“Do you know how much money I have spent, what I have drunk and what I have eaten?” This is the invariable talk by the majority of Armenians of my age and older. When you go into details to know what they were busy with for having such a luxurious life, it turns out, they were “stealing and filching.”
“Well, the Communists were also stealing, but they were allowing us to steal too. While, these … these are avid”. In other words, the problem is for everyone to be able to steal as much as they do. Earlier, when the property was “popular”, the worker was stealing, conditionally speaking, a stick of sausage, while the director – 10. There were plenty of sausages, countless, and no one was counting. This 11 sausage was sold “on the left” and everyone was happy. Now, when the relations are allegedly marketing, the owner does not let anyone steal and take away a sausage from the production workshop, he who does such a thing, the “bodyguard” will give a hard time to him. Only the owner steals evading to pay the taxes and the customs duties, cutting off the bread of the people who live by these budget revenues and paying various bribes to big and small officials. There is no motivation for the business development, everything is already wonderful for this owner, the workers receive a modest salary and dream about the time when they or their fathers were able to steal something from the production. Thus, only the owner is contented, the rest are discontented.
True, now, there are “classic Soviet” offices in Armenia, where everyone is contented because everyone has the chance to steal. These are the offices of the “electricity” and “gas” people. The whole staff, from the top to the inspector, are involved in stealing. As it is said, they enter into a “criminal agreement” with a large number of, let’s say, electricity consumers and “write down” a small number for an appropriate “compensation” in return. Although I must say that according to the highly informed people, it makes the 10 percent of the stealing. In other words, if, let’s say, the electricity network has stolen 100 million dollars from us last year, then the stealing in this way amounts to 10 million dollars. Yet, it is not a small sum. The scheme of the stealing of the remaining 90 million is more impressive, but it is a subject for another time.
The main problem is that our society is concerned not to eliminate the stealing, but stealing “justly” so that everyone is given the opportunity to steal. The problem is not only in the mistake of the “methodology”, but merely “technical,” there is not much to steal in our country and it has been exhausted over 25 years. It is necessary to think about creating new wealth.
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Aram ABRAHAMYAN
