Lecture notes. Oleg Grigoriev - Neoconomics. Economic theory. Lecture notes The technological gap between Russia and the West can be reduced due to the high quality of Russian specialists

Over the past year, it has become more and more clear that neoconomics is the best way to model economic processes and reveal the nature of what is happening in the financial sector and macroeconomics. Oleg Grigoriev was able to clearly demonstrate the power of a new way of understanding economic and political processes. This has led to the emergence of false neoconomists - people who sanctify their purely economicist ideas by claiming that these ideas supposedly follow from neoconomics. This can no longer only be read in articles or heard during webinars, but is also conveyed to the population from television screens. The purpose of this note is to dispel seven of the most frequently heard false statements of these pseudo-neoconomists.

The technological gap between Russia and the West can be reduced due to the high quality of Russian specialists

This is wrong. Neoconomics clearly shows that desire alone is not enough and that the greater intelligence of specialists cannot do anything with a system of division of labor that is much larger in number of workers. 3 billion people can build a system with a much deeper division of labor than the 120-140 million inhabitants of Russia, no matter how smart the people of Russia are, and no matter how stupid those 3 billion are. This is the reason for the tragedy of the USSR with everything its intellectual potential and human capital.

The task posed is meaningless not only within the framework of neoconomics, but also of Marxism and classical political economy. But it is standard within the framework of the economics view of the economy. False neoconomists must realize that it is not a matter of the desires of individuals or large elite groups or even the entire population, but of the peculiarities of interaction between developed and emerging markets. And then it is necessary to set not the classic task of economics of import substitution in a single country, but a different task, a task of a completely different scale. A task on a global scale.

Import substitution is an alternative to the government's collaborationist policy

This is wrong. Import substitution, according to the neo-economic model of interaction between developed and developing markets, is an accelerated version of the suicide of the developing market, the state elite and the entire layer of specialists. Moreover, within the framework of neoconomics it is clearly shown that the economic bloc of the Russian government after the collapse of the USSR acts very wisely and rationally, constantly considering different options for import substitution and abandoning attempts to implement them.

Neoconomics is a closed theory and can only be developed by Oleg Grigoriev

This is wrong. Anyone can use neoconomics for their own purposes, developing the parts of neoconomics they need for themselves or for other people. The way to integrate your knowledge into the general neoconomics is through expanding the system of narratives-models of neoconomics and through standard portals for the interaction of narratives.

A good, although not complete, analogy is the Wikipedia expansion scheme: there are articles, in the articles there are concepts, for each concept you can write your own article about this concept and put a link from the original article. That is, if something is missing for a person in neoconomics, then he can write narratives for himself on the concepts of interest or expand existing narratives to suit his needs and through this expand general knowledge or his personal knowledge.

Neoconomics is an academic theory, and I am a management/nuclear industry/finance practitioner and therefore use it as I want

This is wrong. Neoconomics only looks like a theory. In reality, it is, by design, only a generalization of the practical experience of a certain number of highly qualified specialists, an understanding of this experience. This is what narratives are for - to collect experience on a topic in the form of a coherent set of interacting facts. In turn, the facts themselves are also narrative stories. And on these narratives stands a private model, the essence of which is not a theory, but an understanding of the phenomenon.

Accordingly, the contrast between one’s experience and neoconomics only shows a person’s misunderstanding of the neoconomic approach, misunderstanding of neoconomics and the falsity of sanctifying one’s statements through neoconomics.

Neoconomics is an economic theory, so it doesn't work in this particular case

This is wrong. One of the significant differences between neoconomics and all other ways of understanding economic processes is the consideration of volitional acts of participants in the economic system. Both group and personal.

Economics and Marxism are based on abstract ideal-rational people. Imperfections are introduced unmodelled and with great difficulty. No one has yet succeeded in introducing real influence groups.

