Right On The Right

Real Teen

Seems you are a "teen". This is not a socialist plot, but a political ploy. If it were a socialist plot it would be characterized as strategy to enrich the proletariat. Putins move is only to subjugate the Ukraine. This by no means fits into the definition of socialism. Putin is more of nationalist than a socialist and there by bordering on fascism.

Feel free to spin it how you like to keep the loyal ignorant.

[...] A little while ago, I talked about how the Kremlin was re-socializing Russia. Some people made the argument that the government having control of that type of industry could benefit the country’s citizenship. Unfortunately, the Kremlin is now using their control of the oil industry to apply pressure to neighboring countries, who are currently dependent on Russian oil. I can’t say much except to say that this is an adverse effect of socialist control of an industry. [...]

Sounds like what liberals would like this country to become. Liberals are more of a danger to this country than Al Quaeda.

Kudos Wayne on your latest comments! The voice of reason does live on this blog. So many want to assume and jump to conclusion without hard evidence. Thanks Wayne.

I'm a little concerned about the single mindedness of the comments I'm seeing. It seems that everyone has identified government controle of a particular commodity with socialism/communism. In looking at the part of the article that was reprinted here I didn't see anything which referenced the government's motives, whether this was a permanent or temporary move, or if it was limited to just oil or if the plan was to move into other sectors. Truth is I find it highly doubtful that Russia is moving towards anything even remotely socialist. If I had to make a guess it sounds like they're just trying to get some control over the one commodity that is of any value and keeping neighboring energy hungry countries (ie China-the most populated communist country around) from taking advantage of them. Remember, there is very little structure in the private sector over their and it would be easy for a foriegn power to take advantage of it. In light of this, it seems more and more likely that Russia's government is taking ownership of a portion of it's reserves so as to better secure it's capitalist future and protect itself from neighboring China.

But that's just one possibility. Has anyone seen any statements from the Russian government explaining itself? Before jumping to conclusions about them reverting back to their nazi-esque fascist communism regime, I'd like to at least see their explanation.

Conser-vat-ion-ist,

I would even take your comment one step further. Bread lines in America are caused by Socialist governement policies like the New Deal greatly lengthening the Great Depression. Under sane policies they don't happen AT ALL in America.

I really don't understand why Russia would be heading back down this road. Hopefully it will stop with Oil interests and not go any further. But don't hold your breath.

What's staggering here is that, inspite of world wide evidence that the Socialist Ideals breed nothing but poverty and dispair, people around the world continue to allow these things to happen. I'ts not just Russias economy that's struggling, check Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and all of South America. All governments moved by Socialist Ideals and all with staggering poverty. Remember, during the height of Communist Russia there were everyday citizens standing in bread lines waiting for their bread and two to three choices of meat. Here in America bread lines are for Great Depressions.

It's a shame to hear that about Russian. I hope they don't turn back into a communist state.

I think their basic problem is a lack of entrepreneur. During their communist days entrepreneur would of been the worst type of criminal. They would of been creating black markets for every day items that the communist could not supply in big enough qualities. I would think after all those year of being treated like criminals, one day the goverment said why don't you run a normal business it OK now, they might not think it was such a good idea. ;)

The whole thing with Russia economy is pretty complicated to say the least. I'm not sure if there were any serious analysts out there that thought the transition to capitalism would happen in anything less then 50 years because things were so screwed up. The truth is that in some of the former soviet block countries the fall of communism was used as a way for foriegn investors to basically by huge chunks of industries real cheap.

I met a guy once from the former czeck repbulic. At least I think that's where he was from. Might have been from a different soviet block country. What they did was give each citizen a few thousand play dollars. Basically monopoly money. They could use this to bid on a certain number of stocks for a particular company that was being privatized. So for example, let's say you want to get stock in a car factory. You make a bid using say 400 of your 1000 play dollars and that would get you a certain amount of stock. This sounds like an awsome idea that is fool proof. Well, sure enough, someone figured out how to take advantage of the situation. The people living in these countries are in really bad shape right now and willing to do anything for a few extra bucks. Investing in a factory for the most part wouldn't pay off for most of them for quite some time. So what happened is foriegn investors with a bunch of money came in and told people, look, if you get stock in company xyz I'll buy it from you for this price. So instead of the government owning the factory an outside interest owns it. Doesn't seem to benefit the people too much in either situation.

Government ownership of a particular commodity isn't that unusual in any country, capitalist or communist (Actually, I think in most of the major oil producing countries the government controls the oil). The problem with communism is that it's completely fascist with the government owning everything and controling everything. But there are many capitalist societies where the government owns a particular commodity because it actually works out better of the general public in that situation. A great example of this is water. For most municipallities sewage and water distribution is run for city and municipal governments. Not really sure why this is but it tends to work out for the most part.

Just putting my two cents in.

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