Interfax-Ukraine
According to an article of Interfax-Ukraine dated to 14th July 2014, Ihor Kolomoyskyi, a Ukrainian business magnate and the current Governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast in Eastern Ukraine, suggests to punish people who support separatism and terrorism in Ukraine by seizeing their assets and to create a special fund out of them. The stakeholders of this fund should be those who are currently fighting at the “Anti-Terroristic-Operation” (ATO), as well as relatives of killed soldiers.
The respective article does not say exactly, if the stakeholders receive a dividend, but if, it can be compared to the Alaska Permanent Fund. However, the beneficiaries would not be all citizens of Ukraine and to become a beneficiary would not be unconditional (either you need to be a member of the ATO, or to be a relative of a killed soldier).
Source in Russian:
Interfax-Ukraine [Ukrainian news agency], “Коломойский считает необходимым провести национализацию ряда активов Ахметова и Фирташа [Kolomoyskyi sees it as necessary to nationalise some assets of Akhmetov and Firtash],” Interfax-Ukraine, 14th July 2014.
What the hell, Karl? Asset seizure + stipend to victors during war even ‘might be’ some form of BIG? Are you serious?
Barb, well, it’s supposed to be just-the-facts reporting. The idea is that on the news side of BI News, we report what’s going on as neutrally as we know how and we discuss our opinions on the features side.
If you were able to understand that this is asset seizure + stipend to victors and to mark the moral problem in it, I think we communicated the facts well enough. Not every model of BIG is moral, but a BIG financed by morally questionable means is still a BIG, and people should know what’s going on with BIG.
By the way, I didn’t write this article, but I edited it, and I thought the reporter did a good job of reporting the facts. I suppose we could have done better to imply some question about the morality of the type of BIG at issue without violating our attempt at neutrality, but we did our best.
The situation in Ukraine might be difficult to understand. There are thugs with weapons oppressing people in Eastern Ukraine. From a moral point of view I think it is ok to seizing assets of supporters of the mentioned thugs and to create a fund which beneficiaries are those who try to reestablish the monopoly on legitimate use of force.
It is a proposal and of course, there are many questions (how to prove the support of the bandits for seizing assets? Who exactly should benefit from the fund and how?).
But I would like to point out, that this case can also be seen as an example like if an area was poluted with oil by a hugh company and if a fund was established for the citizens of this area, this could also be considered as a kind of BIG.