The neo-economic model can naturally introduce groups with common interests or models of specific individuals who use the economy for their political or personal interests. This is done using standard methods, and not through “grand pianos in the bushes”. And this allows you to build models very close to real ones. It is possible to even take into account the possibility of such strong-willed decisions as the annexation of Crimea or the Maidan.

If a person does not understand this and does not know how to introduce the personal interests of participants in the economic process, then he is a false neoconomist. If he tries to introduce Rothschilds and Rockefellers, “money changers” and “interest-bearers” into the model, then this also causes some bewilderment.

The world economy will soon reach a level where regional systems of division of labor become profitable. This model is being actively developed by Oleg Grigoriev and his Research Center “Neoconomics”

This is wrong. Both lectures on the interaction of developed and developing economies, and Grigoriev’s book, and seminars clearly indicate that regional systems of division of labor are a false hope. Any neoconomist understands and realizes the reason for this, no matter how difficult it may be for him to understand the consequences of this conclusion of neoconomics for Russia. I also recommend the webinar Discussion between Mikhail Khazin and Oleg Grigoriev: “On import substitution and other disagreements.” The reason for the elusiveness of hope is the same as why import substitution is impossible - for relative success, more than a billion workers are needed, plus special conditions such as the century-long isolation of this billion+.

Possible abandonment of the dollar in favor of independent regional currencies

This is wrong. Neoconomics shows how and why the dollar became an international means of payment and why gold and other currencies had to be abandoned. Moreover, within the framework of neoconomics, the dollar will remain the main international means of payment as long as it can be used to buy a larger range of goods than with any other currency. The USA sells more than 50% of the world's list of exported goods. And yet, false neoconomists are still trying to seduce people with the possibility of creating regional currencies and even propose the ruble, yuan or other, sometimes new, currency options that include a link to gold.

Economic theory. Version 1.0. Lecture notes

Lecture 1. Introductory, part 1

* We are talking about a new theoretical approach to economics that has matured for quite a long time. It coincided successfully with the current crisis, the process of which is developing in accordance with his prediction within the framework of this approach, which thereby has a connection with reality.

* What work was done? It all started back in the USSR, when, after graduating from the Faculty of Economics of Moscow State University, O.V. Grigoriev received good scientific guidance in the person of Ac. V.I. Danilov-Danilyan, a famous economist in the past, now less known as the director of the Institute of Water Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Many regret that he left the economy, which suffered great losses as a result. In the early 1980s. The Danilov-Danilyan group worked on the problem of raw material dependence, which became relevant in the 1970-1980s. The point was that in the centralized system of capital investments that existed in the planned economy of that time, the phenomenon was observed that an increasing share of capital investments was directed to the fuel and energy complex; At the same time, it was obvious that the remaining share of investments going to other sectors of the economy, firstly, was declining, and secondly, causing an extremely negative phenomenon in the rest of the economy. That is, the remaining sectors are deteriorating. In the USSR, the question arose that soon only this sector would remain in the country.

* Investment decisions were made on the basis of methods [for calculating] the efficiency of capital investments, which were written according to market principles. One of the authors is prof. Novozhilov was an ardent supporter of the market Austrian school, and supported a high level of scientific knowledge in the academic economy of that time. It was clear that the degradation of other sectors was dictated by market principles. When perestroika came and talk turned to the transition to a market economy, the Danilov-Danilyan group treated this with horror, because they believed that if in a planned economy this trend could somehow be changed, then in the transition to a market economy, when all decisions are made solely on market principles, the result will be what ultimately happened in the country in 2012.

* At the same time, it was clear that in capitalist countries market principles, in approximately the same “oil” conditions, did not lead to the United States becoming someone’s raw material appendage, but retained and even developed technologies other than the fuel and energy complex, and quite rapidly, which ultimately made it possible to abandon oil production and even purchase it abroad, incl. in USSR.

