I was explaining to Biljana yesterday how Russia can create weapons that exceed American equivalents for a fraction of the cost, and I think you will find the explanation interesting. You see, it’s not that Russia doesn’t have problems. It has a problem with corruption, for instance, but the thing is, corruption is against the law in Russia. One can abuse his position of power in order to steal material and sell it on the black market or whatever, but he can be caught, and in that case he will end up in jail for a long time, and Russian jails are not the most pleasant places. The Russian system is designed to be very lean and effective – the weapons are designed to be cheap to purchase and to require very little maintenance. They also need to be durable. This is because it is understood that the purpose of weapons is to defend Russia and kill the enemies, at the least possible cost to the state, because every Rouble wasted is a Rouble not spent on something useful, such as infrastructure or education. Because the system is designed to be lean and effective, there are no legal ways for people in positions of power to dip their hands into the pork barrel, and if they do so, they have to do it illegally and risk jail.

In America, things are designed differently. The weapons manufacturers, big pharma and other industries finance the campaigns of politicians who pledge to serve them if elected to office. They hedge this by financing politicians from both parties, which guarantees that they will get what they want. The elected politician then works for them, and not for the nominal electorate, and his job is to push through legislation that favours his owners, including government purchases of extremely expensive equipment that includes all kinds of pork barrel dips by a huge chain of leeches that each need to “earn” a commission. Only the smallest fraction of the cost is the actual equipment, and it’s designed to require frequent and extremely costly maintenance in order to guarantee future pork barrel dips, and it’s also designed to fail early, and require replacement, also guaranteeing future pork barrel dips. Corruption in America is therefore designed into the system, and not only is it not against the law, it’s actually the entities that generate corruption that control the entity that makes the laws, basically creating a situation where normal states have corruption, and corruption has America.