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- cross-posted to:
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Vladimir Putin’s government has launched an aggressive campaign to nationalize the assets of Konstantin Strukov, one of Russia’s richest men and the owner of the country’s largest gold mining company. The move marks a sharp escalation in the Kremlin’s efforts to extract wealth from within its own elite as the financial toll of the war in Ukraine deepens.
Strukov, whose fortune is estimated at over $3.5 billion, is the founder of Yuzhuralzoloto—a gold empire built over decades with strong ties to the Kremlin. But on July 5, his private jet was grounded by Russian authorities as it prepared to leave for Turkey. His passport was reportedly seized, and the aircraft barred from departing.
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Billionaires siding with dictators thinking they’ll be protected?
It’s funny to me that they think they’ll be special, every single time. “They won’t throw me out the window for my fortune!”
Leopards Throwing Out Of Windows Party
Window Inspectors Against Workplace Safety party
defenestration
Well, in the case of Nazi Germany it worked spectacularly well. Many of Germanys most rich people are inheritors to industrial fortunes that got unimaginably rich with selling weapons to the Nazi army and using forced labor from the concentration camps. The families Quandt/Klatten (BMW) and Porsche/Piech (Porsche,VW, Audi…) come to mind directly. The Krupps are also still in the game although they have gambled a lot of money away over the past decades
Never ask Mr. Kühne where his family’s fortune came from, or what their most popular cargo was in the 40s.
It is worth mentioning that in the case of krupps they made a lot of money selling arms in WWI and they purchased newspapers to sell the war to increase profits.
Own all the newspapers… Propaganda… Seems familiar.
They made a good coffee grinder though. We’re still running our’s from the early 90s.
Hitler didn’t stay in power long enough to take everything though. (my bad, it was longer than I thought). Also, they probably toed the line and didn’t piss him off so they could make lots of money. They weren’t special either.
Nah. They all play this game; they all know the risk. It’s all about gaining leverage and the correct alignment at the right time.
He probably knows it’s happening and sacrifices himself for his family and assets.
Usually they are. Dictators typically gain and keep power by appeasing the wealthy and powerful.
I believe Putin is between a rock and a hard place and has to take risks. There could be a coup from this. Perhaps more decentralization of force as rich people look to protect their assets and hire private mercenaries or buy the loyalty of military officers.
Not keep power, just to get it. Then they dump them once they’ve got it. See Giuliani, Musk, My Pillow guy, Herman Cain, etc.
I mean… No - to keep it. “No man rules alone.” They need key supporters. However simply “being rich” is not enough.
Some folks became billionaires in Russia simply because they were friends of Putin though.
These may truly be protected class. Everyone else though - out the window as soon as they outlive their usefulness.
russian oligarchs are only useful as a personal piggy bank for putin, he distributes the wealth around and then siezes it back down the line.
I genuinely cannot wait until Thiel gets his comeuppance, one way or the other.
Soon these oligarchs won’t even own a window to jump out of
The government will provide one, they are generous like that.
Our window.
Tea is cheap.
This is a pretty good example of why I say even millinoaires and billionaires should support a functional democractic society with taxation and regulation and social safety nets. Its the old penny wise and pound foolish. Getting a sliver more and a sliver more and then you lose it all because the rule of law was thrown out long ago. It won’t necessarily take that long to. At a certain point it could happen at any time. Maybe it will. Maybe it won’t.
This all depends on the people born into wealth being reasonable people.
Most are unhinged psychopaths or nepo babies with too much ego.
Which is why wealth needs to be forcefully redistributed, they won’t do it voluntarily.
Wealth is actually being redistributed quite a bit in Russia right now. The oligarchs are paying for the war and “the people” are getting much higher wages either in the military or because of labor shortages.
It’s not great, what with all the death and destruction. But Russians gini coefficient is going down fast.
a functional democratic society would not have billionaires and hopefully millionaires neither
A functional society doesn’t need money.
Money implies poverty.
Rich people live under the fear of losing it all. As sharing is synonymous with losing to them, no one wants it and everyone is caught in this loop.
I’m becoming convinced it’s an actual mental disease, or at least grossly maladaptive
It’s a mental disease in the same sense as drapetomania used to be
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drapetomania
Drapetomania was a proposed mental illness that […] hypothesized as the cause of enslaved Americans fleeing captivity.
I could make some guesses, but I’m not sure what you meant by this. What did you mean?
Some adaptation pretty human mechanism which looks unnatural because it’s not us who experience it although given the same circumstances we would do the same
I see right, yeah, it’s the conditions social and material that give rise to the “disorder” whereas if we fix the conditions, it just evaporates. Like abolishing slavery or private property.
Exactly like that 💯
Or you end being shoot on the street and the entire world celebrates it.
