[extropy-chat] fun in Russia with the new `capitalists'

[Robert J. Bradbury]

On Tue, 25 Nov 2003, Mike Lorrey wrote:

> The writer shows absolutely no sense of historical economic
> perspective, and seems pissed that the US won the cold war.

Mike, I didn't get that sense from the article.  I know that
I would agree with your perspective that a free economy is
probably more productive than a managed economy -- *BUT*
I would bet you have never been in the Moscow subways.
A person I once worked with who grew up in New York and
who had obviously experienced the NY subways was *amazed*
when he encountered the Moscow subways.  Both from the
perspective of engineering audacity as well as style.
So one has to be very careful when one goes critiquing
various economic methods.

> The USSR so wrecked the economy in Russia that it is left in
> a 19th century state, in which oligarchs seem to be a natural
> precursor to a developed economy.

I do not believe the first part of this is accurate.  Russia
made a very rapid transition from a feudal state to a modern
state to an industrial state (say from ~1880 to 1930).  This
did not "wreck the economy" -- it did alter its basis significantly.
Was the economy of Russia less productive than it could be
(from say 1930 to 1990)?  I don't know -- there was a lot of
"slave" labor used (and one could look back at various Roman
or Greek societies that depended upon slave labor).  So one
gets into very complex arguments as to whether freedom
will out perform properly managed slave labor.  (We may face
this again if we develop low IQ AIs or develop genetic
sub-humans.)

With respect to the transition from a communistic state to a
"democratic" state (though I question whether this is a valid
characterization) I think the U.S. economists attempted to
create a U.S. like economic situation.  The Russian oligarchs
however hijacked the transition.  There are some good books
to be written comparing Russia in the 1990's with the U.S.
from say 1880 to 1920 where the railroad, oil and automobile
barons (Rockefellers, Gettys, Carnegies, Fords(?), etc.) were
grabbing up all the assets or opportunities of value.  The
only difference is that it probably happened in Russia much
faster.  Now, whether Russia can make the transition to a
"developed economy" as Mike suggests remains to be seen.
There are several hundred years of czarist mentality (that
didn't change much during communism -- Stalin and other
Soviet leaders were czars with minor changes) that need
to be overcome.  One way to look at it -- many, perhaps
most, people in Russia are comfortable being told what
to do (and have been for hundreds of years) -- in the U.S.
given the colonization stream from Europe and elsewhere
that tended to not be the case.  One is dealing with
populations who survived their own self-determination vs.
populations where self-determination urges were eliminated.

Robert