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Thread: Swarm or the Antibaker – How Modern Russia Actually Works (Yulia Latynina, Novaya Gazeta, Russia)

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    cannibalish chauvinist W. R.'s Avatar
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    Default Swarm or the Antibaker – How Modern Russia Actually Works (Yulia Latynina, Novaya Gazeta, Russia)

    Swarm or the Antibaker – How Modern Russia Actually Works (Yulia Latynina, Novaya Gazeta, Russia)

    This is a translation of an article by famous Russian journalist Yuliya Latynina from Novaya Gazeta (The New Newspaper). This article had definitely left some people moved by it: the website of Novaya Gazeta was crashed by hackers after its publication.

    Adam Smith

    1.1. According to Adam Smith, in a free market every individual promotes the good of society while pursuing to her own self-interest. When a baker bakes bread, he doesn’t think about common good, he only thinks about profit. However, the common good increases as the result of his efforts.
    It is easy to see that such correlation between promoting individual and common good doesn’t always exist. Marauders ravaging through a city are maximizing their own good while decreasing the good of society. An official who is sucking money out of his current post in order to buy a higher one does not promote public good. There had been many societies throughout the history where it was better to be a marauder than a baker.

    1.2. A society where it is beneficial to be a baker is an open society. A society where it is beneficial to be a marauder is a closed society.

    1.3. It is not beneficial to be a baker in Putin’s Russia. It is beneficial to be a fire safety, tax, or sanitation inspector who would inspect the baker. Putin’s Russia is a serious case of a closed society degradation.


    Degradation of the economy

    2.1. Any closed society degrades economically. Nobody wants to produce – everybody wants to control the producer. A baker who wants to bake bread or an entrepreneur who wants to produce mobile phones all demonstrate irrational economic behavior. They are not maximizing their good, they are maximizing their vulnerability. A rational economic behavior is demonstrated by the officials who extort bribes from the entrepreneur.

    Any complex economic activities seize to be possible. They are substituted by imports because import of any good involves smaller transaction costs than production of it. Only those things are produced locally that are not possible to be produced elsewhere. Shops and airports will still exist in such society because a Muscovite can’t go to a shop in Warsaw to buy some milk.

    2.2. A specific case of economic degradation is the impossibility of any high technologies development. High technologies are the most volatile part of the economy. There are no nanotechnologies in Byzantium.


    Degradation of motivations

    3.1. Another feature of a closed society is degradation of motivations and expectations. A motivation of making career in a company is substituted by a motivation to get a cushy job. The level of education is falling, the system of stimuli is degrading. If a federal judge has an income of USD500 thousand per month then there is no rational motivation to get a basic salary of USD500. Honesty and scholarship become an absurd behavior from economic point of view.

    3.2. The consequence of motivations degradation is a complete degradation of the education system. A good illustration of this point is the infamous “International Branch of the Faculty of Law of Moscow State University in Geneva”. We all have learned about this institution after four of its students had organized a drag race on Ferraris and Lamborghinis. The “International Branch” was headed by Mr. Hasanov who had been arrested several years before right in the building of Moscow State University for stealing 10 million dollars from Azerbaijani government. The language of studies in the “International Branch” in Geneva was Russian.

    We can guess on the quality of diplomas issued by the institution. What makes us wonder is not why those rich kids couldn’t have entered Oxford or Harvard; it’s why fathers of those hadn’t considered it to be necessary.

    Here’s another example: after the 2006 summer camp in Seliger the Nashi movement [pro-Putin movement famous for its nationalist public relations campaigns] promised that top camp alumni would be sent to Gazprom and Presidential Administration to have their internship there. Promising education in Harvard didn’t even cross their minds. Just for comparison: the government of Georgia will sponsor education of any Georgian student who manages to enter any top-10 university.
    Motivation cancer severs not only the present but also the future of a society.


    Degradation of Public Administration System

    4.1. In a closed society every level and every part of the public administration system, whether it is a ministry or ministry department, turns into a state corporation interested in maximizing the areal where it can extort bribes.

    The strategic damage caused to the society is not taken into account. Let’s look for example at the Ministry of Finance. How does Russian budget work?

    It works in such a way so that to maximize the power of every individual official to distribute funds and power of the Ministry of Finance as a whole over the country. It stimulates governors of the regions not to nurture the tax base in their region but to simply deliver raider attacks on local businesses. That doesn’t make Ministry of Finance officials concerned. What makes them concerned is how to increase the dependence of every individual governor on subsidies: the more subsidies there are – the more kickbacks the officials will receive. In a closed society every entity of state administration aims to maximize its potential to steal.

    4.2. Moreover the system often refuses to execute orders from the top. For example, construction of the Olympic objects in Sochi is Putin’s personal project. However, the construction process is moving slowly because two conflicting groups of officials extort huge bribes from every contractor. If a contractor pays only group, another will destroy the project; if a contractor pays both groups, that will eat away all potential profit.

