To The 1,850~ of You Who Live in Russia, I Offer a Serious Suggestion: Emigrate. Now.

I live in a neighbourhood (Steeles and Bathurst) in Toronto Canada that is heavily Russian. In fact there is about a 50/50 chance that a stranger in my neighbourhood will try to initiate communications with me in Russian assuming it is was my mother tongue ( I only speak English and a little 'survival' French and Japanese). If you were to get into Canada my neighbourhood would probably provide as good as any support for a Russian starting out in the "West". I would also agree that leaving Russia for a more tolerant country would be in the best interests of the vast majority who want to make something of their lives. The US and Canada are by far the most tolerant nations towards immigrants I am aware of. I would target those places first but almost any western country is going to be a better place then Russia considering the oppression differential.

I am so grateful my great grandparents left the USSR almost exactly a century ago.

Unfortunately for the 1,850 readers, I believe it will be difficult to find a US-caliber country that will accept and offer them residency/citizenship. I suppose I could be wrong, though.

Also

Mitt Romney = Nostradamus

Not really. Most everyone who pays attention knew that Russia was the #1 geopolitical threat. Russia was spending the past several years locking up deals for their pipelines, consolidating power, and had already invaded Georgia.

What percentage of the population do you think "pays attention"? Don't you remember "the 80's called, they want their foreign policy back"?

Out of the population most people are very uninformed. Numerous polls that are conducted from time to time prove that. Huge percentages of people think the Sun revolves around the Earth or have no idea who prominent people such as John Roberts or Eric Holder are. I would think that, for instance, the readers of Josh's blog are very much on the "more informed" side compared to the rest of society.

Yes I remember "the 80s called". It was a canned line that Obama used to insult Romney as being decades out of touch on every major issue. Obama also got away with blatantly lying about Benghazi, thanks to a moderator that got involved.

I don't think Obama truly disagreed with Romney on that. He can't be that naive. God help us if he is. I think that all this stuff was politics. I do get the impression that Biden really is the belligerent buffoon he made himself out to be in the debate vs Paul Ryan, though.

We're on the same page and paragraph.
(btw, great user ID name)

What about everyone who does not believe in what Putin believes in joining hands and blowing him out of the water. Has that possibility ever crossed your mind? Do not tell me that is not possible in this age of Internet. A little snowball is all it takes. It is amazing what catharsis can result in.

Unfortunately, that is not to be found in the character of the Russian people.

There are exceptions, of course, but the point remains.

I'd say there are exceptions, you could ask the Romanovs' if they were still around!!

I still think Joshua suggestion of emigrating might be a little easier than replacing Putin however:)

Yep.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Magnitsky

For those of us who appreciate Disney, Joshua = Mufasa...

Young Simba: Everything the light touches... But what about that shadowy place?
Mufasa: That's beyond our borders. You must never go there, Simba.
Young Simba: But I thought a king can do whatever he wants.
Mufasa: There's more to being a king than getting your way all the time.
Young Simba: There's more?
Mufasa: [laughing] Simba.

Putin is God.

Try budding Hitler II

What about those of us in China? 😉

Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V

I sometimes think situations such as this are a good mental experiment to run as part of overall financial planning. "What would I do if I had to suddenly leave my home country, emigrate somewhere else and start over?" Then, the next intelligent question would be, "Is there anything I can/should do now that would help me in that scenario?"

Is it unlikely? Yes. Has it happened time after time throughout history? Yes. Is it worth considering? Probably depends on where you're at in your wealth-building trajectory, but it's certainly a valid scenario to consider.

I do this all the time. It seems to be a trait for a certain personality type. John Bogle wrote in one of his books about how he would run scenario testing at Vanguard to see how he could survive if stocks declined 67% in a single trading day. That appeals to me. If you've already worried about everything that can happen, you can sleep a lot better at night knowing there is nothing else you could have done.

Wouldn't globalization make "leaving" irrelevant?

It isn't like the old days where you could simply walk away from your situation and be in an entirely different "world" (as far as society goes). Technology has become so powerful (and advancing exponentially) that "location" for the most part is meaningless.

You live in the U.S. The U.S. isn't just a country, it is now a layer over the entire planet.

... unless you're talking space travel. (?) I'm just curious how you could get away from a global entity.

No. You misunderstand globalization. The countries in our planet aren't homogenous.

I'm sure Joshua has preps we don't know about. But his strong dislike of cash or valuables that are readily accessible seems a bit against running emergency scenario analysis such as these.

