A bribe-based economy has very high barriers of entry, especially when the main client in your industry is the state. Which means low competition which means... lots of bad things.

Example: Cell Phone service in the US. Actually, that's not the worst possible, but we are lagging the rest of the world.

But I'm saying that they feed the corruption. By paying bribes.

I thought this was quite insightful. No matter how bad the conditions, there will be companies willing to make a profit there. After all, the choices are enter the market and make some money, or don't enter the market and make none. And Russia is a _big_ market, therefore a potential profit hard to dismiss.

This all means the system there will not run out of fuel very soon. It is less productive though, but their natural resources will probably make up for it. The biggest loser is the population. I read recently in a study of happiness per country Russia is very near the bottom. But as long as there are enough money to move the wheels, the system will go on.

That is exactly something to be expected from a corporation. You don't expect corporations to take the moral high ground and heal Russia's political system at the expense of their own profits?

With respect to corruption there's bad news and good news. The bad news is that only Russian people can do something about it. The good news is that Russian people can do something about it.