I want to draw the readers’ attention to the following point. In all discussions about our current political crisis, the “economic component” keeps coming up. It necessarily includes a certain sum of money that the government desperately needs right now — blood from a stone, otherwise… and then come the variations. Yanukovych’s flip-flopping and everything that follows are explained by this need for money.
This need is perceived as something completely objective, existing regardless of the state and any particular government. If anyone does offer an opinion on the matter, it is only along the lines of “our people wouldn’t have let it come to this” or “our people would have handled such a task better.”
In reality, however, there is no “objectivity” here. First of all, we are talking about state expenditures — that is, in the final analysis, about our own expenses on what the state considers its needs. However the financing is carried out — through domestic and foreign loans, taxes, or inflation — all of this is our money and only our money.
Secondly, if we begin to analyze where the state spends our money, we will find nothing there that could not exist without its involvement. For example, the “social welfare” that is sacrosanct for Ukrainians was not actually invented by the state. It was, rather, appropriated by it. Neither Bismarck at the end of the nineteenth century nor Lloyd George at the beginning of the twentieth ever concealed that the state social insurance they “introduced” in their countries was necessary to them for purely political purposes. The essence of that “introduction” consisted, in fact, in the nationalization and displacement from the market of existing civil society structures. And once those politicians had resolved their immediate political tasks, state social insurance did not disappear — because it had become a convenient form of political control, ensuring the receipt of votes in elections from the recipients of state “assistance.”
That is, instead of asking “where would I get money if I were in Yanukovych’s place,” we should first inquire why it is needed. And the obvious solution to the problem is not to search for somewhere to borrow even more money — the repayment of which, I will repeat, will be made by us — but to reduce state expenditures. If you lack twenty billion, cut your expenditures by twenty billion. Here is the answer from representatives of civil society. Sell! Sell your “free” medicine and “free” education, for which we pay both in taxes and in various forms of bribes (and along with the sale, the corresponding ministries will disappear). Reduce your bureaucracy. Transfer the pension fund into the budget. Return pensioners to their families in exchange for tax exemptions — these are the obvious prescriptions. And implementing all of this is not simply, but very simply, possible; all the difficulties here are only technical.
In order to do something about the state, the bureaucracy, and all the misfortunes they bring, we must, to begin with, stop thinking like them, stop putting ourselves in their place and perceiving their interests as our own. In most cases, our interests not only do not coincide but are directly opposed. Therefore, when you hear that the state lacks your money for fulfilling certain functions, the answer must be simple and clear — sell!