* There are two answers to this problem: 1) in reality, in the USA and in the West in general, strategic decisions are not made on the basis of market principles (a conspiracy theory about the nature of things). There are indeed quite a few examples of such solutions in these countries. For example, the US introduced a tax on sealed vacuum to move from vacuum tubes to transistors for the development of microelectronics. The argument against this answer is that, whatever the think tank and the US government, it was an insignificant force compared to the government of the USSR, since in the Land of Soviets the leading role was played by such prominent bodies as the State Committee for Science and Technology, the USSR Academy of Sciences, "nine" defense industries, people from which made decisions. Chairman of the State Planning Committee N. Gaidukov came from the oil industry, but in general it is unlikely that he alone acted against these expert-regulatory structures. And yet, the entire crowd of these structures could not resist the usual market logic. There was a big question about what mechanisms exist in the US, given the knowledge that multinational companies buy elections, have their own lobbyists everywhere and make decisions based on market principles.

* After perestroika, these questions turned from theoretical to practical. Heated discussions about the problems of turning the country into a raw materials appendage were held in power in the 1990s, and various attempts were made in this regard, which each time ended unsuccessfully. The experience of developing countries was also considered, many of which were trying to overcome their dependence on raw materials and develop their own industry. These experiments ended mostly in failure. The experiments that were going on also had signs of impending collapse, which is what happened to many of them (Argentina, Mexico, etc., including those that had a restart, like in Brazil).

* Preliminary conclusion 2) was quite bold and was that all national economies are different, and there are some invisible factors in them, in which in different cases market factors lead to different results. This was a challenge to traditional economic theory, which asserts the equality of all economies in the world, except for particular differences; that is, for example, nothing prevents Romania (Argentina, Indonesia, China, etc.) from reaching the level of the USA, except laziness, greed, etc. of things. The entire theory of modernization suggests that, apart from obstacles from the residents of the states themselves, there are no other obstacles in the economy to increasing the level of well-being.

* If economies differ, by what factor? In 2002, during a private meeting, O.V. Grigoriev came up with an idea about the level of division of labor. It was a kind of speculative construction that made it possible to fit numerous factors considered earlier into a fairly simple scheme. This raises several problems. First of all, doubts arose as to whether such a consideration was “reinventing the wheel,” which someone had discovered long ago. Doubts were serious due to the fact that the division of labor as a proposed explanation was not only not new, but one of the basic concepts in economics. Suffice it to say that A. Smith begins the presentation of his ideas with this concept. Any economist will tell you about the division of labor, for example, that “Russia must take its place in the international system of division of labor.” However, why did O. Grigoriev see the division of labor as a construct that explains the fundamental difference between economies, but not to other economists, although everything here seems to be quite simple? Everything that was necessary for conclusions was contained in A. Smith's small classic text.

* Since the time of A. Smith, something has happened to the concepts and structure of theory, after which the division of labor became not a tool, but a figure of speech. We had to reconsider the evolution of economic theory. When it became clear that this economic discovery not only was not “reinventing the wheel,” but also clarified a lot, a discussion began on this topic. How to measure this factor? The first thing that catches your eye is the number of professions, which the Norwegian economist E. Reinert also spoke about as a factor dividing rich and poor countries. Indeed, in the USSR, compared to the “West,” the level of division of labor was less, unlike the latter, and the mass of people began to receive a mass of new professions (for example, the word “merchandiser” outside of Moscow still causes a smile).

Economic theory. Version 1.0. Lecture notes

Lecture 1. Introductory, part 1

* We are talking about a new theoretical approach to economics that has matured for quite a long time. It coincided successfully with the current crisis, the process of which is developing in accordance with his prediction within the framework of this approach, which thereby has a connection with reality.

