The State of Affairs in Russia

[Berkut]

Obviously. It's an ideological position like any other.

It's a statement of preference for economic efficiency coupled with the empirical observation that government, being by definition a monopoly, is not subject to competition.

"Obama is a Muslim" is a baseless assertion.

"I prefer whiskey neat" is not a baseless assertion.

You cannot compare a statement of what someone likes with a statement expounding on what everyone ought to like.

"I prefer whiskey neat" is not a baseless assertion, but "Everyone prefers their whiskey neat" certainly is.

And the statement in question is:

Doesn`t change the fact that "as little state as possible while staying effective" should be the prime guiding principle of any advanced society.

That is most certainly a baseless assertion. It is not a fact, and it is very debatable that it should be the prime etc., etc., etc.

[Admiral Yi]

I think the "should" makes it a statement of preference, but not that big a deal either way.

[Razgovory]

Regarding 2b, yes in a "pure" form it is a pipedream and will never happen unless humans reach a level of maturity which seems impossible at this stage.

*gulp* I've said it before, and I'll say it again:  Libertarians are the 21st century Communists.  The ideologies may be the perfect opposites, but the mindsets are identical.

Well they both dream of a stateless society.  Just the Libertarians do not want a dictatorship in the middle.

I'm not entirely certain this is true.  Libertarians are minimalist in government, but not anarcho-capitalist.  They often seem rather contemptuous of democracy, as well.  Benjamin Franklin's quote about democracy being two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for lunch seems popular amongst them.  A dictatorship or monarchy that that was essentially toothless might suit them fine.

[Valmy]

I'm not entirely certain this is true.  Libertarians are minimalist in government, but not anarcho-capitalist.

The guys who want minimalist government are called 'Minarchists' and I get the feeling the ideologically pure Libertarians hold them in contempt.

[Tamas]

I think you are mixing libertarians with anarcho-capitalists.

[Admiral Yi]

I'm not entirely certain this is true.  Libertarians are minimalist in government, but not anarcho-capitalist.  They often seem rather contemptuous of democracy, as well.  Benjamin Franklin's quote about democracy being two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for lunch seems popular amongst them.  A dictatorship or monarchy that that was essentially toothless might suit them fine.

Good Lord.  The quote was democracy without constitutional protections is two wolves and a sheep choosing lunch.

[Valmy]

I think you are mixing libertarians with anarcho-capitalists.

Yeah I have never heard those dudes identify as anything but Libertarians.  Anarcho-Capitalist is not a thing outside of Paradox games that I can tell.

[garbon]

I think you are mixing libertarians with anarcho-capitalists.

Anarcho-Capitalist is not a thing outside of Paradox games that I can tell.

[Razgovory]

I'm not entirely certain this is true.  Libertarians are minimalist in government, but not anarcho-capitalist.  They often seem rather contemptuous of democracy, as well.  Benjamin Franklin's quote about democracy being two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for lunch seems popular amongst them.  A dictatorship or monarchy that that was essentially toothless might suit them fine.

Good Lord.  The quote was democracy without constitutional protections is two wolves and a sheep choosing lunch.

Huh, apparently he never said it.  So good lord yourself.

[Viking]

We can privatize the government and get the best of both worlds. 

We can even hand out shares to all the citizens, one per citizen with a quadriannual GM replacing the sitting board with a new one elected by the shareholders.

[Eddie Teach]

I'm not entirely certain this is true.  Libertarians are minimalist in government, but not anarcho-capitalist.  They often seem rather contemptuous of democracy, as well.  Benjamin Franklin's quote about democracy being two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for lunch seems popular amongst them.  A dictatorship or monarchy that that was essentially toothless might suit them fine.

Good Lord.  The quote was democracy without constitutional protections is two wolves and a sheep choosing lunch.

Huh, apparently he never said it.  So good lord yourself.

[PDH]

*takes a drink*

[Grinning_Colossus]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-26014836

Moscow shooting: Gunman opens fire at school, takes hostages
An armed man has entered a Moscow school and taken more than 20 students hostage, officials and reports say.

It is unclear whether the gunman is still at the school and whether he is still holding anybody.

The man was the father of one of the pupils at the Moscow school number 263, an interior ministry spokesman told the Interfax news agency.

Initial reports said the man opened fire on police officers who arrived at the scene, injuring one.

More of this shit. 

