Just finished reading the article with the same name as this thread on Scheerpost, thought it was quite good. Hopefully can lead to a good conversation or 2. I'll quote the introduction below, as well as the conclusion.
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December 14, 2022
By Patrick Lawrence / Original to ScheerPost
The nice thing about being an oligarch is that you are so wealthy it doesn’t matter that you are looked upon as a predatory pariah. The nice thing about being an American oligarch, such as Jeff Bezos, is that America does not have oligarchs: It has highly successful business executives and entrepreneurs. Jeff Bezos can build Amazon into something that looks very like a monopoly, he can own The Washington Post and sign contracts with the Central Intelligence Agency, he can have a net worth of $114 billion. But he is still a highly successful businessman, not an oligarch. He is a “job-creator,” a phrase of which I have long been fond.
The new fashion among government officials, economists, think tank inhabitants, bankers, investors, multilateral bureaucrats, and the journalists who faithfully copy down what they say is to forecast what kind of place Ukraine will be once the war is over. And here’s the thing: Ukraine has oligarchs, and the postwar Ukraine these people have in mind cannot have oligarchs. Highly successful business executives and entrepreneurs with vast holdings, the same holdings from which they now profit, O.K. But they have to be executives and entrepreneurs, not oligarchs.
Nomenclature is all when it comes to postwar Ukraine, you see. Jeff Bezos and the reporters whose checks he signs understand this very well.
[snip]
The kicker at the end of this dismal piece of Washington Post propaganda leaves us precisely where Jeff Bezos would want us. It quotes a financial journalist in Kyiv named Yurii Nikolov. “I hope the businessman Akhmetov will remain with us,” he tells The Post, “and oligarch Akhmetov will not be reborn.”
It is all a question of nomenclature, nothing more.
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Full article:
Patrick Lawrence: In Ukraine, the Autumn of Oligarchs | Scheerpost
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December 14, 2022
By Patrick Lawrence / Original to ScheerPost
The nice thing about being an oligarch is that you are so wealthy it doesn’t matter that you are looked upon as a predatory pariah. The nice thing about being an American oligarch, such as Jeff Bezos, is that America does not have oligarchs: It has highly successful business executives and entrepreneurs. Jeff Bezos can build Amazon into something that looks very like a monopoly, he can own The Washington Post and sign contracts with the Central Intelligence Agency, he can have a net worth of $114 billion. But he is still a highly successful businessman, not an oligarch. He is a “job-creator,” a phrase of which I have long been fond.
The new fashion among government officials, economists, think tank inhabitants, bankers, investors, multilateral bureaucrats, and the journalists who faithfully copy down what they say is to forecast what kind of place Ukraine will be once the war is over. And here’s the thing: Ukraine has oligarchs, and the postwar Ukraine these people have in mind cannot have oligarchs. Highly successful business executives and entrepreneurs with vast holdings, the same holdings from which they now profit, O.K. But they have to be executives and entrepreneurs, not oligarchs.
Nomenclature is all when it comes to postwar Ukraine, you see. Jeff Bezos and the reporters whose checks he signs understand this very well.
[snip]
The kicker at the end of this dismal piece of Washington Post propaganda leaves us precisely where Jeff Bezos would want us. It quotes a financial journalist in Kyiv named Yurii Nikolov. “I hope the businessman Akhmetov will remain with us,” he tells The Post, “and oligarch Akhmetov will not be reborn.”
It is all a question of nomenclature, nothing more.
**
Full article:
Patrick Lawrence: In Ukraine, the Autumn of Oligarchs | Scheerpost