* What work was done? It all started back in the USSR, when, after graduating from the Faculty of Economics of Moscow State University, O.V. Grigoriev received good scientific guidance in the person of Ac. V.I. Danilov-Danilyan, a famous economist in the past, now less known as the director of the Institute of Water Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Many regret that he left the economy, which suffered great losses as a result. In the early 1980s. The Danilov-Danilyan group worked on the problem of raw material dependence, which became relevant in the 1970-1980s. The point was that in the centralized system of capital investments that existed in the planned economy of that time, the phenomenon was observed that an increasing share of capital investments was directed to the fuel and energy complex; At the same time, it was obvious that the remaining share of investments going to other sectors of the economy, firstly, was declining, and secondly, causing an extremely negative phenomenon in the rest of the economy. That is, the remaining sectors are deteriorating. In the USSR, the question arose that soon only this sector would remain in the country.

* Investment decisions were made on the basis of methods [for calculating] the efficiency of capital investments, which were written according to market principles. One of the authors is prof. Novozhilov was an ardent supporter of the market Austrian school, and supported a high level of scientific knowledge in the academic economy of that time. It was clear that the degradation of other sectors was dictated by market principles. When perestroika came and talk turned to the transition to a market economy, the Danilov-Danilyan group treated this with horror, because they believed that if in a planned economy this trend could somehow be changed, then in the transition to a market economy, when all decisions are made solely on market principles, the result will be what ultimately happened in the country in 2012.

* At the same time, it was clear that in capitalist countries market principles, in approximately the same “oil” conditions, did not lead to the United States becoming someone’s raw material appendage, but retained and even developed technologies other than the fuel and energy complex, and quite rapidly, which ultimately made it possible to abandon oil production and even purchase it abroad, incl. in USSR.

* There are two answers to this problem: 1) in reality, in the USA and in the West in general, strategic decisions are not made on the basis of market principles (a conspiracy theory about the nature of things). There are indeed quite a few examples of such solutions in these countries. For example, the US introduced a tax on sealed vacuum to move from vacuum tubes to transistors for the development of microelectronics. The argument against this answer is that, whatever the think tank and the US government, it was an insignificant force compared to the government of the USSR, since in the Land of Soviets the leading role was played by such prominent bodies as the State Committee for Science and Technology, the USSR Academy of Sciences, "nine" defense industries, people from which made decisions. Chairman of the State Planning Committee N. Gaidukov came from the oil industry, but in general it is unlikely that he alone acted against these expert-regulatory structures. And yet, the entire crowd of these structures could not resist the usual market logic. There was a big question about what mechanisms exist in the US, given the knowledge that multinational companies buy elections, have their own lobbyists everywhere and make decisions based on market principles.

* After perestroika, these questions turned from theoretical to practical. Heated discussions about the problems of turning the country into a raw materials appendage were held in power in the 1990s, and various attempts were made in this regard, which each time ended unsuccessfully. The experience of developing countries was also considered, many of which were trying to overcome their dependence on raw materials and develop their own industry. These experiments ended mostly in failure. The experiments that were going on also had signs of impending collapse, which is what happened to many of them (Argentina, Mexico, etc., including those that had a restart, like in Brazil).

* Preliminary conclusion 2) was quite bold and was that all national economies are different, and there are some invisible factors in them, in which in different cases market factors lead to different results. This was a challenge to traditional economic theory, which asserts the equality of all economies in the world, except for particular differences; that is, for example, nothing prevents Romania (Argentina, Indonesia, China, etc.) from reaching the level of the USA, except laziness, greed, etc. of things. The entire theory of modernization suggests that, apart from obstacles from the residents of the states themselves, there are no other obstacles in the economy to increasing the level of well-being.

* If economies differ, by what factor? In 2002, during a private meeting, O.V. Grigoriev came up with an idea about the level of division of labor. It was a kind of speculative construction that made it possible to fit numerous factors considered earlier into a fairly simple scheme. This raises several problems. First of all, doubts arose as to whether such a consideration was “reinventing the wheel,” which someone had discovered long ago. Doubts were serious due to the fact that the division of labor as a proposed explanation was not only not new, but one of the basic concepts in economics. Suffice it to say that A. Smith begins the presentation of his ideas with this concept. Any economist will tell you about the division of labor, for example, that “Russia must take its place in the international system of division of labor.” However, why did O. Grigoriev see the division of labor as a construct that explains the fundamental difference between economies, but not to other economists, although everything here seems to be quite simple? Everything that was necessary for conclusions was contained in A. Smith's small classic text.

