Stupidity - the single reason why democracies never work

[Sarmatian]

Well, Sarmatian and Aemilius, all I can say is, that if you are incensed by my description of Russia or Serbia, just wait and relax with the prospect of Seamus returning to this thread to find his political beliefs described as borderline fascist.

Or, in other words, I have no axe to grind with either Serbia or Russia. You get the same treatment Peasant Phil and Andres get about Belgium, Adrian and Frags about the Netherlands, Rabbit and Don Corleone over the US, HoreTore over Norway, perenially hard-done by Furunculus over the UK, etc. I just barge in and take painstaking care not to mind my own business.

I understand I'm a bit touchy when the issue arises but you have to understand something. For you everything about Yugoslavia was what you read in the papers. For me, it was a bit more personal and a bit more real. That's why I feel somewhat insulted when you speak so nonchalantly about it. I shouldn't, I know, but the dark side of the force is strong.

I thought that Obama went to Moscow, hoping to 'push the reset button' for US-Russia relations.

I wasn't sure which one were you talking about, because you've mentioned both Russia and Serbia.

just don't mock Vålerenga IF or Mjøndalen IF.... then you're dead.

Let it be known that with Sarmatian at the helm, Valerenga won the UEFA Cup and got the semis of CL in Football Manager.

And from what I got from Sarmatian's post, he too was somewhat ambivalent.

That's because Louis and I have had discussions before. (He was completely trounced of course, but he won't admit it )

First, find a suitable profitable factory, government-owned or private. Then grab one of your judges, and have him make a verdict declaring you as the rightful owner of the factory. Then grab the towns local police force, and have them occupy said factory, force the previous owner to relinquish his ownership and then remove them. Then loot and pillage what you can, take up a gazillion loans, remove your personal stakes in it, declare bankruptcy and finally pocket the money you've stolen.

That's not really how it works. Go back to the 90's, Yeltsin times. Huge political and economic crisis in Russia. Someone yells "democracy" and you have state owned companies privatised. Some shares are kept by the government, some distributed to the workers. Those workers go out of the factory holding a piece of paper in their hands. Someone outside the factory offers them 200 dollars for it. Crisis is severe. they need to feed and clothe their children, they need to pay the gas bill, the electric bill and many other things and they need to pay it NOW. They can't say ok we won't eat this month but we will eat twice as much the next. So they sell it for 200 dollars. Some don't actually know how valuable is the piece of paper they hold in their hands, they exchange it for a bottle of vodka. They can't afford to wait for months, to get themselves organised, to hire an expert. They have no money and no time and there's no expert. Then there's a problem with finding someone else to sell it to. Foreign companies are reluctant to invest during a crisis and only people with money are mobsters or "controversial businessmen". In the true spirit of free market, where "everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for", those oligarchs got factories and companies worth hundreds of millions, even billions for a few cases of vodka. The trouble is, it is hard to prove that there was anything against the law in it. Is it your fault if someone sold you something worth a 1000 dollars for 10 dollars?

Similar stuff happened in other countries going through transition. After 2000, Serbian government tried to deal with it by introducing special tax for extreme profit retroactively. Unfortunately, due to corruption, a very small percentage of the money was collected. In fact, you could say almost none of it was collected.

That's often the problem when you try to change political, social and economic system overnight. You can't just install free market economy in a country not ready for it. When Milosevic lost in the 2000, pretty much everything that was sold or privatised was done below the real value. The steel industry in Serbia, worth more than 200 millions, was sold to US Steel for 2 millions. When the economy was stabilised, when certain laws were enacted, the situation got much better. For example, Telenor bought the cell phone company for 1.3 billions, Carlsberg bought a brewery for more than 600 million, Interbrew bought another for 900 millions.

Even with US Steel paying a lot less than it was worth, it's still not that bad. It's US Steel, you know they will invest some fresh capital, try to make it work again. Unfortunately, most of the foreign investments were actually domestic through phantom firms set up in Cayman Islands or wherever. Then it often ended in the scenario you mentioned, like taking loans, selling them off or just closing them down to eliminate competition. Not all, to be fair, but most of it

The pattern was more or less the same in all transitional countries... Some fared better than the others but none was immune to it...