• 0 Posts
  • 13 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: July 26th, 2023

help-circle


  • Finance management major here, I’d argue that governments aren’t inherently inefficient.

    On a local level, government organisations are essentially the same as non-profits. The only difference is in who they are accountable to. Even KPI are pretty much the same.

    The inefficiency of a government in contrast to the free market is in its inability to adjust to people’s needs quickly on a global scale. Imagine a company that has to sell a little bit of everything and then some. What kind of resource does it need to have to fully satisfy the demand? It’s practically impossible to make a vertically integrated system that would do this amount of research, let alone organize all the production and supply chains. It doesn’t matter if it’s a government or an entity. They all will drown in beurocracy, except the government is usually stricter as they tend to play it safe.

    Hence, it’s really a non-issue if a government takes control over parts of the market. And because they can’t facilitate it all, they take over socially significant parts of it, like municipality governance, military, and healthcare.

    Also, you (the person reading, not the person I’m responding to) should never be mistaken in thinking that the free market is perfectly efficient. It isn’t. Creating points of inefficiency drives a lot of revenue. Think purposefully limiting demand to drive prices up. This is what’s happening with insulin in the US, for example. If you have perfectly inelastic demands, you can make your product infinitely expensive.



  • In Soviet Union, the rock genre was for a very long time existing underground due to the inability of artists to be properly published.

    Only starting with the 1980s could the artists finally publish their songs officially. And even then Soviet government put a lot of measures to prohibit rock music in the country.

    This resulted in the appearance of many beloved bands and artists, like

    • Kino (tl. Cinema),
    • DDT,
    • Aria,
    • Chaif,
    • Grazhdanskaya Oborona (tl. Civil Defense),
    • Mashina Vremeni (tl. Time machine),
    • Sektor Gaza (tl. Gas Sector)
    • Korol i Shut (tl. King and Jester)
    • And many others

    The history of Russian rock is actually quite fascinating. It was inspired by bard songs and often touched darker subjects as well as being satirical and judgmental of Soviet government.

    Due to that, some artists, like Yegor Letov from Grazhdanskaya Oborona and Yuri Shevchuk from DDT, had troubles with KGB (Soviet FBI).

    Nowadays, rock artists are still being persecuted for their views. For example, DDT is de facto prohibited from performing in Russia.



  • Regular Galaxy S22 256Gb

    Was choosing between S22, Pixels, and Nothing Phone. Ultimately, I went with the former because I happened to accumulate Tab S8 as well as Galaxy Buds 2. If not for those, probably would’ve saved a buck with first Nothing.

    Pros: Easy cloud sync, good processor, nice materials, could be found for a very affordable price, and rest of the features that come with premium phones

    Cons: No headphone jack, no SD card slot, some bloat you can’t remove, battery

    Would’ve probably still rocked my Poco F1 if it didn’t get obliterated by a 0.5m drop onto a quartz floor. It never fully recovered from it.


  • They may not matter in a sense that you can’t elect anybody but Putin.

    But they do matter in a sense of showing the incumbent they aren’t stable.

    After successful re-election of incumbent, they fall into a sense of euphoria. This leads to creation of some absolutely horrific and unjust laws.

    However, when the re-election is deemed unsuccessful (say 55% voted for “the right candidate”, but the second place got scary high 30-35%), they become timid.

    That’s how informational autocracies work. And that’s why elections there absolutely do matter, as they directly affect quality of life. It’s the safest and loudest way of showing the government your middle finger.


  • They guy did his research, and he did it right. Even mentioning the “social contract”, that’s not something you hear from an average youtuber.

    There’s only a few things I’ve noted

    Although the monthly rate can be calculated as yearly÷12 and is acceptable, it is inaccurate. Doesn’t change much, but still. ( (1+monthly rate)^12 = 1+yearly rate <= this is the accurate conversion)

    Next is “failed pension reform.” It’s failed in political sense. The intent of it was to temporarily lessen the depletion of pension fund, which it technically did do. But, yeah, it was absolutely not popular. Not to mention that it didn’t solve the root of the problem, which was obvious from the start. Back during his first or second presidency period, he promised not to raise the age for retirement, yet in 2018, he did exactly that. Needless to say that his ratings have been falling ever since then and up till February of 2022.

    The one thing I would’ve liked him to also mention is “quality of foreign exchange earnings,” which is a relatively new term. Essentially, companies now need to pay attention to wether or not they can exchange earned currency for something that they can trade with other countries or within Russia. Previously, they traded in dollars, so it was never an issue.


  • An economics student from Russia here, here’s my perspective.

    First, is that a country’s economy is a lot less volatile than we expected. There is also another factor that played into it. During covid, Russian companies amassed a sizable amount of inventory that was already inflated compared to European companies due to how volatile our economy is. This has given them enough time to reroute supply chains once sanctions hit.

    Basically, the so-called “grey import” plays a major role in assuring the stability of our economy. Companies either route their import/export through neighboring countries or through affiliated companies.

    Second is the competency of our central bank. After most of the major banks were cut off from SWIFT (used for international transactions), they raised the key rate, limited the amount of money you can cash out at one time, and did some other stuff. Higher key rate = higher deposit interest rate, but at the same time, credit became more expensive. All of this was needed for preventing banks from defaulting. Once panic died down, the changes were reverted. Now, they’re dealing with inflation.

    Lastly, the majority of our budget comes from oil and gas. Since Europe didn’t want to buy it, Russia started selling it to Asia at discounted prices. Quantity of oil/gas sold drastically increased, which mitigated reduced prices and led to a surplus budget. Not to mention that they started pushing on large companies to reduce the amount of dividends and instead re-invest the money.

    I wouldn’t call it “thriving,” however. All of this has definitely led to a slowdown in growth, which, as time goes by, will only get worse. But for now it’s fine.





  • He’s probably yearning for the Russian Empire instead of Soviet Union.

    Russian governmental officials have some really outlandish views for an average Russian person.

    They’re very religious, believe in conspiracies, actively anti-lgbt, don’t support abortions, antisemitic to name a few. None of these qualities are present in the general masses. They are in their own informational bubble.

    As far as I understand it, he believes that the Russian Empire and collective Europe were always at each other’s throats, and that never changed for over 200 years. At the same time, Russia is a successor of the Russian Empire, and USSR is being omitted for some reason. That’s the simplistic explanation of it.

    For you to understand how crazy that is, Russians (in general) have little to no idea of how the Empire worked and what the views those people held. USSR essentially wiped out all of that culture.