* Since the time of A. Smith, something has happened to the concepts and structure of theory, after which the division of labor became not a tool, but a figure of speech. We had to reconsider the evolution of economic theory. When it became clear that this economic discovery not only was not “reinventing the wheel,” but also clarified a lot, a discussion began on this topic. How to measure this factor? The first thing that catches your eye is the number of professions, which the Norwegian economist E. Reinert also spoke about as a factor dividing rich and poor countries. Indeed, in the USSR, compared to the “West,” the level of division of labor was less, unlike the latter, and the mass of people began to receive a mass of new professions (for example, the word “merchandiser” outside of Moscow still causes a smile).

* However, the primary question was a deeper question - not about how to measure, but about in relation to what this very level of division of labor will be measured. It was clear that it was not applicable to the national economy, since, if we take, for example, the division of labor system (SLT) of the USA, then it is not limited to the borders of this country, and is generally global. In the USA, the profession of metallurgist almost disappeared, as well as everything connected with the peasantry. Then, perhaps, tie this concept to the company? It is possible, but, again, this is not the same level. The issue remained open and without resolution for eight years. At the same time, there was already terminology and results, including forecasts that were coming true. But there was no basis for this activity. In 2010, it became clear to what the concepts of the level of division of labor apply.

* Actually, in economics there were initially two bases (objects of study) for the application of economic concepts: the national economy, which is dealt with by “political economy”, and, subsequently, the micro-level (individual), which is dealt with by “economics”. When another basis for the applicability of economic concepts was formulated, such discourse was called “neoconomics”. After the change of object, in fact, the neoeconomic group had to radically reconsider the history of economic teachings. The process ended relatively recently.

* About the structure of the lecture course. In view of the fact that in neoconomics there is another object that requires a high level of abstraction for its representation, the initial introduction of basic concepts would not lead to an understanding of the results of such work, and it would be necessary, when building a complete picture, to repeat for the second time what has already been said , but it fell on deaf ears and was forgotten. Therefore, in this first lecture, basic concepts will be given vaguely, and in the next two lectures a case will be considered, a specific example of how the division of labor factor works to explain some phenomena in the real economy, for which even orthodox economics does not have any solutions on n. XXI century, although orthodoxy itself considers these phenomena to have no satisfactory solutions: this is the interaction of developed and developing states, and in general the problem of economic growth. Therefore, later, when the transition to working with abstract concepts is made, there will be a link to a specific example before your eyes. After introducing additional abstract concepts, additional content will be added. This is the structure of the course.

Those who know me know that I generally share the views of O.V. Grigoriev on economics. In this regard, I decided to say a few words about some differences in the approaches of Khazin and Grigoriev.

Khazin’s texts, written under the influence of the half-mad Devyatov, contain a lot of all sorts of conspiracy theories, which I don’t even consider necessary to sort out. But if we analyze, let’s say, an adequate part of them, what confuses me most of all is the use of the term “global project”, which seems to hint that someone somewhere is once consciously designing or designed it. Meanwhile, it is obvious to me that capitalism did not develop according to someone’s pre-conceived plan, but “historically,” so to speak. Thousands of different influential people in different countries over the centuries have solved their specific problems, unwittingly forming institutions that have developed into a system, and a system that is constantly evolving and changing to the wickedness of the bottom. Grigoriev claims, in my opinion rightly, to explain the principles of this system, emphasizing that before that they worked in practice, but were never formulated explicitly. Khazin, with his “global projects,” began to claim that the principles were originally laid down by someone, which weakly correlates with reality and leads down the crooked path of conspiracy theories.