[Syt]

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2014/02/10/140210ta_talk_surowiecki?utm_source=tny&utm_campaign=generalsocial&utm_medium=facebook

The Sochi Effect

Whatever happens on the ice and snow of Sochi in the next couple of weeks, one thing is certain: this Winter Olympics is the greatest financial boondoggle in the history of the Games. Back in 2007, Vladimir Putin said that Russia would spend twelve billion dollars on the Games. The actual amount is more than fifty billion. (By comparison, Vancouver's Games, in 2010, cost seven billion dollars.) Exhaustive investigations by the opposition figures Boris Nemtsov, Leonid Martynyuk, and Alexei Navalny reveal dubious cost overruns and outright embezzlement. And all this lavish spending (largely paid for by Russian taxpayers) has been, as Nemtsov and Martynyuk write, "controlled largely by businesspeople and companies close to Putin."

Sochi is emblematic of Russia's economy: conflicts of interest and cronyism are endemic. But the link between corruption and construction is a problem across the globe. Transparency International has long cited the construction industry as the world's most corrupt, pointing to the prevalence of bribery, bid rigging, and bill padding. And, while the sheer scale of graft in Sochi is unusual, the practice of politicians using construction contracts to line their pockets and dole out favors isn't. In the past year alone, Quebec learned about systematic kickbacks and Mob influ­ence in the awarding of city construction contracts. In Turkey, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has become embroiled in a vast scandal involving friendly construction tycoons who were given cheap loans and no-bid contracts. And a recent report from the accounting firm Grant Thornton estimated that, by 2025, the cost of fraud in the industry worldwide will have reached $1.5 trillion.

What makes construction so prone to shady dealings? One reason is simply that governments are such huge players in the industry. Not only are they the biggest spenders on infrastructure; even private projects require government approvals, permits, worksite inspections, and the like. The more rules you have, and the more people enforcing them, the more opportunities there are for corruption. And, in many countries, the process of awarding contracts and permits is opaque. As Erik Lioy, a forensic accountant and fraud expert at Grant Thornton, told me, "When it's not clear how projects get approved, people assume the worst, and that provides incentives to do a bribe or kickback."

On big government projects, additional factors kick in. Such projects are rare, and construction work is erratic, so politicians with contracts to award have immense leverage. For contractors, bribery will always be attractive, because the cost of a bribe is dwarfed by the value of a contract—an effect known to economists as the Tullock paradox. And, as a study by Neill Stansbury, the co-founder of the Global Infrastructure Anti-Corruption Centre, put it, when a project is really big "it is easier to hide large bribes." Then, too, Lioy explains, "most big projects involve building something unique, or at least something that's never been built in that place before, and that makes it harder to estimate if costs are reasonable." Corruption is obvious only when costs are completely absurd—which Nemtsov and Martynyuk have shown is the case with Sochi's ice arenas and ski jumps.

Sochi is a monument to Putin's Russia—a nationalist showcase, intended to demonstrate just how far the country has come in the past two decades. It has also given Russia its first world-class winter resort, and has significantly developed the infrastructure of the Caucasus. In that context, overspending can become, perversely, a point of pride. The contractors on the Pyramids almost certainly padded the bills, too.

It's no surprise that graft-ridden grandiose projects are most common in countries where government isn't accountable. But even politicians who (unlike Putin) have to worry about being reëlected often see benefits in unnecessary or wasteful construction spending, because it gives the economy a short-term boost. Turkey's construction spree, for instance, has played a major role in its economic boom. Construction creates jobs, and often reasonably well-paying ones. That's why, going back to the days of Boss Tweed, pouring money into construction projects has been a key part of what's sometimes known as "populist clientelism"—a system that allows politicians both to reward cronies and to appeal to voters.

But an economic boost based on corrupt spending is an illusion, the equivalent of a sugar high. Paolo Mauro, an economist at the I.M.F., says simply, "Corruption is bad for economic growth." It's well documented that corruption discourages investment, because it makes businesses uncertain about what it takes to get ahead; as one study put it, "Arbitrariness kills." Corruption also skews government spending. The economists Vito Tanzi and Hamid Davoodi found that corruption leads politicians to overinvest in low-quality infrastructure projects while skimping on maintaining existing projects. (It's easier to collect bribes on new construction than on maintenance.) And, in a pathbreaking study nearly twenty years ago, Mauro found that countries with high levels of corruption spent little on education. In economist-speak, corrupt politicians put too much money into physical capital and not enough into human capital. Crony construction capitalism leaves us with too few teachers and too many ski jumps to nowhere

[Tamas]

