"Oligarchs" refer to underground Russian businessmen that cheaply bought up state assets after the USSR collapsed and sold it for exceedingly higher sums later.

It's a blasphemy to capitalism to conflate those bandits with Western entrepreneurs that founded and built their own companies from scratch, even though they have their own set of issues.

Is it really? I'm positive most would very likely do the same if (when) they get a chance at a collapse.

They would but they didn't. It's not about intentions.

Sounds like capitalism to me.

Kinda, it's basically capitalism with a lot of insider trading, where your connections mattered more than what you did.

t. someone from country which underwent that.

Luxe Lifestyle was a recently-formed company with no staff. It was awarded £25 to buy protective equipment for Covid.

The very next day, on April 29, DHSC bought another 200 million face masks, this time contracting to pay £252.5 million to Ayanda Capital, a Tory party-linked firm also bumped into the VIP lane despite having no previous PPE experience. It is an investment company specialising in currency trading, offshore property and private equity.

To this day, no-one has been charged with any crime.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/ppe-procurement-scandal-u...

That sounds like Capitalism minus all the propaganda about merit and capitalist-class productivity. So just Capitalism.

It sounds like that, but believe me, it was vastly worse than current times. Except if you were in lucky 0.1% that had those connections, and also had no conscience.

> cheaply bought up state assets

In the west, we call that "privatization", and it happens pretty frequently, and it's common for the process to be technically open, but practically exclude all but a handful of buyers.

It's also common for those buyers to make a lot of money from the assets before returning them to the state 20 years later, unmaintained and debt laden.

> In the west, we call that "privatization", and it happens pretty frequently

That's not even slightly true? It's headline news and massively controversial every time this happens.

it is deeply true, and everyone actually involved would know that

Can you name off the top of your head the last 3 significant privatizations?

> Can you name off the top of your head the last 3 significant privatizations?

In the UK, privatisation of Network Rail arches (which will 'break even' for the buyers in about ten years), privatisation or TfL land in London at below-market prices to property developers, and the backdoor privatisation of NHS services through public-private partnerships.

- 2019

- 2010s? Hard to tell what you are referencing

- Not a real example (subcontracting is not the same as selling off state properties).

So yes, 2-3 examples from the UK over the past 2 decades is not really compelling.

So, why then did you ask for:

> Can you name off the top of your head the last 3 significant privatizations?

I can list similar privatizations in Canada. Here's an article that discusses various issues around it in the Canadian context: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02648...

Even further back: during Prime Minister Mulroney's tenure (which coincided with Reagan's and Thatcher's), quite a few public corporations were privatized. Here's a news article from that time period that gives an idea of the pressures faced in Canada at the time, and how what Thatcher was doing in the UK (producing a long list of public corporations and services to privatize) was affecting Canadian judgements: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1985/08/30/d...

And here's an analysis of how the privatization of Canada's medical isotopes business didn't save the government money, and instead only helped to cushion private owners from risk: https://www.utpjournals.press/doi/abs/10.3138/chr.2019-0010

We also have a prominent think-tank that is constantly pushing for further privatization: https://www.fraserinstitute.org/article/time-privatize-gover...

Just some more evidence, from different time spans, in case you are serious.

I asked you for the 3 most recent examples you could think of, and your recent examples were decades old.

You have now linked me to a paper discussing privatization happening in the 1980s and 1990s.

If you want to make the argument that this happens frequently in the west, you need to find examples actually happening this decade. I don't feel like this should be controversial.

> "cheaply bought up state assets'

If they were 'proper investors' they would cheaply buy up UK water companies, load them with debt, pay out 40 billion of dividends, and then enter talks with the government about insolvency.

Can someone explain this to me? America won the Cold War and had an influence on Russia's (the successor state) transition to a market-based economy. Then how can “we“ at the same time be mad about how the transition was handled?

Excuse me? America did not get to define Russia's development, what the heck?

Many Russians do believe exactly that. While "getting to define Russia's development" is a stretch, there has been some US involvement: https://www.thenation.com/article/world/harvard-boys-do-russ...

I do think they don't use oligarch for all Russian billionaires. For example it isn't used for Tinkov or Durov. In 90s-00s there really were oligarchs now they use it for the ones that are or were maybe affiliated with government, like the childhood friends of Putin or former KGB/St Petersburg mayors office who all happen to be CEOs of huge companies

I've heard successive stories of oligarchs getting shaken down for money or outright purged by Putin that I don't think Russia is an oligarchy. That implies some collective decision making.

The Ukraine war is madness and reflects a ruler with absolute power.

I've wondered that too, and from what I can understand, the distinction is that the Russian Oligarchs don't just have political influence, their wealth itself was a result of political connections with the ruling elites from the start.

Correct.

The "America bad" crowd is so eager to say they're all the same that they intentionally look away from any nuance.

American (immigrant) here who happens to think this is still the very best country all things considered. Disappointed in how things have declined over the past 40 years I’ve been here but still thank God for America as far I am concerned.

Not all American super wealthy are oligarch but some are very close to the mark. Borderline cases that are concerning: Elon Musk is an American oligarch. Bill Gates is an American oligarch.

Also can someone dump 4Gs of Google’s codebase somewhere?

Perhaps if America has killed your friends, family or country, Russia looks preferable.

You might enjoy reading this article:

https://kamilkazani.substack.com/p/avocado-economy-why-russi...

>Also Western billionaire versus Russian oligarch - even if the source of wealth is virtually identical and their political power probably higher in the West.

The term "oligarch" has a specific meaning and, surprisingly, Western media uses the term correctly about the subset of corrupt Russian and Ukrainian businessmen who got rich in the 1990s by buying billions worth of state assets for pennies.

I have never seen Russian tech billionaires like the JetBrains founders being called "oligarchs".

Linguistic choices aside, the nature of power acquision is very different in russia and western countries. One of the best explainers is on Kamil Galeev's twitter/substack. Highly recommended read:

https://kamilkazani.substack.com/p/avocado-economy-why-russi...

Oligarch means businessman who have monopoly in some field. So, it is not very different from old money in Europe. Or corporations in USA.

That is not the definition[0]. I can see how you think it might be, but oligarchy is for governments not monopolies -- even if some cases that line is blurred.

[0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/oligarch

Eh, while billionaires enjoy privilege in the West, oligarchs literally run gangs, murder people on the regular, and support Putin's attempted genocide of Ukraine. I would say that's definitely comparing grapes and oranges.