For example, I always feel having some level of cash (month or 2 of expenses) not in the bank to cover emergencies is prudent. If running scenario analysis, this could be valuable in a hurricane, or a massive bank hacking problem, terrorism, or some other issue that makes cards and ATMS not readily usable. Some of these scenarios are quite possible (hurricane and lines are down) while others extremely remote (terrorism).

Same thing goes for keeping a small bit of cash on me for less extreme examples - emergency gas, taxi, etc... You could apply same reasoning to having things like a generator or jumper cables.

Or I could be completely off base on his opinion on the topic. Not putting words in anybody's mouth. Just an observation based on comments around needing to borrow cash from friends at inopportune moments.

I thought the topic was on hypothetical tyranny.

Is the U.S. immune from it?

I thought the U.S. was the world police ... we have bases in virtually every country. And drones and satellites covering the surface of the world.

Josh, the only thing you're overlooking (and it's the biggest problem with your suggestion) is that it is extremely difficult to impossible to emigrate from Russia without being very wealthy already by Russian standards, or marrying someone in a Western country (which is difficult in and of itself, and takes time). That's the sad truth of it.

Yep. Very difficult, but it can be done.

True....unless you are a EU citizen it is next to impossible to emigrate to one of the countries you mentioned.

Secondly, as someone who has actually visited Russia its not nearly as bad as you make it out to be. The supposed lack of liberties is not much unlike the USA which is covertly becoming one of the most authoritarian counties in the world.

Secondly, as someone who has actually visited Russia its not nearly as bad as you make it out to be.

I'm genuinely curious as to how you come to that conclusion. What, specific, freedoms do you think the United States is losing? I'd appreciate it if you could name at least one or two so I can attempt to understand why you believe that to be the case.

Personally, all of the angst I hear being in the middle of the country are based on the idea that society is too permissive. This is an especially strong complaint among the 65+ years and older crowd and often accompanied by a fear that it will invite divine retribution as punishment.

A century ago in this country, women couldn't vote, blacks had to use different water fountains, communists were required to register with the government, gays were thrown in the Leavenworth federal prison to serve out their sentence after being caught, Catholics couldn't get elected to public office, your neighbor had the right to ban you and your wife from using contraceptives, there were limits on how much money could spend in an election, you'd be arrested if you attempted to get an abortion, and pornography or anything deemed offensive could be restricted.

Yet, 100+ years of court cases and changes in the culture have made it all but impossible for the government to regulate individual expression. The mayor of New York wants to lower soda sizes to decrease health care costs? Struck down. California wants to ban citizens from carrying concealed weapons? Struck down. Citizens want to prevent you from dumping a big chunk of your net worth into election advertising? Struck down. Congress wants to make it a crime to distribute pornography online? Struck down. Your neighbors want to ban contraception due to their moral objections? Struck down.

The attempts at restricting freedom often get big headlines, while a few months, or a couple of years later, their death at the hands of courts and legislatures barely gets any ink. This creates a very skewed view of reality for those who don't pay close attention.

As for Russia not being as bad as it seems, my inner economist makes me rely on numbers and statistics rather than what my eyes can see. Visiting a place, or even staying for awhile, is very different, especially when you occupy a more privileged place in society.

The life expectancy of a male teenager in Russia today is several years lower than 33 of the 48 least developed countries monitored by the World Health Organization, including Haiti, Afghanistan, Mali, and Yemen. The causes are manifold; e.g., in addition to violent death rates that exceed even war torn regions, if he does manage to survive comfortably into adulthood, roughly 25% of his peers will have drunk themselves to death by the age of 55.

Despite having one of the most educated populations in the world (more than 50% of the population has a college level education, which is exponentially higher than most places), Russia has been wholly unable to convert this into human capital productivity. For a couple of generations now, they have invented practically nothing compared to the rest of the world; their market share of ideas collapsing to a mere pittance. They are eclipsed by nearly every European and Asian country. Your iPhone is made up of German parts, your refrigerator was likely made in South Korea, the cogs in your automobile were manufactured using precision tools most likely made in Israel, the operating system you are running most likely came from the United States, your complex derivatives and chocolate likely originated or traveled through Switzerland, your planes, helicopters, and space parts likely came from France, ad infinitum. Russia can't translate its workers into creators for reasons that have to do with its culture - the software program that runs in the minds of the people - meaning they are left to exploit oil. There have been some interesting theoretical attempts to explain this failure; e.g., see The European Journal of Comparative Economics, Volume 3, Number 1, pages 103-129 ISSN 1824-2979: Human Capital in Russia[a href="http://eaces.liuc.it/18242979200601/182429792006030106.pdf">Source PDF. In fact, had it not been for increases in government transfers funded by oil reserves and a shrinking population which make it appear that Russia's middle class is earning slightly more, the situation would be far worse than it looks.

