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Comment by fpoling | Hacker News Reader

> because this is death to entrepreneurship

This does not follow. Even in highly corrupt authoritarian countries entrepreneurship can flourish. Just consider Turkey or Russia. In such places one quickly learn whom to pay with corruption payouts becoming business expenses.

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Does entrepreneurship flourish in Russia? This would surprise me just because its GDP is smaller than Italy's, and around 17% of it is oil and gas. CAGR for past 10 years in Russia is ~1.5% (compared with ~2.3% for the US).

Just seems logical to me that if entrepreneurship was flourishing, we would see more economic growth as a result.

You can’t take the GDP in US$ for comparison, given the sanctions and all. PPP is a better means.

I do not know about entrepreneurship, but I do know that a Russian’s average purchase power is significantly higher than what you might expect from just looking at the GDP

It might be true that we can’t compare gdp between Russia and other countries, but even if so, wouldn’t we see a growth in GDP over time (ie comparing Russia to itself)?

Russia has been spending all gains in economy on military for the last 15 years. Ability of local businessmen to quickly find new trading partners in Asia is one of the primary reasons Russian economy did not collapsed under suctions and the war.

It's thanks to oil, gas and minerals exports they have managed to keep the russian economy going. Not thanks to entrepreneurship or some russian made products. They also stole a lot of western companies and their assets.

West imposes sanctions forcing business to divest and leave Russia -> Russia "stole". That's some next-level reasoning there.

I wouldn't be so snarky when your own reasoning leaves out a key part of the series of events there..

When the government said businesses must be locally owned, of course the bandits with money (aka oligarchs) saw the opportunity and suddenly became company-owners left and right. I guess it's "the West"'s fault that they created space for the bandits to move in (and not Putin's fault that he forced "the West" to sanction the country because of invasion). If we go further up the "cause and effect" chain it must be NATO's fault for expanding into East Europe. ;) .. but why wouldn't Eastern European countries want to join NATO, considering their large neighbor to the East still have imperialistic dreams.

"This would surprise me just because its GDP is smaller than Italy's"

GDP to US dollar is only works IF your export and import is only traded with US dollar which doesn't to be the case since Russia is trade with Brics partner that bypass all sanction and not using US dollar

Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I get the feeling that this is purely a theoretical exercise for you, life under those conditions is chaotic and complex, at the bare minimum, it limits the complexity of the kind of business you can run.

And that's ignoring other externalities.

Russian business is very complex. Just consider that due to sanctions many companies needed to quickly learn how to operate with cryptocurrencies, find new trade partners etc.

Or like building companies switched to Russian military contracts to build factories for drone, ammunition etc. to make weapons to kill Ukrainians.

If one has no moral compass, one can absolutely flourish as a businessman in Russia.

That's why Russian companies have such a global reputation for being sleazy. You have to be a sleaze in order to get anywhere. Fish rots from the head and all that, so we should expect American companies to get the same stink if things keep going this way here. Bad companies will wade into the muck, and good money will flow elsewhere more stable.

Scams and frauds are going to flourish under Trump because the guy himself is keen on running scams and frauds from the White House. Who is going to investigate crypto scams when POTUS is launching his own pump and dump shitcoin? It's going to be scams and frauds from the top all the way down.

I don't think entrepreneurs enjoy paying for "protection" when mafia knocks on the door or companies being taken over entirely when somebody in power decides that they like this one.

Can you mention some Russian success stories to back that up?

Wasn't this the whole shtick with Navalny -- minority shareholders rights being trampled and he set about trying to critique the Russian government. Or Bill Browder who was doing business in Russia until the Russian government literally killed his colleague.

> one quickly learn whom to pay with corruption payouts becoming business expenses

Exactly also already happening in the US and with Law Firms.

"Trump rescinds executive order after law firm agrees to provide $40m in free services" - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/20/trump-rescin...

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