Hacker News Reader

While I broadly agree with you, Russia is not a useful example for this point: the failures as a state to be a good place for normal people to live in are not the important failures, instead look specifically at the oligarchs within it and the power they wield, the money they've made.

View on HN

Those oligarchs could have, and be, making a lot more money if they integrated with the global economy and participated as a good contributing member.

It's a failure of lost opportunity for the oligarchs too. Authoritarian regimes have a much lower upper-limit that holds everyone and everything back

I don't think so, they would be crushed and bought out by the bigger American Oligarchs. By liting their influence, their local monopoly remains unbeatable.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com