That was a fun day
Smaller scale millionaires perhaps. Once they go multinational, it becomes very difficult to significantly harm them even if one country decides to dispossess their business. This has already happened to large corporations that exist today through nationalization at various places and points in time. E.g. Shell after Venezuelan oil nationalization.
A billionaire cannot exist in 2 countries at the same time. It doesn’t matter if his company is multinational, he isn’t.
If you jail that billionaire, which is not hard as a state if said billionaire resides in your country, you can “convince” him to give even assets in foreign countries.
That’s why they removed his passport.
Right but how do you make most countries want to arrest them? We currently don’t have a setup allowing for this if no international criminal offenses are involved. It only happens if the billionaire resides mostly in an “authoritarian” country where they could get “arbitrarily” arrested. The rest of the world isn’t currently setup to do this. I’m not saying it can’t be setup or shouldn’t be setup like that.
The comment you replied to originally was talking about why billionaires should support a democratic society.
If the society is not democratic, it would be authoritarian. Therefore what I explained could happen.
Yes. Of course what you said could happen. My point is that in the current status quo there’s still plenty of non-authoritarian countries and billionaires are still operating on easy-to-jump-ship basis when they destroy one democracy or another for increased profit. So I think that’s why this cost isn’t factored in. Competition for increased profits dominates. If we’re left with only a few democracies that tolerate billionaires, then that calculus could change. It’s similar to capitalism’s treatment of any finite resource - plunder that bitch till there’s nothing left, then deal with the consequences. If we don’t, the other guy would do it and we’d lose on the profit, and the other guy gains power over us given by the newly acquired capital.
That requires rule of law to actually work. Putin is well known to murder problematic oligarchs. Combined with some proper blackmail, that tends to work very well.
Not if its the home nation. Shell was a us company in venezuela but if the same thing happened in the US the owners would be lucky to get out of the country with what they could carry and if they worked fast enough maybe they could have a small fraction of what they used to.
Yes, of course.
Hamilton Nolan has made a similar argument
That’s what you get for siding with fascists. People will never learn.
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Just like Ancient Rome. The dictator needs cash so he murders the rich people who aren’t his friends and takes their money
What a great way to show the inefficiency of sanctions! /s
Somebody didn’t watch Rules for Rulers, keep your elite happy or they’ll come together and turn on you.
Fingers crossed.
You remember those old “In Soviet Russia” backwards jokes? It’s like that, but unironically.
Putin has consolidated power to the point that he doesn’t serve at the behest of Russian billionaires; they only exist due to his whims - and they can cease to exist just as quickly.
‘Blowout’ by Rachel Maddow touches on this, it’s an interesting read/listen.
They are refering to a YouTube video I think.
Which references this book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dictator's_Handbook
Huh, til
Not if you have a loyal, competent police apparatus to round up anyone who dares to step out of line.
Apparently the FSB is the opposite of the army since he’s still in power.
The billionaires?
And let this be a lesson to US Billionaires.
If most of them are as smart and lucid as Musk, they won’t learn anything.
US billionaires think they can control Trump, and that’s very likely true. The worst is yet to come for these rich guys when someone who can truly reverse the power dynamics and thus rule them with an iron fist, as well as the common people, takes the throne.
Trump cannot be controlled, everything is purely transactional with him. The moment he gains more from taking businesses by force, thats what he will do.
Trust and deals have no meaning to him. This is a theif without honor.
He can be controlled for as long as you have access. He bends to the will of the nearest person like a weed blowing in the wind.
We should treat him like the threat that he is,an absolute unchecked tyrant.
The USA elite should take notice. It’ll happen to them too. Trump will ruin them if things get between himself and them.
It’s all ready happening between him and Musk unless that’s all kayfabe
I’m really excited for Zuckerfuck to get Trump’d. Unlike Musk, he’ll do it in the most pathetic way… Raging like a little nerd by writing private temper tantrum emails and everyone in his circle comforts him because he pays them 7-figures.
Tbf, musk’s way is also pretty pathetic.
Neither of them has the chops to pull off such an act. They’re genuinely horrible idiots.
You mean covfefe?
Trump Admin using national security as a pre-tense to take control over X/Twitter away from Musk, and effectively killing it in favour of Truth Social
If Trump takes Facebook from Zuck i will lmfao and simultaneously weep for humanity.
it’s so much better when you take from the rich, rather than taking from the poor like we do in the united states.
They take from the poor in Russia too though. The rich aren’t the ones being fed into the meat grinder in Ukraine.
specifically the poors of ethnic russians, not the white ones from moscow and st petersberg.
the difference is that the united states ONLY takes from the poor, while the russians take from both rich AND poor.
