• rottingleaf@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    3
    arrow-down
    10
    ·
    13 days ago

    It’s different people. Those in US still own real things and do something with them to get such incomes.

    Those in Russia steal.

    In other words, in USA connections are means to help actual power and tools to actual power. In Russia it’s the other way around, actual power is all dependent on connections, which ultimately all go to one ruling group.

    It’s nowhere as bad. But it will get as bad as Russia, of course, if Americans don’t learn something.

    • Bakkoda@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      13 days ago

      Hahaha. Just because it’s “legal” here doesn’t mean it’s not stealing. Taking billions in insurance premiums and then spending it to lobby to make it harder and harder to qualify to receive money for a claim is “legal” but so unethical and morally bankrupt that a guy just killed a CEO because of it and the entire country just shrugged and said “Yeah that’s about right.”

      • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        13 days ago

        It’s legal in Russia too at this point. That’s not what I mean. Wealthy people in Russia own nothing really - they are just pockets of Putin. Less wealthy people are just elements of various mechanisms, legal and not, able to steal according to their status. Less wealthy than them - those who do honest business, but pretend the competition is not stifled by various invisible limitations by connections. The lower it gets, the more it is like normal stuff, but one can feel that something is wrong even arriving from Yerevan to Moscow, and Armenia is quite oligarch-owned too.

        In Russia there are no CEOs to kill. People in such positions are kinda normal and everyone knows where real power lies, and those holding it can’t be so easily caught.