what you call corruption there is called lobbying here.

From wikipedia:

>Corruption is a form of dishonesty or a criminal offense which is undertaken by a person or an organization which is entrusted in a position of authority, in order to acquire illicit benefits or abuse power for one's personal gain.

>In politics, lobbying or advocacy, is the act of lawfully attempting to influence the actions, policies, or decisions of government officials, most often legislators or members of regulatory agencies, but also judges of the judiciary.

From those descriptions, it seems pretty clear that corruption is a bad thing, but it's not really clear that lobbying is a bad thing. Sure, trying to influence people could involve corruption, but at the same time don't you want your representatives to be responsive to their constituents? Is a hypothetical world where politicians can't officially be influenced at all really better?

Well, yes, if you substitute the context and actual behavior for the dictionary definition, lobbying does appear to be a reasonable thing.

Except there's an objective difference between what's happening in countries like Russia, and countries in Western Europe, even through the former has endemic corruption, and the latter has "lobbying". Redefining "lobbying" to mean "influence operations that I don't like" is sloppy writing and placing fast and loose with definitions.

No, it's more like refusing to describe as "lobbying" the behavior that became legal after Citizens United v. FEC. It seems wild to just, "oh it's legal and fine," when at least one justice involved in the 5-4 ruling was accepting huge gifts from billionaires.

I'm sure plenty of what you'd consider corruption in Russia is both obviously corrupt as well as de facto legal.

> No, it's more like refusing to describe as "lobbying" the behavior that became legal after Citizens United v. FEC.

You realize that the word "lobbying" isn't limited to activities that occur in the US? It's a generic english word. Moreover, "lobbying" includes any sort of influence operations, not just the ones you hate that were legal after Citizens United v. FEC. As I said earlier, trying to redefine "lobbying" to mean "influence operations that I oppose, like what corporations are doing in the US" is sloppy writing and playing fast and loose with existing definitions.

We all understand the distinction they wish to make, and your strawman arguments trying to recast corrupt behavior as "stuff I don't like" doesn't change any of that.

Funny how looking from local perspective the fortunes are opaque but globally it's quite evident whose money move around.

In the US too.

The same things prevalent in Russia are the same things everywhere else

Anyone can form a trust and merely write on the paper that it is adhering to the laws of a random jurisdiction anywhere in their country or anywhere in the world, and that paper is never registered with the state but is able to hold banks accounts and titles and the beneficiaries are never known to anyone, or can be swapped out after the bank account is formed

Trust net worth is never included on your personal net worth, nobody knows anything

The most interesting thing about Oligarchs are that they were raised under a communist system and understood capitalism better than people raised under a capitalist system, who hardly understand communism either. Everyone should study what they saw and anticipated, so you can be prepared to make some oligarch level trades too and keep it as opaque as necessary. You have the same tools. It literally takes a multinational coalition of sanctions against your country and you for this to ever be investigated in a half effort way, and thats not going to happen, and even then the assets have difficulty being seized by countries that follow the rule of law

What's equally fascinating is how they manage to brainwash and agitate so many people to kill each other, from their remote estates in Dubai, Spain, Italy, France, and from yachts in the open sea. Many countries can be called "rich country of poor people" but Russia, Belarus, Ukraine indisputably beat all competition.

Can you elaborate?

If you’re referring to the content and troll farms I don’t think those are run by oligarchs

just random working class folks trying to get by

Oligarchs have cuts of revenue streams from an oil refinery or a piece of a grain silo, random titles to revenue generating things built with Federal agency budgets given away for practically free when the government wasn't going to own the means of production anymore. Just had to be there.

At least some troll farms were run by Prigozhin, an oligarch. Then there is intense domestic propaganda directed at domestic population.

ah, yeah. I’ve run into social media marketers for products that told me they can do the same for NGOs, politicians, they named India, Russia, states within countries I never heard of, US

domestic propaganda is huge, definitely flies under the radar