[speedy]

I think every glass is half-empty for this guy. Some of what he says is self-evidently valid, such as government expansion or GDP stats (although I assume any logical person already understands this.) However, he is highly selective in his fact selection. One that particularly struck me was the bit about the standard of living in Russia being higher under Communist Brezhnev than under "Capitalist" Yeltsin. He conveniently leaves out the fact that just between 2000 and October 2003, per capita GDP in Russia has gone up over 72 percent, so that in fact it is now higher than it has ever been. I work with people who invest their own money in Russian projects and this issue just came up yesterday. I'm not even so sure that we are more highly regulated than we were 30 years ago. Some areas, like environment, yes. Others, like transportation, telecommunications, media, less so. There have always been thousands of annoying regulations on the books. Only their natures change. Thirty years ago (or not much more, anyway) there were still miscegenation laws in some states.

[AreaMan]

He conveniently leaves out the fact that just between 2000 and October 2003, per capita GDP in Russia has gone up over 72 percent, so that in fact it is now higher than it has ever been. I don't need to defend this guy but considering he wrote this in January of 2002, he probably went with the numbers available to him at the time which were probably 2000 or mid 2001 numbers. It's just a thought.

[Tauzero]

"I'm not even so sure that we are more highly regulated than we were 30 years ago. "

You can relieve your doubt by checking the length of the federal register.