Comments by "N Velsen" (@nvelsen1975) on "Asianometry"
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Nope. The oligarchs were made mainly out of companies being turned into 'Employees' shares'. Owning 1/3800th part of your company had no value at all for people, so a few enterprising invididuals who were deep in the Soviet barter system to trade goods, were basically able to swoop up large sections of a huge industrial company for the equivalent of a few glasses of vodka or a pack of cheap cigarettes.
Then came a chaotic time when the nominal tax rate in Russia was above 100%. So make one ruble, pay 2 rubles in tax. So EVERYBODY who owned a company during that time period is technically guilty of tax evasion: They had no choice.
This according to dr Leo Paul's lectures at Utrecht University.
Imagine that as an example Jefferies Financial goes Soviet and now 2885 people who all don't know what shares are, can't spend them and don't care, own that company. Now you're smart, you've saved up some goods so you begin trading and by giving 2000 of them a drink at the pub, a pack of cigarettes, or some item of clothing, you acquire their shares. And because it's Russia you simply steal another 300 shares off of people and convince another 400 to hand over their shares for free because you demand it over some Soviet regulation.
Congrats, for the equivalent of a few month's work, you now own a Fortune500 company.
That's how Russian oligarchs came about, by acquiring huge industries at a fraction of their assets-based cost.
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14:03 From my work (urban planning) I have to understand wave field strengths and potential harm.
For the Netherlands (most restrictive on this topic, best I know) Based on 2005 precautionary norms updated in 2023, prolonged exposure to wavestrengths over 0.4 microtesla can potentially by harmful to little children, but not to adults. Prolonged means 'You live there', basically. A couple weeks or months of exposure doesn't do anyting.
Can potentially, because nobody will get ethical clearance to research this, stuff a couple hundred babies right underneath a 380 Kv powerline, raise them there and see how many develop medical conditions.
I mentioned a super strong powerline? That's because you need that level of power to generate a potentially-harmful strengths. For a 110 KV mast we know the field's only harmful for 30 meters in each direction with the worst being a 380 kv 'Donau' style mast with a zone of 75 meters.
Compared to that, the concept of a transmitter that's way, way less powerful (case in point: power lines power transmitters and entire towns) generating a wave strength enough to cause even potential hypothetical harm, is laughable.
Of course we knew the conspiracy nuts were wrong, but they are wrong by orders of magnitude into the thousands.
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I'll paraphrase some things I remember from the lectures of Dr Leo Paul of Utrecht University.
It wasn't so much 'on the advice of'. In Russia, nobody knew how to have an economy; it had never been done before. Everything was monopolised by the state and people were essentially slaves who worked as little as they could get away with, unless they had an avenue through which to get personal rewards. By exceeding quotas, you could get personal rewards (so basically capitalism, just without money) and this could consist out of being allowed to have a car or being allowed to have a holiday home.
The ways of production were incredibly inefficient and passive. People were used to spend a lot of their day bartering and queuing up for goods instead of working, stealing was a constant thing for everybody.
So.... communism is dead suddenly, now what? How do you run a company?
They decided that everybody who worked there, would receive an equal share in ownership of the company.
Congrats, you are now 1/3200th part owner of the factory where you work. But you can't actually do anything with the damn coupon.
This is when the oligarchs were born. People who had lots of things they had already hustled and stolen their way to, would trade these company shares. Here's a pack of cigarettes for your coupon which is worthless by itself. So you hand it over and have a smoke.
Through this bartering, one person could obtain ownership over giant former state companies, suddenly stretching property inequality to extreme lengths. Income inequality soon followed.
The huge economic shock was because Russia has basically bankrupted itself through socialist inefficiency and military spending trying to conquer the world. So they were already in deep trouble.
Then suddenly its no longer socialism, but you have a population who for generations have worked the socialist way.
For example if you own or set up a company, you will your lightbulbs are breaking at an unnatural rate. How weird. Why?
Well, under socialism you can't just buy a light. Only companies could. So, you brought broken light bulbs from home and changed those with working ones at your company, stealing their lightbulb.
So you could expect your company to basically pay for many goods that would be stolen, on top of salaris, and lots of things breaking and causing inefficiency all the time.
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