Dec-18th-2009
Why doesn’t Russia stop having a corrupt mob like government, and allow investment and business to flow?
I mean Russians really badly want to become a main player in the world again, (still kinda are but not as much as the past). And while Russia has made great strides in economic development, I have heard and read that many government officials were in power during communism and work on bribery, and demand business comply with what they do or else they will not be allowed to do business.
This is very bad for foreign and domestic development, if companies or people knew they could start a business with out being strong armed. Investment would sore and the economy could diversify making russia a nicer richer place.
So why doesn’t russia do something about these corrupt local officals slowing down investment?
The answer is simple: Russia is a communist state. Once people are in power, they want to keep that power. Therefore, their system of government suits them because it enables those who are in power to stay that way.
weeeeell, let’s see how politically incorrect i must be and how much care i throw to the wind. america’s darling of ukraine, timoschenko, (who knew NO ukrainian language) stole money from gasprom or the predecessor, russia’s natural gas company. sergei mavrodi and others created a ponzi company mmm invest and bilked millions of dollars from people, khodarkovsky’s yukos failed or refused to pay taxes and owed billion$$ to the russian government… on and on. this was yeltsin’s "capitalist" russia. living in russia for six months or more at a time, i often told my wife "we need someone to run for ‘stalin’ (as if it is a political office) not for president. i meant that russia needs a STRONG FIST to rule. i hope we have that in putin and medvedyev.
russia has NOT the experience nor the LAWS to fight corruption in capitalism. consumer fraud would be much worse had the government not cracked down on businesses. people are too trusting. advertisements (LIES) on tv are not 20 years old in russia (1989 was "ссср"). the ussr had no advertisements to tell you what you need to have to keep up with the jonses. "there is no sex in the soviet union" -a response was on a usa-ussr "bridge" talk show. now we have nudity on tv, capitalist prostitution, sale of women for mail order brides (often goldiggers at best- frauds or worse). narcotics were not a problem until about 1995-98. graffiti did not grace the fences until 2001. thanks mtv and all other capitalist intrusions.
russia is doing what it can against corrupt capitalist business.
i’ll admit it is more difficult to do INTERNATIONAL business as usa has sent every factory to communist china and employed their population making toys for americans. toys like plastic dart guns, x-box, motorola phones, computers, buicks, you know, things that americans buy that COULD be made by americans. corrupt business profiteers make more profit paying chinese wages. (a finance professor worked in china told me say chinese can’t even buy the reeboks they make??!?) russia just never warmed up to these "takeovers" of industry. for good or bad.
There is NOTHING corrupt about forbidding foreign investments –
sometimes those are not the kinds of investments which would benefit Russia and its interests.
So please… and corruption in Russian government- is NOT any different from any other government.
Considering that Russia only came out as a new government like 18 years ago with all the mess in the process- Russia is doing pretty good on corruption now,
- way better than USA and many other countries (US still has almost the same corruption level as Russia (lower than Russian at low graded jobs, like police, BUT HIGHER RATE at the HIGHER RANKED POSITIONS like CEOs and politicians) even though it’s been an independent country for over 230 years.
Cheers!
Because 40% of those who takes bribes were criminal elements in 80′s and 90′s.
It will take long time to make non-corrupted country.
And have you seen how corrupt the British government is these days?