And that presents another problem: The declining birth rate puts Russia on a projected trajectory of losing 1/5th of its population base in a single generation, which threatens the stability of the country's existing institutions and political equilibrium.

That translates into economics, as well. The recent 2014 Index of Economic Freedom listings put Russia lower than Nigeria and Pakistan. It's completely decimated by places like Canada, Australia, Denmark, Japan, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Luxembourg, the United States, South Korea, Colombia, Singapore, etc.

As for emigration. I never said it would be easy. But it is possible. There are at least four dozen countries with better economic opportunities and individual freedoms, some of which offer enormous differentials in living standards. Who ever promised life was going to be effortless? Sometimes, life outright sucks and you have to do the impossible if you want to avoid a very bad situation. Throwing your hands up in the air and saying, "Oh well, shouldn't even bother to try" isn't a very successful strategy, especially given the demographics of this site, where most of those readers are in the top income distribution of their fellow citizens.

Joshua, I have a few questions and comments. First of all, I do agree with you that there are a considerable number of countries where it is almost certainly easier for the average citizen to live a comfortable and happy life, including the US. I am, however, a bit suspicious of western media coverage of Russia. I have never been there, but I have met a number of young, well educated Russians, who have lived abroad for a considerable period of time studying and/or working. Although aware that their country is far from perfect, all of those I have spoken to on any kind of political topic have expressed a strong belief that much of what the western media writes about Russia is at best exaggerated, at worst, outright propaganda and lies.

So, regarding freedoms and liberties, first, as it has been brought up elsewhere, yes, I am aware of the Magnitsky case, and also Politovskaya, Litvinenko, Khodorkovsky and probably more that have slipped my mind. I am not going to claim that the Russian state is innocent, it is indeed implicated in some inexcusable actions domestically and abroad. But as for the US, what is your opinion on US drone strikes, which amount to execution without trial, targeted at both foreign and US citizens. One that particularly comes to mind is Abdulrahman Al-Awlaki, a 16 year old US citizen, whose killing has never been explained or justified, and who, it seems, didn't actually have any links with terrorism aside from the fact his father (also executed in a separate drone strike) was a suspected Al-Qaeda recruiter. I am sure killing sons for their father's suspected crime is probably anti-constitutional. Or at least, it damn well should be.

On drone strikes in general, this (http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/drone-strikes-killing-more-civilians-than-us-admits-human-rights-groups-say/2013/10/21/a99cbe78-3a81-11e3-b7ba-503fb5822c3e_story.html) suggests a high rate of mistakes and/or collateral damage. Considering that the death toll from Russia's annexation of the Crimea can be counted on one hand, I would suggest it's a fair question to ask - how can America justify this? How can America carry out these strikes, often in violation of the sovereignty of countries at which they are not at war, and yet still point fingers at Russia? Even if the Supreme Court were to declare it unacceptable at some point in the future, that doesn't bring back the dead.

What about the continued holding of terrorist suspects without trial at Guantanamo Bay? As I understand it, they are classed neither as military prisoners, and so do not benefit from the protection of the Geneva convention, nor as ordinary criminals, so do not benefit from the protection of ordinary American rights. It may well be that these can be justified by those in charge of protecting America, as saving American lives. But if criticisms are going to be levelled at other countries for their human rights records, again, I don't think it's unreasonable to ask for justification.

Domestically, regarding the NSA thing. I know you are opposed to it. For me, one of the most disturbing things about it was that the companies forced to cooperate were not even allowed to challenge this in the courts. If this is legal behaviour on the part of the NSA, surely this is a big problem? If it is illegal, then it seems Snowden has had to flee the country in fear of the consequences for his unmasking of such illegal behaviour. And I do not think he is unjustified in this fear, looking at how hard the government came down on Manning. Doesn't sound terribly different to Russia, in some respects.

