajuc 14y ago
    Agreed, execution matters. But it's hard to miss the pattern - we have yet to see well run communist (not socialist) state. Every country that tried communism failed, and either are poor backwater countries (Kuba, North Korea), reverted to capitalism (Central and Eastern Europe), or kept communism on banners only, changing most of economy to capitalism under the hood (China). We even have a few case studies, where one country is divided into 2 parts, and one half is made communist. Both in East/West Germany, and North/South Korea the differences are quite obvious. Maybe it has sth to do with the system itself, after all?

yaakov34 14y ago

Yeah, absolutely. Revolutions have worked out so well before, especially in Russia. What Russia needs right now is some serious destruction and civil war, followed by a few decades of rule by hard men who know that their Cause comes before anything. Oh yeah.

PGenes 14y ago
A revolution is not guaranteed to fix it. Unfortunately a revolution(of some sort) is the only thing that has any chance of fixing it.
rdl 14y ago
I think they'd be best off with a "revolution" in thinking by the government and public security services. If they put rule of law as a high priority, and are able to extract enough. Everyone would be better off with Putin and the FSB crowd having their own licit and overt wealth, power, and perks, but then using their power to enforce fair laws on everyone else in exchange, vs. the system where they officially don't get as much benefit from their jobs, but extract personal benefit through corruption, and where others in society can use the state as a tool against other people. (which is why it makes sense to pay police, judges, etc. quite well, and to give them high social standing, in exchange for competence, professionalism, and lack of corruption) You could probably get that from the top echelon (I don't think Putin is at all corrupt, in the sense of taking bribes or anything like that, and would be surprised if his direct reports did), but it's hard to get that down to the lowest level of law enforcement.
- cousin_it 14y ago
  > I don't think Putin is at all corrupt, in the sense of taking bribes or anything like that, and would be surprised if his direct reports did Haha. Here's a little about Putin: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8175406/WikiLeaks-Putins-secret-billions.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8175406/... And here a little about his former minister of health: http://en.novayagazeta.ru/society/8682.html http://en.novayagazeta.ru/society/8682.html There's much more where that came from. You can pretty much pick any high-ranking official in Russia and start digging.

ajuc 14y ago

Or maybe low level stats are falsified in each prison/police station to show better "effectiveness" of cops. Only when it's aggregated it's stuppidly big number. The same happened with recent elections to Duma (over 100% people voted in many regions of Russia).