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2014/02/10/140210ta_talk_surowiecki?utm_source=tny&utm_campaign=generalsocial&utm_medium=facebook

The Sochi Effect

Whatever happens on the ice and snow of Sochi in the next couple of weeks, one thing is certain: this Winter Olympics is the greatest financial boondoggle in the history of the Games. Back in 2007, Vladimir Putin said that Russia would spend twelve billion dollars on the Games. The actual amount is more than fifty billion. (By comparison, Vancouver's Games, in 2010, cost seven billion dollars.) Exhaustive investigations by the opposition figures Boris Nemtsov, Leonid Martynyuk, and Alexei Navalny reveal dubious cost overruns and outright embezzlement. And all this lavish spending (largely paid for by Russian taxpayers) has been, as Nemtsov and Martynyuk write, "controlled largely by businesspeople and companies close to Putin."

Sochi is emblematic of Russia's economy: conflicts of interest and cronyism are endemic. But the link between corruption and construction is a problem across the globe. Transparency International has long cited the construction industry as the world's most corrupt, pointing to the prevalence of bribery, bid rigging, and bill padding. And, while the sheer scale of graft in Sochi is unusual, the practice of politicians using construction contracts to line their pockets and dole out favors isn't. In the past year alone, Quebec learned about systematic kickbacks and Mob influ­ence in the awarding of city construction contracts. In Turkey, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has become embroiled in a vast scandal involving friendly construction tycoons who were given cheap loans and no-bid contracts. And a recent report from the accounting firm Grant Thornton estimated that, by 2025, the cost of fraud in the industry worldwide will have reached $1.5 trillion.

What makes construction so prone to shady dealings? One reason is simply that governments are such huge players in the industry. Not only are they the biggest spenders on infrastructure; even private projects require government approvals, permits, worksite inspections, and the like. The more rules you have, and the more people enforcing them, the more opportunities there are for corruption. And, in many countries, the process of awarding contracts and permits is opaque. As Erik Lioy, a forensic accountant and fraud expert at Grant Thornton, told me, "When it's not clear how projects get approved, people assume the worst, and that provides incentives to do a bribe or kickback."

On big government projects, additional factors kick in. Such projects are rare, and construction work is erratic, so politicians with contracts to award have immense leverage. For contractors, bribery will always be attractive, because the cost of a bribe is dwarfed by the value of a contract—an effect known to economists as the Tullock paradox. And, as a study by Neill Stansbury, the co-founder of the Global Infrastructure Anti-Corruption Centre, put it, when a project is really big "it is easier to hide large bribes." Then, too, Lioy explains, "most big projects involve building something unique, or at least something that's never been built in that place before, and that makes it harder to estimate if costs are reasonable." Corruption is obvious only when costs are completely absurd—which Nemtsov and Martynyuk have shown is the case with Sochi's ice arenas and ski jumps.

Sochi is a monument to Putin's Russia—a nationalist showcase, intended to demonstrate just how far the country has come in the past two decades. It has also given Russia its first world-class winter resort, and has significantly developed the infrastructure of the Caucasus. In that context, overspending can become, perversely, a point of pride. The contractors on the Pyramids almost certainly padded the bills, too.

It's no surprise that graft-ridden grandiose projects are most common in countries where government isn't accountable. But even politicians who (unlike Putin) have to worry about being reëlected often see benefits in unnecessary or wasteful construction spending, because it gives the economy a short-term boost. Turkey's construction spree, for instance, has played a major role in its economic boom. Construction creates jobs, and often reasonably well-paying ones. That's why, going back to the days of Boss Tweed, pouring money into construction projects has been a key part of what's sometimes known as "populist clientelism"—a system that allows politicians both to reward cronies and to appeal to voters.

But an economic boost based on corrupt spending is an illusion, the equivalent of a sugar high. Paolo Mauro, an economist at the I.M.F., says simply, "Corruption is bad for economic growth." It's well documented that corruption discourages investment, because it makes businesses uncertain about what it takes to get ahead; as one study put it, "Arbitrariness kills." Corruption also skews government spending. The economists Vito Tanzi and Hamid Davoodi found that corruption leads politicians to overinvest in low-quality infrastructure projects while skimping on maintaining existing projects. (It's easier to collect bribes on new construction than on maintenance.) And, in a pathbreaking study nearly twenty years ago, Mauro found that countries with high levels of corruption spent little on education. In economist-speak, corrupt politicians put too much money into physical capital and not enough into human capital. Crony construction capitalism leaves us with too few teachers and too many ski jumps to nowhere

Yep