
Russia Threatens to Block YouTube, Instagram, After Complaints from an Oligarch - sethbannon
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/02/12/world/europe/russia-youtube-instagram-navalny.html?action=click&module=RelatedCoverage&pgtype=Article&region=Footer&contentCollection=Related&referer=https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/03/02/world/asia/nastya-rybka-trump-putin.html?
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maxander
Russia is a perennial political issue for most of the Western world, yet has a
GDP somewhere around that if Spain. They’re not China- if they try to make
internet giants now to their authoritarian norms, the giants are going to
realize they come out best by just packing up and leaving the country.

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NotSammyHagar
But Russia has nukes and a sizable military. How can they afford to have such
a large military, if their gdp is like Spain's? Russia population is around
144 million, Spain's around 46 million according to google, so about 3x the
population, but 1/3 gdp per person. Are the poor so starved in russia that
they can afford to have jet fighter development, nukes, air craft carriers,
etc? I'd never thought hard about how Russia can afford to have such an
apparently dangerous military while being relatively small and poor.

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NinjaKitten
They can't really "afford it" in the common sense of it. Russia is just so big
and has so much left over hardware and factories from soviet days as well as
people with the know how that things will get done alone almost automatically
by scale and diversity of options. Somewhere there's always someone able
that's willing to do it for less.

Its difficult to explain this concept/phenomenon, but Russia just works very
differently compared to other countries and has a lot of underpaid skilled
people, information and older tech to fallback on.

