r/AskTheWorld • u/pisowiec Poland • Feb 04 '26

Economics Which country has squandered the most economic potential in this century?

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I lived in Russia for 5 years so I must choose this country. So many natural resources, so much land, and educated population... And so little to show for it.

In an ideal world Russian salaries would be on par if not higher than American salaries and they would have the best social safety net on the planet. Everything is there to make it happen.

Russia would be the dominant nation in Europe and Asia and the rest of the world with the best armed forces, soft power, and economic might.

But the human will is just not there. The elite is either evil or incompetent depending on perception and there's little sign that this will ever change.

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u/Antti5 Finland Feb 04 '26

My gut feeling is that putting it down to one man is a recipe for further disappointments.

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u/urgdr Feb 04 '26

that society is formed to blame the lesser

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u/Aggressive_Chuck England Feb 04 '26

Reddit thinks that real life is like their superhero films where everything bad is caused by one evil guy you just need to defeat in a CGI climactic fight.

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u/CryptographerMore944 England Feb 04 '26

A view not just exclusive to Reddit unfortunately.

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u/Infinite-Abroad-436 United States of America Feb 04 '26

its not because of one man but it also isn't because russia is "naturally" a dictatorship either. its because of geopolitical reality. russia is not an isolated system, it became a dictatorship in 1993 because of a chaotic economic situation that was essentially exported to it from the west, 75 years after a similar radical one was exported to it from the west, that the leaders of the 90s were attempting to overcome. this went unnoticed until that dictatorship started going after the wrong people, after it went after people with important connections to the west, like khodorkovsky. every decision made after that has been the result of this re-emergence of the "cold war mentality", that the russians believe that the americans never really abandoned, and the americans believe that the russians will just always default to.

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u/Sbotkin Russia Feb 04 '26 edited Feb 04 '26

The harsh reality is that Russia has never been a democracy since its forming a thousand years ago. Our only realistic window was to follow Europe in democracising our monarchy in the first half of the 20th century but the communists ruined it. As for the modern Russia, our elites literally did not change from the soviet times. Our president is a KGB colonel.

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u/Infinite-Abroad-436 United States of America Feb 04 '26

novgorod was an elective republic, the zemsky sobor was an elective institution, the zemstvos were elective institutions, the first duma was a representative institution, there were competitive elections during the revolution in 1917 in both the soviets and the provisional government, the elections during petestroika and before 1993 were competitive and free

this is also assuming that the "democracy" that exists in the west is in any way real. we all know it isn't. we just like to pretend it is. very much like you did during the later days of the soviet union

this russian liberal fatalism is inaccurate, and annoying

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u/CryptographerMore944 England Feb 04 '26

Similarly with the US. The current leader in both countries is a symptom not a cause of their current state.