Moreover, the trick is that some principles of capitalism were actually voiced, but did not correspond to real practice, while others worked, but were not voiced. Here, as in any organization, there are formal instructions, and there is everyday work, which management often does not fully understand (if it has never worked in this structure in lower positions). At the same time, if everything is done “according to the regulations,” then the work gets jammed, it’s not for nothing that they call it the Italian strike.

Likewise, at the global level, the benefits of free trade and the protection of private property are declared, but in practice something completely different works, and if you try to bring practice into line with theory, then everything goes awry. Khazin concludes from this that the real laws were originally invented, but hidden by some puppet masters. Grigoriev, instead of conspiracy theories, is trying to bring theory into line with practice.

  • June 6th, 2018 , 12:11 pm

Some decent economic analysis from Alexander Vinogradov

Everything will be free there, everything will be a blast there
You probably won't have to die there at all.

– Egor Letov – Everything is going according to plan

The past week was the first time when I did not see patriotic sadness regarding the composition of the new government in my standard information flow. They probably got used to Dmitry Medvedev at the helm, and Vitaly Mutko in construction, and Dmitry Patrushev in agriculture (not to be confused with his father Nikolai Patrushev - he, as before, remained Secretary of the Security Council). This can be understood - we must somehow move on with our lives, leaving in the past numerous explanations of what happened, from “this government will be more manageable” to “it is temporary and it will not last long,” as well as the already noticeable apology for the already emerging Russian neo-feudalism. In general, the dust has settled, “Maslenitsa is over, Lent has begun.” And since that’s the case, it’s quite possible to talk about the prospects for the next six years.

Generally speaking, at this moment we should have stopped, thought and summed up the results of the previous six years - but there was very little of this in the press. This is due, in my opinion, to the fact that the previous six-year plan was inextricably linked with the May decrees and one can, of course, flaunt quite correct maxims like “the decrees have been implemented by 90%,” but this, unfortunately, is not enough. The point here is that these decrees were transformed into 218 specific instructions to the government, and many of them are tasks like “hold an event,” “prepare a plan,” and the like. Obviously, this is not difficult to do, and the percentage of completion is growing. But, for example, there are not 25 million highly productive jobs - in reality it fluctuates at the level of 16-18 million, with the maximum - 18.28 million - being achieved in 2014, although, of course, these 25 million should be created by 2020, i.e. There's still time. The growth of real wages in 2018 by 2011 was supposed to be 40-50% - in reality it was only 9.2% at the end of 2017. Further, the volume of investment required in the decrees at the level of 27% of GDP does not want to deviate from the level of 20-21%. The share of high-tech products in GDP at 25.6% in 2018 is also extremely doubtful, since it barely rose from 19.7% in 2011 to 22.1% in 2017. A related indicator, although not included in the decrees - the share of innovative products - on the contrary, has decreased, and in a number of key industries - from mechanical engineering to chemistry and metallurgy - it has collapsed to a minimum in 12 years, and in general, Russian industry ranks second to last in terms of the level of innovation in Europe, surpassing only Romania. In general, the picture based on key actual (and not paper!) indicators turns out to be very unattractive, and, as far as one can understand, no one really wants to focus on it. Well, yes, we didn’t master it, no matter what happens, but the new plans are so wonderful, aren’t they?

They are, of course, immensely impressive. Here you have an increase in per capita GDP by one and a half times, and an increase in life expectancy, and a halving of the poverty level, and a variety of affordable housing, and an increase in labor productivity by at least 5% per year, and even a tenfold increase in the cargo turnover of the Northern Sea Route. In total, these are about 150 goals and tasks of varying degrees of complexity and size (six years ago there were about 190) - in other words, the basic ground for the next version of the May decrees has been set quite solidly. However, a logical question arises: to what extent does this correspond to reality?

