With all the money going into the Ukraine war and other ventures since Putin came to power, I imagine there’s a lot of stuff he could’ve done to make the world a better place and Russia a formidable world power.

  • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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    7 days ago

    The Netherlands is also wealthy because of their natural gas.

    So it is definitely possible to not be a dictatorship, and a good Putin would make it so.

    • JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      The Netherlands is absolutely not wealthy because of its natural gas. The Netherlands is a manufacturing center, a farming powerhouse (it’s literally the world’s number 2 food exporter). It was Europe’s original trading empire. Today it contains the closest thing Europe has to Silicon Valley, with world-class universities and the super-high-tech ASML. It’s been a wealthy country for centuries because it has invested in its people. The natural gas is an anecdote.