Call me crazy, but people might take ML users stand against fascism more seriously if they did literally anything with it besides just rooting for a different Imperial kleptocracy built on violence.
the only thing that’s crazy is westerners refusing to learn from the large body of independent evidence that defines marxists/leninists in a similar manner that climate deniers refuse to learn from the large body of climate science evidence.
Defending a violent, Imperial, kleptoctacy is not Marxism. Lying about how you are being criticized is not a genius plan to avoid the consequences of what you said. Can you communicate in anything other than buzz words or am I talking to a chat bot?
That’s not what I said.
I would recommend that you reread the comment before it gets deleted by the liberal mods in this community; but I already know that your ilk doesn’t respond well to reality.
How do you not get exhausted from being so incredibly wrong all the time?
I’m powered by the fact that liberals like you get it wrong SIGNIFICANTLY more often. Lol
Did you have a stroke writing this??? Wtf
the difference is that the united states ONLY takes from the poor
Takes as in seizes; nevertheless I admire how you twisted to the point to better comport w your world view. Lol
Takes as in seizes
I think you’ve forgotten that the means of production is supposed to be seized by the proletariat, not by the bourgeoisie using their illegitimate government.
Trust me the US will start taking from wealthy Americans as well soon enough. Once authoritarian groups burn enough Bridges and goodwill. They always have to scapegoat another group.
It’s pretty hilarious how so many people think that the boot isn’t the problem. The flavor of it is all that matters.
putin is a trillionaire just reclaiming his ill gotten gains from his oligarchs.
tax the rich! (slight /s)
what i’m wondering is:
who exactly wanted this war? i.e., i guess it was not a single-person decision. probably a number of oligarchs are behind it because they think they can profit from either the conflict or the outcome of it.
everybody knows that wars are hella expensive. i guess most wars are decided by economic factors, i.e. who can stay solvent longer. what did the oligarchs think would happen to their wealth due to the war?
Putin’s power draws from his adversaries and foreign policy. He is very weak domestically, mostly at the behest of the oligarchs that run the entire domestic policy show.
Putin muscling around internally usually has to do with the oligarch’s stance on foreign policy or the other oligarchs are wanting to eat one of their own.
It’s funny because $3.5bln is nothing when trying to cover the war effort, but it’ll spark a massive distrust in the Kremlin’s inner circle, which is basically the only group of people that can realistically threaten Putin’s very life.
I’m still waiting for these fuckers to finally grow some balls.
Nah. Russia will implode itself on its own even without resistance. As if Russia never learned anything that autocratic control over economy never works, because their political culture is too corrupt to function effectively.
Francis Fukuyama, as wrong as he was about the end of history, is still correct that dictatorships eventually collapse because they surround themselves with yes men who are too detached from reality. The invasion of Ukraine is the beginning of the end for Putin. It is only a matter of time.
the beginning of the end for Putin. It is only a matter of time.
With his age, he has all biological means to fuck around and never find out. I believe the legacy talk captures him, but the fact he himself would never meet any pushback makes many of his decisions way easier than if he was 40yo and had another 40+ to his rule. Any other minute of him fucking up foreign countries with a weaponised influence, not to say direct warfare, is a minute too much.
He could’ve tried to revive the country, and he got an easy start in the 00s, but he chosed to gamble it instead.
He could’ve tried to revive the country, and he got an easy start in the 00s, but he chosed to gamble it instead.
That’s not why people become dictators. Not to mention that in autocratic environments heads of states don’t really feel the consequences of their actions, and don’t really mind throwing millions of their own people under the bus to bring some ephemeral former glory back.
early on the war, and probably now he looked like he was on corticosteroids because of the moon face in many photos, hes probably hiding some health condition,.
Strukov’s company has denied the incident entirely, stating that he was in Moscow on the day in question and calling the reports “disinformation.” But court documents confirm that a judge had already banned him and his family from leaving the country, and government agencies moved quickly to enforce it.
I will now recommend the Sad Oligarch podcast. Short series on the mysterious deaths of Russian oligarchs in the last few years.
A friend of a friend is the daughter of a Russian oligarch. It was a messy situation in which she was at risk of being drawn into the politics, even though her dad was an asshole who she would’ve been glad to see defenestrated. I only know the surface level info, but it sounds like a fucked up situation in many ways
Hadn’t considered people born into the crosshairs like that. Cheers.
defenestration podcast.
That’s the scientific name, yes.
Strukov is about to suffer the effects of defenestration.
is the defenestration supposed to be a metaphor for something? i.e., they took too many risks and “leaned out the window too far and fell over” or sth 🤔
At this point it’s just a signature calling card. Like the Wet Bandits leaving all the taps running. Ensuring that everybody knows who did it, without officially claiming responsibility, is intended as a power move to remind everyone that Comrade Major is always listening so toe the line
It’s giving Elon-Trump vibes