Here I must once again point out the features of the existing economic model in the Russian Federation. There is nothing particularly tricky or mysterious here; this is a classic monoculture-rent model of interaction between the local economy and the developed world. On this incoming cash flow, through market (private demand from beneficiaries) and non-market (fiscal-budgetary) mechanisms, a local non-tradable sector of the economy was formed, grew and strengthened, i.e. all this that cannot be imported, from construction to hairdressing services, production aimed at the domestic market has also increased.

The formation of this system took place in the 2000s and was accompanied by the corresponding policy of the Central Bank - the so-called. currency regulation (currency board), the essence of which boils down to maintaining a fairly strict ratio of the amount of local money in the country and gold and foreign exchange reserves. This type of policy is typical of developing countries, especially those who are trying to restore their economies after certain experiments. This is its main advantage - this kind of peg allows you to stabilize the country’s monetary system, in the event of a previous catastrophe, reduce very high inflation, and restart production chains and economic processes in general. The downside is that it is risky: with an increase in the cash flow into the country, noticeable economic growth begins, and actual import substitution begins (increasing incomes of the population make it profitable to invest in the production of previously imported goods). There is also the formation and expansion of that very non-tradable sector, but, on the negative side, this growth is accompanied by serious inflation (at a level of about 10%, which, of course, is quite tolerable - but has a clear negative impact on production chains, creating threats to businesses, especially low-margin ones ) and the quite likely formation of bubbles (systems with positive feedback) in different markets, usually in the stock and construction markets. This, again, is tolerable - what’s worse is that when, for one reason or another, this incoming flow is reduced, a sharp collapse of the economy begins. Bubbles deflate, assets become cheaper, their owners go bankrupt, and investments made with the expectation of further growth do not pay off.

This is exactly what we observed in the period 2002-2007. An influx of money, inflation, bubbles, economic growth, replenishment of government reserves (how could we live without it) - and a general feeling that life is getting better, and that this will continue in the future. The fairy tale ended with the fall in oil prices in 2008 - suffice it to say that the government spent about $200 billion to support the domestic economy. On the other hand, during the period 2009-2014, the Central Bank made a transition to a new form of monetary policy, inflation targeting, breaking this tight link between local and external money. As a result, the inflation target was achieved quite successfully (we will not now touch on the issue of inflation for the poor, the growth of government tariffs, and so on), it became almost unnoticeable, the role of the exchange rate as a damper increased - but another effect was that the country’s economy stopped rapidly respond either to the growth of incoming cash flow (i.e., rising oil prices) or to its reduction.

I remember that 7-8 years ago, before some elections, United Russia came out with the slogan “The goal is stability, the principle is responsibility.” I won’t say anything about the second part, but the first was implemented quite clearly. This stability, however, is not very reliable (more on this below), but the fact remains a fact. This means, among other things, that even positive external conditions (the same oil price is now quite high) do not turn into economic growth, as it was 12 years ago. They turn into increased capital outflow: $19.8 billion in 2016, $31 billion in 2017 and already $21 billion in the first 4 months of this year. The economy is, in general, neither hot nor cold.

  • May 18th, 2018 , 02:52 pm

  • April 9th, 2018 , 12:45 pm

Slavophiles and nihilists are coming;
Both of them have unclean nails.

For if they do not agree in the theory of probability,
They agree on untidiness.


Now the liberals, represented by Navalny, have already begun to tell us fairy tales about the dominance of private houses in the “beautiful Russia of the future,” as they say. A private house is of course good, but “where is Zin’s money” to start and maintain all this happiness. “Patriots” and “Westerners” now agree on illusions on this topic. Only some see a private house as a return to the mythical rural pastoral, while others see it as the embodiment of hipster illusions about the future. Below is a good text by Alexander Shurygin with an analysis of the issue.


Review of the collection of articles “Home. Private housing and private life in modern Russia.”

