Comments by "Paul Aiello" (@paul1979uk2000) on "Why Russia cannot become a democracy" video.

I always get the impression that the country is too big and too centralized in why democracy doesn't work there but democracy is proven to deliver good living standards by listening to the people. I think Russia would need to devolve more powers to the regional governments in the country if they want things to really get better, that seems unlikely under the current government, the alternative is that Russia breaks up into smaller countries, that's a possibility, especially when you look at the standard of living in Russia, it's quite poor, most of which is centred around Moscow and St Petersburg where the quality drops off a lot in other regions, then when you take into account the oil, gas, coal and other natural resources Russia uses to prop up the economy, Russia's economy is doing really poor, even before the war started, after all, with that kind of natural resources, Russia should be doing better and it begs the question of how much worse Russia would be if no one wants its resources. So Putin likes to think Russia is doing well, truth is, most countries would love to have the natural resources that Russia has and in better hands, the economy would be doing a lot better and being as Putin been in power for 2 decades, it's clear he's done a poor job and this is all before the war in Ukraine even started, now it's much worse for Russia. In any case, democracy can work on any size country, but the government at the top needs to give enough powers to the lower governments, a bit like how the EU does with its members or how the US does with its states, if you try and centralize too much power, performance on the economy is usually worse, it also means more mistakes can happen as we're seeing in China with it's zero Covid policy.
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