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Comment by simonh | Hacker News Reader

I thought most of the major assets got bought by connected oligarchs, sometimes by literally putting goons at the doors of the auction room to beat up anyone that tried to get in to bid against them. If the oils fields were actually owned by European companies, we’d be buying Russian oil from ourselves, not from Russia.

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That was one way. Another was not paying salaries for months ("company has no money" was a common case) until employees sell their "vauchers" to those who wanted to buy.

I've heard variations of this story a lot. Common people and workers received a share of the company they work for, but times were so dire most people sold them to those with money for a pittance. So foreseeable, why was it allowed to happen?

Some people chose to put their assets to work for later and others to sell their assets for cash right now. Why shouldn't people be allowed to make those decisions?

If you're starving, why shouldn't you be allowed to sell yourself into a lifetime of slavery in exchange for a meal today?

Exactly.

Ditto for the goons. If your main skill is sociopathic violence and physical strength, why not use those your talents to intimidate and exploit the workers for your boss’s benefit?

Shock therapy transition to capitalism plan meant people did not do the first choice. There were no choice, literally. Workers got shares in the companies they worked for without any alternative (get your share or continue receiving your salary).

Do you really, genuinely believe that these people had credible options, and were not deliberately coerced and engineered into desperate economic conditions in order to squeeze them into selling their shares for a pittance?

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