The topic of settlement and spatial development is coming to the forefront of public discussions. One of the signs of the growing popularity of the topic, as well as the emerging interest in it from the liberal-hipster community, is the release on the Inliberty website of a collection of texts under the general title “Home. Private housing and private life in modern Russia.” The first issue in the collection is a kind of Message from the “President of the Beautiful Russia of the Future” A.A. Navalny, which proclaims the main ideology of the publication: “Russia must change the format of its daily life and make a civilizational choice in favor of low-rise buildings.” It seems that instead of the ideologist of the creative class, Richard Florida, who has left the pedestal and his comfortable urban environment, the progressive public has a new idol. This is the famous publicist, propagandist of “unmoskvichization” Yuri Vasilyevich Krupnov. True, for some reason his name is not mentioned in the collection. Apparently, Yuri Vasilyevich, unlike Richard Florida, is not doing well with PR. But we will correct this defect.

It is Yuri Krupnov who has been preaching for 15 years (and maybe more) the idea that Russians should move out of big cities, acquire individual houses and private planes, settling in the wide expanse of our country. Otherwise, the dreams of Margaret Thatcher and Madeleine Albright will come true, 15 million people will live in Russia, and the country will lose the natural resources of Siberia. Regarding the topic of individual housing construction, back in 2003 Yu.V. Krupnov released a whole book called “Home in Russia. National Idea”, in which long before A.A. Navalny and others presented ideas that are extremely similar to those contained in the collection on the Inliberty website.

Krupnov’s ideas could be treated as the benevolent wishes of a patriot-conservator, but the growth of their popularity in the creative-hipster environment indicates that it makes sense to analyze in detail the pros and cons of this concept. In our case, of course, from the position of Neoconomics.

The very idea of ​​low-rise construction and the fight against 25-30-story anthills (or, as our colleague A. Vinogradov likes to put it, “tiger nests”) as the dominant type of housing is correct. Of course, nothing other than the greed of developers and the omnivorousness of consumers can explain the dominance of “tiger cubs-anthills”. One of the key problems of our housing sector is the fact that during the transition to the market, we retained the dominance of essentially the Soviet apartment as the main offer on the housing market (what A.V. Bokov calls “New Old Housing”). The fact that an apartment in an apartment building as an object of ownership is something incomprehensible, since it is not tied to the land, has already been discussed many times from all sides, so the argument that only individual homeownership can create a genuine class of owners sounds quite intelligible and convincing. Therefore, the general pathos of the authors of the collection of articles is generally fair.

At the same time, this completely justified view is accompanied by a number of deepest misconceptions.

The first and most important of them is due to the fact that supporters of disurbanization believe that new communication technologies provide an opportunity for remote work, and this, in turn, refutes “outdated” economic models, like the New Economic Geography and other “agglomeration” theories.” . As disurbanists believe, a person armed with a computer with the Internet can live in the middle of the taiga and be as successful and wealthy as a resident of a metropolis. Similar conversations have been heard for decades, but they are still there. We can attribute everything to the inertia of settlement systems, saying that simply not everyone who has access to remote work has realized the advantage of their situation and that is the only reason they are crowding into megacities, instead of going to live in the so-called Vologda region.

In fact, there are other reasons. Firstly, it is the availability and variety of goods and services. If you make a lot of (and not necessarily a lot of) money, you should have a place to spend it. And not just one, but many different places. Only a high concentration of population makes it possible to create not rural grocery stores with bread, salt and matches, but full-fledged trading formats and, most importantly, the infrastructure that serves them. Secondly, despite telephones and Skypes, an educated person should be able to maintain personal connections with his colleagues, attend professional forums and congresses, and travel around the world with minimal travel costs. To quote the American economist Edward Glaser, who wrote in his book “Triumph of the City” about Silicon Valley and Bangalore, the world’s key centers of the IT industry: “while companies in this industry could work remotely, they have become the most striking examples of the benefits of geographic concentration. Engineers and inventors who could easily communicate electronically are paying for some of the most expensive real estate in America so they can meet each other in person.”

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  • February 20th, 2018 , 01:25 pm