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Strategies & Market Trends : ahhaha's ahs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ahhaha who wrote (3572)	11/16/2001 6:59:44 PM
From: GraceZ	Respond to of 24758

Maybe you mean enforcement For sure, enforcement here is spotty at best. Of the more than a dozen or so crimes that I have had committed against me here, only one instance resulted in arrest and conviction. Mostly the laws that enable businesses to function are voluntarily complied with here in the US. Its high voluntary compliance that makes capitalism work. In talking to my nephew about Russia (he lives there and is about to marry a Russian woman) and what he encounters there, it sounds like where he lives in St. Petersburg might be the equivalent to living in a bad part of town in any major American city. I worked on a book with a photographer who did a documentary project there when the USSR was first broken up in pieces. From his pictures and comments he made I got the impression that city living was a lot like the period we went through in this country during the expansion of the west and during the prohibition period. His impressions were very different when he traveled to the country side. My comparison came from Keith's comments about following the "rules". His co-worker got kidnapped because he didn't follow the accepted practice of hiring the "right" people as body guards. If that ain't protection money please tell me what it is. This doesn't strike me as a legal requirement to operate a business any more than what the drug dealers told me about the set of "rules" you needed to follow in order to stay alive. Its a fairly well known fact that in this country that a large number of security personal and body guards are former criminals, at least the ones that aren't former cops. It would not surprise me if that were also the case in Russia, so in effect you pay one set of criminals to protect you from another set of criminals. The police in this country still collect protection money. A friend of mine had a job for about three days collecting payment for a small newspaper that was owned by a police organization. He quit when he realized what it was a front for. This newspaper had nothing in it except small sixteenth of a page ads. He would show up at the place of business, usually some small store or grocery, tell them they owed such and so for their "ad" and then the people would take the cash right out of the register, no checks. It appeared to him that the people who owned the businesses didn't feel like they had a choice in buying the "ads". Most were recent immigrants, so they may have been coming from other countries where it is usual for the police to be entrepreneurs.

To: ahhaha who wrote (3572)	11/16/2001 7:46:40 PM
From: frankw1900	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24758

Both Putin, and Gref, the minister for economic development and trade, sing from the same book. I n the last month they've both said that if Russian businesses can't feel secure in Russia then it could hardly be expected that foreign ones could. They say also that they don't think an amnesty on fled capital would be nearly as effective as conditions which would naturally attract it back. The tax reforms are a terrific start. What is perhaps equally important is that owning land is becoming legal. Things are not, however, stable for anyone, native or foreign, either in the important metropolitan centers or outlying areas. Law enforcement is not yet reliable - criminal culture in Russia is at or beyond the development it achieved in the US by the 50's (which for the US became insupportable and government policy towards it became aggressive). Right now, in Russia criminal behaviour challenges the state. Partly this is because, until recently, there was no law at all regarding wide areas of business activity or there was law that criminalized business activity and this, like US Prohibition generated a criminal culture with roots spreading far into the government at all levels. (Shades of Kennedy and Luciano but more so). I didn't go looking for this story but it's illustrative of the problem: russiajournal.com In a disturbing trend, city real-estate officials across Russia are increasingly coming under fire – quite literally – for their work. Four lives have already been claimed. "A property developer who believes a particular city official is purposely blocking his project may decide to physically eliminate that official, with the hope that it might be a lot easier to reach the desired agreement with his replacement," said Leonid Melkhin, a criminal commentator with TV-Center. A similar thing happened in the south of France some years ago when the criminal culture became so emboldened it assassinated a reformist MP. The government in Paris rightly saw this as a direct challenge and did some severe housecleaning at all levels. In Quebec today criminal elements are extremely bold and the government there is finally taking some action (too slowly). The problem Italy has protecting its judges is well known. I think Russian lawmakers and enforcers are moving into areas where they've had limited experience: crime is now free enterprise whereas previously it was a state monopoly so there was no criminal law or enforcement of a significant kind - (it depended from the aesthetic sense of particular officials). Everyone is working almost from scratch - legislators, courts, police, citizens, criminals. As the real estate stories on that site illustrate, the stakes can be very high. Protection is still the name of the game and the state is not yet in a position to provide really good civil protection and justice and to the degree it can't, it lacks some legitimacy from a citizen's point of view and this gives rise to well known cynical attitudes. You're right the comparison with our drug dealers is not legitimate but right now, if you are in business and small it's best to pay the unofficial tax.