In economic terms, I cannot argue with the points you made, these are serious problems. I had a brief read of the paper you linked to. It was interesting, but I noticed it was dated 2006. The Russian government has since acknowledged that over-reliance on oil and gas is a problem, and Medvedev launched a modernisation programme (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medvedev_modernisation_programme) to help fix this. I believe Putin has carried it on, and a number of major American and European corporations have invested in projects started as part of the programme, including, if memory serves me rightly, the top of my head, AMD, Google, SAP, Cisco, Oracle, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft and Boeing. There has also been heavy investment in car manufacturing from Volkswagen amongst others. I honestly couldn't tell you exactly how successful it has been, although I am aware that a smaller proportion of Russia's workers are in high-tech fields than in the US, Canada, many European countries, Japan, Korea etc. I'm also aware that this is what will likely be most directly affected by the situation in Ukraine (a lot of focus is on gas supplies to Europe, but Europe will not cut them off until there is an alternative supply, and by then, if it even happens, it looks likely that Gazprom will probably have signed an agreement to massively expand supply to China), but it is an issue that the government are aware of and are trying to improve.

You point out how the US has improved over the last century, well, hasn't Russia too? 100 years ago, Communists would have been locked up. 97 years ago, they were running the place. Now, they are just one of a bunch of political parties with seats in parliament. In the tsarist and early Communist times, famines were common, as were anti-Jewish pogroms. Now, neither are. Under Stalin, Pussy Riot would likely have ended up in Vorkuta digging up uranium with a trowel or something. In modern times, they were arrested and released after a few months. Under the tsars and Soviets, Russians couldn't leave the country without permission. Now they can. It's far from perfect, but it's hard to say it's not improving.

As for the emigration comment, well, you might have a point. As a British/American dual citizen, I certainly am in no rush to swap these for a Russian passport. I don't think it would be as difficult as some commenters suggest. A 250,000-300,000 property purchase in Cyprus or Greece (both EU members) will get them permanent residency in an EU member state. I believe this would mean the right to live and work anywhere in the EU, although I'm not 100% certain. This is directly aimed at attracting Russian and Chinese investors. From there, full citizenship would only be a matter of meeting the length of residency requirement. While 250,000 Euros might sound a lot for a country with average wages considerably lower than most western countries, I would assume that the average Russian reader of your site either is, or has the potential to become, amongst Russia's higher income groups. Russia has fairly low taxes, 80% of people own their own property, with only 1% having a mortgage (Soviet state owned housing was handed over to its occupants upon de-nationalisation) and of course, low energy bills. Someone with a decent salary would surely be able to save a sum like this. If someone really wants to do it, it is doable.

On the drones thing, it's actually quite simple... if you are actively trying to kill us, we'll kill you back first.

(Of course, it would be best to only kill bad guys and not innocent bystanders.)

Unfortunately, what you wrote was more of the same old tired "What about the U.S.?" and "Russia's not as bad as it used to be." A lot of "blind" people have written the same apologist type of stuff about Iran and China too.

There are lightyears of difference between the government of the U.S. and the government of Russia. I suggest you start viewing governments in terms of good/benevolent and evil/not benevolent. The U.S. is a 9 or 10. Russia is a 1/2/3/4/5 depending on the wind.

Do not try and twist my words. If someone joins Al-Qaeda or a similar group, they know the consequences, they have made a choice to declare war on the US, and if that results in their death, so be it. I am not talking about them. I am talking about the hundreds of innocent people. If you want to blithely dismiss the issue with "Of course, it would be best to only kill bad guys and not innocent bystanders" then so be it, but the fact remains that this is not what happens - innocent bystanders are killed, and in some cases, only innocents are killed. If a country wishes to lecture others on behaviour, it is not unreasonable to ask them to account for their own actions.

The reason for the "What about the US" is simple - firstly, William Tell mentioned it, and Joshua asked for specific examples - I pointed out a few that concern me. Secondly, away from this blog, the US chooses to insert itself into the argument through its actions. It tells Russia "this is unacceptable, we will do.... to punish you". And it should. Don't misunderstand me on that, I want the US to do that, and Europe, and any other countries that value human rights. But I also expect these countries to live up to the standards they profess. If you believe that the US is a 9 or 10 on your scale of benevolence, don't you think it would be a terribly sad thing if it threw that away? Don't you think it would be easier to gain support if America could point to it's own spotless (or at least considerably cleaner) record? And do you honestly think that a policy which results in as many innocent deaths as it does terrorist deaths should not even be questioned?

The reason for the "Russia's not as bad as it used to be" is also simple - Joshua pointed out a list of things that have improved in the US, it is only fair to point out that things have improved in Russia too. People have written the same about China because it is also true in regards to China. This is not to say that either country is perfect, that either is close to the US in terms of the rights of its citizens, or that either doesn't face a challenge from those that might want to reverse this, it is simply to say that there have been concrete improvements. I don't know enough about Iran to comment either way.

tl;dr:
1 - If you want to lecture others, get your own house in order first.
2 - It is not unreasonable to question policies which cause hundreds of innocent deaths, even if the government responsible is probably one of the better ones seen in history.