    In February 2008 Vladimir Putin went to Botlikha and ordered to build a military road there, which he characterized as “another corridor to enter Georgia”. He stressed that the road will be used “heavy military machinery”. However, by August 2008 [the time of Russia--Georgia war] the road that would have allowed to enter Georgia from the third direction (not only from South Ossetia and Abkhazia but also from Dagestan) hadn’t been built due to a simple reason: theft.

    4.3. The system is designed in such a way as if every official – and not only Putin – is the center of quasi administration. Everybody wants to rule everything.


    Degradation of the coercion system

    5.1. American economist Arthur Laffer once noticed that after a certain point an increase in tax rates decreases the amount of taxes collected. This effect is called the Laffer curve. It seems that there is a similar curve for the number of crimes committed. Dmitrii Kamenschik, co-owner of Domodedovo airport, calls it a penitentiary threshold.

    5.2. In a country where the crime rate is above the penitentiary threshold, crime investigations become meaningless. The system of legitimate violence seizes to prevent crimes and starts to spawn them.

    5.3. Every system is not characterized by the mistakes it makes. It is characterized by its reaction to the mistakes. Currently if a policeman or an official commits a crime, the system is trying to defend him.

    5.4. Firstly, as a result of this a crime stops being a crime and becomes a privilege granted to an official.

    5.5. Secondly, the coercive apparatus stops to do what it had been designed to do: investigate crimes. It is often thought that the Ministry of Internal Affairs or General Prosecutor’s Office do not work properly when it is necessary to punish a high-ranking official. That’s far from truth. The system doesn’t work in all cases.

    Here’s a simple example: on March 20, 2009 right on runway of Vnukovo airport [international airport near Moscow] unknown people in masks robbed a courier carrying 43 million rubles [ca 1.45 million dollars] in cash from Makhachkala [the capital of Dagestan]. Such couriers had been constantly robbed by airport’s police before; after criminal charges had been brought the robbing was conducted by “unknown individuals” who were quite familiar with the airport’s security system. Let me remind you that Vnukovo is an airport used by Russian top officials: instead of armed robbers it could have terrorists who would have sneaked to the runway to capture Vladimir Putin’s airplane.
    It would seem that the safety of Vladimir Putin is more important than interests of a gang of corrupt policemen robbing black money couriers. However, the case have never been solved, even given the fact that serious people from Makhachkala had found the robbers, interrogated them, and handed them over to the police.

    5.6. Thirdly, a subordinate obeys an order from his superior only if it is in his own interest. To put it in a different way, there are no orders in the system; there are only commissions. The relation between a superior and his subordinate are very much like relations between a buyer and a seller. The seller is the superior who makes a proposal; however, the buyer will accept it only it serves his own interests.

    5.7. Fourthly, when the system does execute an order, it is not capable of doing this in a professional manner. An example of this is Khodorkovsky case who had been accused of physically stealing all oil that had been extracted by his company, YUKOS.


    The Swarm

    6.1. “System” is not a very accurate word to describe such an organization. A “system” is supposedly highly-organized and is often governed from the center. A “swarm” is a much better word.

    6.2. Swarm has a high level of organization; however, it is being governed by simple instincts. Termites can build very complex structures, but not because they have a central authority but because they obey easiest of commands: “If another termite had marked this place with a pheromone, leave there a twig”.

    In a similar manner, Russian law enforcers can bring very complex criminal charges by obeying very simple commands: “If something happened to this person, bring a criminal charge against him”. Not a long time ago someone stole a bag with very important documents from my friend, a businesswoman. She went to the police. The first question was: “Aha, so you are a businesswoman?” Finally, after one hours of similar questions the poor woman managed to leave: what bag are we talking here about?

    6.3. A swarm doesn’t share a common mind. A swarm has only instincts. One part of the swarm is not capable of giving orders to another part. That is why orders in Russia are being executed (pheromone left by a superior is working) only when the hormonal state of a subordinate is favorable for execution of the order. If a general says to a hungry major: “Don’t touch it!”, the major will continue devouring it. If general says to a satiated major: “Devour it!”, the major will not do that.

    6.4. It doesn’t matter for a swarm if some of its members refuse to act in a commonly accepted manner. Not all officials extort bribes. Not all policemen kill people. However, it’s not that important: it is similar to a situation in a city invaded by marauders. Some soldiers may refuse to rob and kill. That will hardly influence the fate of the city.

    6.5. Marauding is the highest form of social disorganization. We are pretty close to it.


    Centralization

    7.1. If money is generally made mostly in the marketplace, companies allocate their capital in places where it is cheaper to buy land and hire workers. That automatically supports the decentralization of the economy. If money is generally made by administrative decisions, companies try to be there where a decision made by an official would bring them more profit. That automatically makes everyone who wants to make money to move to Moscow.

    7.2. As a result, from the administrative point the country can divided into Moscow where nobody makes any decisions because different clans have interests too conflicting, and the rest of the country where nobody makes any decision because you need to ask Moscow first. From the point of transportation Russia can be divided into Moscow where nobody can go anywhere because of constant traffic jams, and the rest of the country where nobody can go anywhere because of the absence of roads.

