[programmertote]

As someone who lived 22 years under a regime that was under US sanction, I disagree.

The normal day folks like us bear the biggest (by a large margin) brunt of the sanctions whereas the rich and ruling class go about their day merrily. Sure they'll encounter some inconvenience like not being able to travel to certain countries or being able to expand their businesses as much as they wish to, but they live in secluded districts with 24-hour electricity while us plebes get 12 hour electricity every day (This is just to mention the least annoying effect of artificial scarcity created by sanctions; the government couldn't get parts nor get training on technical know-how to fix/upgrade the hydro generators because of the sanctions).

A lot of people starves and the education system suffer, which sets the entire generation backward by at least 3 decades (while the rich and ruling class send their kids to international schools and then at institutions in nearby neighboring countries; some even went as far as faking their children's identities and sent them to places like Australia, Canada and even US to study).

Sanctions aren't that effective and they only hurt (and kill) the people at the bottom of the society.

[threatofrain]

Without trade policy you have only words or war. For any stress you place on a country it's always going to be the poorest who suffer, even if it's a natural disaster or pandemic.

[true_religion]

Sanction the rich. If the rich and middle class loose out on luxuries that they see other countries enjoying, a regime change will quickly follow.

Having the mot bags of rice, or the largest cattle herd only makes one feel rich if they don’t know about the existence of other luxuries. Sooner or later, someone will think I’d we simply off the king, we could have power AND an end to sanctions.

[programmertote]

Believe it or not, the US imposed sanctions targeting specifically to the rich. But the sad reality is that a lot of poor people are dependent on the rich to make their day to day living (food). So sanctions eventually affected poor people even if they are designed for the rich. For example, make it difficult for the rich to buy cars in the country by imposing sanctions? Too bad, the rich also buy cars to run their tax companies etc. and so the sanction has to be applied to those class of cars as well. Then what happens is the car prices are too expensive across the board and people have to import second-hand cars which costs more for maintenance and are MPG inefficient. Since the car prices are too high, there's no insurance to be had and once you get into an accident as a bus driver, your life can be ruined (meaning, you'll lose your job and career regardless of whether you are at fault or not). I have not even started about gas prices (because of the sanctions, the gas prices are much higher than they should be and people have to queue up in long lines to get their weekly quota--not to mention it creates black markets and dangerous consequences like occasional fires--thereby wasting productivity of everyone involved. I'm not giving you very good examples here, but one will understand how sanctions impact poor people the most only if one has lived in a country under sanction.

The quickest and most effective way to transform an authoritarian country for the better is to let the rich, the poor and the middle class have a taste of what quality living (to some extent, the capitalism) is like. Then their children will get proper education and things will automatically change for the better in a generation at most. I have seen that with the children of the rich and military/ruling class people in my home country; these younger generations are the ones who, using their parents' accumulated enormous wealth and influence, to make changes (some bad, some pretty decent) to copy what they've tasted in other, more developed countries.