Friday, March 17, 2017

Here's A Thought...

...On what we might want to consider doing to punish Russia for all of the outright offensive actions it has been doing subversive wise to social media, and electoral processes all over the world.

Why don't we get with all of our NATO partners, as well as our biggest trading partners elsewhere, and hammer out an agreement to put tariffs on as many Russian products as possible (in addition to what's already been done). We then all agree to use that money (including the money from sanctions already in place, if possible) to aid resettlement of refugees around the world.

My favorite approach, of course, would be the program to create new living spaces as floating cities, with hydrogen production as a anchor industry to provide export capabilities for whomever ends up living in the provided cities. I mean seriously. Can you think of a better win win for the world, other than Russia of course?

And since the terrible Mr. T. has been so big on wanting to start slapping tariffs of folks, why not start with the guys who are probably the world's biggest provocateurs right now. I mean he has, if only grudgingly, admitted that they were screwing with our elections. How could he not get behind an action like this; even putting the money originally meant for building a wall in as well.

Just consider it. Why come to a place where you might not be welcome now when you could go to a new city, or at least to the place where the tariff participants agree the new city production facilities would be located, so as to help in the creation of your own resettlement.

And I would further propose that one of the metrics we use in seeing how well the new sanctions were having would be the price of a Russian bribe.

As you can see below in the linked article, bribe prices are climbing. I would like to think that it is because the usual means of Russian big shots to get money, siphoning money off of major industries like oil production, has been hurting the poor dears considerably of late. Especially now that the price of oil is under threat of falling again (which isn't going to be helped if we start consuming more than in the past, which is a big part in why we have recent production surpluses). Just think about how much a bribe might go up if everything else the Russians export has a tariff on it? And just as important, what better way to make clear to the Russian people just how unique their economy has become now that Putin has been in charge for so long. Perhaps the bribe metric could become the de facto Russian misery index. You never know without trying after all.

The bottom line here is this. If the Russians want to play the "make the rest of the world afraid of outsiders" game then let's put constructive consequences to the behavior. Consequences that will help the people the Russians are making pawns of. If that isn't just come-upance than I don't know what else could be.