Putin Is Destroying Russia And Is Too Stupid To Understand

[PdamnedQ]

3. Quite simply, lack of common wealth, or the notion of, is leading to their end.

Consider this;

Wealth (including getting natural resources out of the ground and making them available) is created through creative effort, innovation, industriousness. Any people, left free and with their individual rights (to life, rightly-earned property, and pursuit of their own interests) protected by objective law, administered by a just government, will steadily improve their lot. They will become wealthy.

People free to keep what they earn create more.

Take away or control by force what they earn and people create less.

The system that protects people's freedom, the system under which all property, including money, is private, and the government's ONLY role is the defense of individual rights through police force, judicial system, and defense force, is called Laissez-faire Capitalism.
It has never existed, though a few places have come close. The United States in the 19th century and Hong Kong throughout its history are two (imperfect) examples.

In short, the degree of economic wealth a nation creates is proportionate to the degree of economic and political freedom its people enjoy.

Even partial freedom works wonders. The liberation of China's markets in the last three decades, and the subsequent economic boom, is testament to that. Russia itself has seen a massive improvement in living standards since the break-up of the completely anti-freedom USSR.

Russia spent its first several centuries under Tzarist Feudalism, then suffered the disaster of Marxism, and now labours under an increasingly despotic crony-fascism. Economic and political freedom was limited under the Tzars, completely absent under the Marxists, and is metered arbitrarily at the whim of the ruling elite now.

Russians, despite their wealth of learning and a rich history of scientific and artistic achievement, have never really been free, economically or politically.

What wealth has been created is concentrated in the hands of a corrupt ruling elite. That has been the case in Russia for pretty much its entire history.