    7.3. Russian transportation system is a very good metaphor of Russian society. Let us magine ourselves an official who had stolen all money allocated to repair the road and who solves his own transportation problems with blinkers. The same thing will happen to Russia’s system of public administration.


    Emigration

    8.1. Totalitarian regimes of the past tried to conquer the world. That is why they forbad any brain drain. Stalin could have killed a scientist in Siberia, but he could not have allowed him to go to work in the West. Current Russian regime doesn’t aim to conquer the world because if it conquers it, it will have nowhere to buy its Mercedes’ from and nowhere to safely keep it assets obtained from oil exports. From 1991 till 1996 in the heyday of post-perestroika extreme poverty 429 thousand people left Russia. From 2003 till 2008 during the most prosperous time supported by high oil prices, nearly 440 thousand people left our country. People emigrate to get freedom, not food.

    8.2. The bigger the number of talented individuals who decided to leave the country the easier it will be to govern the swarm. The regime de-facto stimulates the brain drain.


    Memory

    9.1. One of the most feature of a swarm having no brain is the absence of memory. A swarm can’t remember what had happened a day before. If a mosquito swarm is in one place, then in another, and then back to the first place again, it is not because it has become nostalgic about the first place. It has happened because of chaotic movement of members of the hive and a simple principle: “Keep certain distance from the nearest mosquito”.

    9.2. Our leadership swarm demonstrates a complete absence of memory. One day we stigmatize WTO which we are willing to join only together with Belarus, and the next day we stigmatize Lukashenka who wants to get our oil without any duties by referring to the custom union agreement. We are friends with Russia on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays when Putin is meeting with Obama, and are enemies with them on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays when Putin decides to ban American poultry or criticize American anti-missile defense system.

    9.3. The system doesn’t remember what it had done the day before; the system reacts only to a present day stimulus.


    PR instead of idelogy

    10.1. There is a function of a central nervous system that dies the last: that is the self-justification. Nothing is as innate to a person as a desire to feel oneself grand, and no one has this desire more acute than a degenerate drug addict.

    What does a drug addict say to himself? A) They don’t respect me. B) I am the greatest. C) I will put my revenge upon them. The more drugs an addict consumes the more he detaches himself from reality; in order to detach himself from reality he constantly needs a bigger fix.

    10.2. The self-consciousness of the ruling swarm is similar to the self-consciousness of a drug addict. It consumes it drug via the Ostankino TV-syringe.

    10.3. This self-consciousness is by no means an ideology. It is PR. Ideology is an algorithm ordering something that is right according to the author of the ideology. PR is a way to justify any behavior.


    Adam Smith

    11.1. A society should be designed in such a way that individual aspiration for individual good would benefit the whole society. That is what free societies are about.
    In many other societies – bureaucratic or feudal – individuals maximize their own good at the expense of others. Since the beginning of scientific revolution such societies have become uncompetitive.

    Contrary to some pessimistic views – “Russia is no good for anything” and “Slavery is innate to it” – views being propagated by the regime under the brand of “The Unique Way of Russia”, we can see that very different societies had once managed to become open.

    In the beginning of the XX century China was a dying empire where officials were smoking opium, hating foreigners, and selling off their country to them. In the middle of the XX century there were multiple cases of cannibalism in China because of hunger. Now China is a rapidly developing superpower. Seven years ago Georgia was synonymous to “corruption” and “criminals in power”. Today Georgian road policemen don’t accept bribes and its economy is one of the most open in the world. South Korea and North Korea are different not because of the differences between their “historic paths” and “unique features of people’s soul”. They are different because of the systems of public administration they have.

    There are no regularities in history. There are only solutions.

    Solutions that had been found by Japan, Singapore, South Korea, China, Chile, Turkey – many countries that once had to face the necessity of catch-up development – can also be found by Russia. Russia is a too great country to die of lice.

    Source: Novaya Gazeta

    Yulia Latynina

    Translated by: Viktor Tanatov
    FROM HERE

    Yulia Latynina laughs at your resentment.


  2. #2
    NS-Drone Swarm-General RoyBatty's Avatar
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    This wench is mentally ill. There are some valid criticisms though.

    All things considered she's a bit of a Russian version of "Sorcha Faal" and specialises in concocting intricate "journalistic brews" containing, a mishmash of facts, fiction and conspiracy theories.

    Too many fantasies, not enough substance.
    Last edited by RoyBatty; 05-19-2010 at 09:15 PM.

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    Latynina does not write anything objective about Russia.
    It is good there is a criticism. But does she offer any solution to the problems?
    Putin, Russia, communists, Pussy Riot, bla-bla-bla...
    "Novaya Gazeta" is only good for wiping the ass.

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    is just really nice
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    latynina is like politkovskaya but less extreme,
    eventhough she speaks wise sometimes (if subject is out of her american employers concern) she is not reliable source at most cases
    Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.

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    Veteran Member sevruk's Avatar
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    Latynina usual stupid liberal cunt

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