Comments by "David Himmelsbach" (@davidhimmelsbach557) on "Is Russia Becoming Irrelevant?" video.

  1. Yeltsin's health had been failing for YEARS. (booze) Putin was one of MANY Yeltsin picks as he was trying all the while to find a successor. The in-fighting was intense. Stalin had utterly destroyed the talent pool for national leadership -- with his SYSTEM. One is reminded of Imperial Rome when you'd spin the wheel to figure out who the next Big Boss would be. Putin has only put a gloss on the decline of Russia. He has NOT addressed any of its fundamentals. Rather, he's been a vulture-tyrant. The tales of Russian resurgence are strictly from Putin's media laboratory. On its economics, Russia's play should've always been to become a commodity exporter -- just like Kuwait and the oil states. It should've also unloaded its money bleeders: which Yeltsin tried to do. But like Britons, Russians just could not let go of empire -- even when it was clearly dragging them under. BTW, Red China has the same addiction -- and is headed for WWV is I post. Russia is still a prison of nations. Many are destined to remain two-to-three generations (culturally, economically) behind modernity as far as the mind can conceive. They are economic parasites. Naturally, they blame Moscow for their backwardness. And there is a lot of truth in that assertion. Moscow inserts a lot of internal tariffs -- which makes for vey strange economics. ( Keep in mind that the US Federal government was established expressly to stop internal tariffs. I the 1780s Pennsylvania and New York nearly came to blows over their tariffs and counter-tariffs -- against each other ! They were minting their own coins and conducting their own foreign policies ! Before it got entirely out of hand, the First Constitutional Convention was triggered. It was NOT meant to establish a totally new form of government. Instead, its remit was to merely paper over the commercial war between New York and Pennsylvania. Once the players took their seats they all realized that nothing less than a whole new structure was essential. Moving the deck chairs around would accomplish absolutely nothing. With this in mind -- check out Putin's Russia. ) Vladivostok is alienated from Moscow by time and distance -- and economic policy. Moscow -- essentially -- has an export tariff regime that bleeds Siberia, Vladivostok in particular. Without it, the Russian Far East would simply explode with economic growth. It sits on the Russian gateway feeding the fastest growing economies in the world -- and it's stuck in the mud. Thank you Putin.
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