How Putin Turned a Western Boycott Into a Bonanza
How Putin Turned a Western Boycott Into a Bonanza
If companies want to leave Russia, the president is setting the terms — in ways that benefit his government, his elites and his war.
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TLDR:
Having invested untold billions into building factories and other infrastructure in Russia, hundreds of companies were forced to leave while selling off their assets at fire-sale prices. Western politicians predicted that it would help strangle the Russian economy and undermine the Kremlin’s war effort. What actually happened that many were simply sold to local management and business continued as usual. The exits of major Western companies turned into a windfall for domestic business and the state itself.
Western companies that have announced departures have declared more than $103 billion in losses since the start of the war, and the exits were subjected to ever-increasing taxes, generating at least $1.25 billion in the past year for Russia’s war chest.
In all, Putin has overseen one of the biggest transfers of wealth within Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union. Huge swaths of industries elevators, tires, industrial coatings and more are now in the hands of increasingly dominant Russian players.
“You screwed up, left it,” he said. “We picked it up inexpensively. Thank you.”
Mr. Putin scoffs at the notion that leaving will hurt. “Did they think everything would collapse here? Well, nothing of the kind happened,” he said this month. “Russian companies took over and moved on.”
This is the proof that you can tax wealth. Usually, you say 'Tax wealth' and the corporations go, 'If you raise taxes, we'll leave.' To which, my response has always been, 'Off you fuck, then, and good luck taking the land, workers, and consumers with you. Putin has proved that they can't. This is why he's dangerous. There's probably more in this than the war, although it's hard to compare them. Workers in the west are absolutely not supposed to understand this, hence the state of Western journalism.
South American and African nations are absolutely studying how it's unfolding. The only caveat I see is that the state in question has to be big enough to have a self-sustaining system if they pull the trigger.
It's considerably easier if you border China to be fair. I could easily see the US and its lackeys blocking shipping (or at least trying).
Exactly, if companies leave the market they create a niche that will be filled by somebody else. It's really that simple. And I completely agree that western media works really hard to make workers think that they need the parasite class while they're the ones who actually produce things.
The West's sanctions on Russia since February 2022 have been one of the greatest self-owns in human history.
Literally the only one who better at this besides Russia was the USA, cannibalizing European industry and exporting natural gas at exorbitant prices.
I'm beginning to wonder if that wasn't the US's goal with the sanctions all along? They were less concerned about "stopping Russia" and more concerned about making their European vassals more dependent on them.
why not both? stopping Russia from further ingratiating into the European supply chain and subsequently forcing them to rely on the US are two wings of the same bird to me
I just love how the whole thing was premised on chauvinism where they took it for granted that backwards Russians couldn't figure out how to operate these businesses without the enlightened west. This is what happens when people start getting high on their own supply.
Straight out of the Nazi Germany playbook. Sometimes I wonder whether the ruling class of the west genuinely thinks of the non-west as untermensch.
I think they must. They need to justify their atrocities and subjugation somehow. What better way to do that than to insist they are "inferiors" who "deserve it"?
And we often see leadership in the EU accidentally saying the quiet part out loud quite a bit as well.
It's not just the ruling class, unfortunately.
It is fortunate for China, Russia, etc that the West underestimates them and has no interest to learn about them.
I think it's exactly that, the policy towards Russia and China really does seem to be rooted in the idea that they're just not able to develop on their own.
When Marx said that capitalism will provide the means to its own destruction, I did not think that he meant this.