3 ms·

The "should" here is more normative than descriptive. That said, the consensus is actually the opposite - if the government controls large stocks of natural re

The "should" here is more normative than descriptive. That said, the consensus is actually the opposite - if the government controls large stocks of natural resources, they tend to focus on resource extraction rather than developing their economy or civil society. If you can get foreign engineers to run your mines / oil wells / etc (and you definitely can) you don't even need schools for indigenous engineers to keep things running. This is the "resources curse". OTOH when you have a pre-existing, well-functioning government & society that happens upon a natural resource windfall, like Norway or North Dakota, it's pure gravy.

throwaway729 10y ago
The US and much of Europe are extremely resource rich. Like, ridiculously so. The problems only seem to happen when the entire economy is organized around exporting extracted natural resources. And a lot of those problems are as economic as they are political. Local economies dominated by a single sector tend to see smaller versions of the same problems, regardless of the sector.
- pjc50 10y ago
  Europe was resource rich, leading to the industrial revolution, but many of those resources are comparatively depleted now. Partly why steel mills are closing across Europe: they were built to exploit local resources which are no longer there.
  - snrplfth 10y ago
    No, this is mistaken. The large steel mills are closing across Europe because steel recycling has gotten much better - the old mills closing are generally blast furnaces, which are used for making new steel out of ore - while the mills that are now more common are arc furnances, used for recycling scrap steel, which is a more advanced process than it once was. And blast furnaces tend to be very polluting, which is a major reason why wealthy countries prefer not to have them and simply buy new steel from elsewhere.

throwaway729 10y ago

The US and much of Europe are extremely resource rich. Like, ridiculously so. The problems only seem to happen when the entire economy is organized around exporting extracted natural resources. And a lot of those problems are as economic as they are political. Local economies dominated by a single sector tend to see smaller versions of the same problems, regardless of the sector.

pjc50 10y ago
Europe was resource rich, leading to the industrial revolution, but many of those resources are comparatively depleted now. Partly why steel mills are closing across Europe: they were built to exploit local resources which are no longer there.
- snrplfth 10y ago
  No, this is mistaken. The large steel mills are closing across Europe because steel recycling has gotten much better - the old mills closing are generally blast furnaces, which are used for making new steel out of ore - while the mills that are now more common are arc furnances, used for recycling scrap steel, which is a more advanced process than it once was. And blast furnaces tend to be very polluting, which is a major reason why wealthy countries prefer not to have them and simply buy new steel from elsewhere.