Why IKEA Is Fed Up with Russia

Re:Why IKEA Is Fed Up with Russia by Confusion on Monday July 06, 2009 @05:27AM (#689383)

If you need to pay bribes, you need to raise your prices to still make a profit. Your customers, i.e. you, need to pay more. Corruption hurts the population of a country, as every cent comes directly out of their pockets. That is partly why people in properly democratic countries have, and keep, a higher standard of living.

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Re:Why IKEA Is Fed Up with Russia by radu_floricica on Monday July 06, 2009 @11:27AM (#689791)

It's much worse. The cost of bribes is bigger then the actual sum, and incomparable for the economy as a whole.

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.

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Re:Why IKEA Is Fed Up with Russia by stcredzero on Monday July 06, 2009 @02:22PM (#690148)

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.

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Re:Why IKEA Is Fed Up with Russia by aarongough on Monday July 06, 2009 @05:06PM (#690457)

Luckily you're still getting better service than us poor Canadians!

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Re:Why IKEA Is Fed Up with Russia by ilyak on Monday July 06, 2009 @05:29AM (#689387)

Sure! Where did I say that corruption is a good thing?

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

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Re:Why IKEA Is Fed Up with Russia by alexk on Monday July 06, 2009 @08:36AM (#689539)

None of your posts here contains a single fact, just rage. Moreover you are using lexicon (in russian) that unacceptable here. Stop trolling, please.

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Re:Why IKEA Is Fed Up with Russia by radu_floricica on Monday July 06, 2009 @04:48PM (#690426)

> Well, you know why they still do business here? The answer is M O N E Y

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.

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