The U.S. is good just because Russia is terrible?

Didn't more innocent civilians die in this war than enemy soldiers? Wasn't the ratio massive, like 75% were civilians?

And who attacked who? (Say 9/11 and I won't reply. There's mountains of information and research on what happened).

First section, agreed.

Second section, disagree. It's a kleptocracy that has spent way too much time with Iran and China and now doesn't see much of anything wrong with going down that path.

Putin likely wants, and possibly will, stay in power until he dies. It's in the national DNA of Russians to live under someone's thumb and they like it.

Have you heard about Sergei Magnitsky? How much time did you actually spend in Russia?

Such a naive blog post unsurprisingly authored from a country that is home to Fox News and arguably a significant proportion of the country is uncultured. I'm not Russian, but I've been there and most of the points in this article equally apply to the US and UK lest ignorance blinds judgement.

Internet freedom? You've clearly missed Edward Snowden & Google's very public campaign against Internet laws being espoused by Washington. Here in the UK, financial repression is so rife that HSBC under UK law now has the power to freeze funds (and has done so) of any UK citizen whether they've been convicted of a crime or not if that person refuses to provide documentary evidence of why they need to withdraw large funds; this information then gets passed to the government. The patriot act developed in the US allows for the arrest and detention of citizens without due process.

This is a perfect example of a comment that says absolutely nothing, draws on no specific data, contains plenty of buzz-words, and serves only to reinforce someone's pre-existing worldview without proffering any fact-based, data-driven argument to support the hypothesis. This sort of intellectual laziness shouldn't come as a surprise given the few things you attempt to use as a foundation (e.g,. the HSBC withdrawal freeze) have been written about extensively in their own stand-alone blog posts, which five seconds in the search bar would have demonstrated.

I'm not sure whether you're really this ignorant or whether you're trolling - e.g., arguing the existence of a television network that makes up 1 out of 200 channels in the average home and is watched by a mere 1,532,000 people out of the 313,900,000 people in the country is somehow indicative of a cultural deficit that makes the human rights abuses in Russia tolerable because not enough Americans are listening to Schubert or discussing Kant.

Discussions like this don't run on "feelz". If you want to be taken seriously, provide a numerical justification for your assertion that life is not better in the United States, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Canada, etc., despite the fact per capita earnings are several multiples higher for the same work, even adjusted for the purchasing power disparity in the lower cost of living in Russia; explain the massive differential in life expectancy, cardiovascular disease, and alcoholism; provide studies or academic evidence demonstrating that there is not, in fact, an enormous productivity problem in that the human capital of the Russian people results in a mere fraction of the economic output of similarly educated people in other nations; ad infinitum.

Greatest response I've ever seen to a common problem in internet discussion

I'm extremely confused Joshua. I thought YOU talked about indefinite prison sentences without trials, here on this blog?

You've talked about our constitutional laws being broken ...

There are unquestionably struggles between government overreach and individual freedom that need to be addressed here in the United States and that, as you correctly highlight, I write about from time to time. My problem is the completely ludicrous false equivalence drawn between the political, social, religious, sexual, and economic freedoms of the advanced democracies such as the United States, Canada, Switzerland, South Korea, etc. and Russia based on the cold, rational numbers; the absurd notion that "if '1/50x' exists in Country A, then it has no right to criticize '1x' in Country B".

If, for example, this were Russia, this blog would now be required to be registered with the government and there are at least three reoccurring themes that would result in large fines and potentially long prison sentences as they violate three of the recently passed laws put in place over the past couple of years.

To argue that Russia is not that bad compared to, say, Canada, where Every. Conceivable. Meaningful. Metric. crushes Russia because Canada has what some constitutional scholars have called "free speech lite" compared to the United States, where the first amendment allows for even offensive hate speech, is farcical.

You are not intelligent, Nayem. I implore you to do something to change that. Take classes on debate, logic, critical thinking. Change your religion. Whatever it takes.

The Patriot Act isn't real? Indefinite detention without trial isn't real?

I believe those things I read were real. I must be stupid too.

There are no savage boons in Russia.

I read this article today and it made me think of your post:

http://money.cnn.com/2015/08/26/news/russia-bans-western-soaps/index.html

Your judgment is looking pretty good here, almost 10 years later.

Downright prophetic post.