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I find this very easy to believe and it is the story of the poor major oil producing countries. In Nigeria, 25% of the national budget is dedicated to the perso
by gmt2027 15y ago
I find this very easy to believe and it is the story of the poor major oil producing countries. In Nigeria, 25% of the national budget is dedicated to the personal expenses of the lawmakers by law. The rest makes its way into a very corrupt system that the multinational oil corporations are complicit in building after infiltrating the government and civil service at all levels [wikileaks]. They easily avoid accountability for persistent decade-long oil spills that exceed the Gulf of Mexico incident each year. In the long term, this 'oil wealth' is toxic to the society, infrastructure and environment of these countries.
The demand for oil is in every sense an economic addiction and the governments of the industrialised world will suspend all principle to keep the pipelines flowing. They empower ruthless sociopaths with billions of dollars and feign outrage when these despots hold their people hostage and slaughter thousands to maintain their hold on power. Why are the world's most dangerous men invariably from major oil producing countries?
I think the capitalist ideal of money as the only measure of success is a very irresponsible way to run a planet. In the past at least, the system seemed to work in favour of a few countries that were first at the controls. Now that there is just so much momentum that this ship has started to fly itself, I find it amusing to watch the US and Europe scrambling to come to grips with just a small part of the helplessness of the other 5 billion.
- rrrazdan 15y ago" Why are the world's most dangerous men invariably from major oil producing countries?" Natural resources have a way of corrupting the society. I even did a project on the correlation between corruption and natural resources as a part of GDP. Here's a link , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse
- lobo_tuerto 15y agoCould this be analogous to the "Curse of the gifted" but on a geopolitical scale?
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- gmt2027 15y agoGood article. It is rather depressing to accept the reality that these countries will only continue to deteriorate for the foreseeable future.
- david927 15y agoNatural resources have a way of corrupting the society. Natural resources have a way of bringing corrupt people to take those resources from you.
- johngalt 15y agoCanada produces more oil than Venezuela. Not a country I would characterize for it's ruthless sociopaths and the slaughter of thousands. Whenever you have something of value bad people will try to take it with force. The capitalist ideal of money is that markets allocate resources better than force. Saying that capitalism creates brutal dictatorships, is like saying banks generate robberies.
- gmt2027 15y ago"Catch them young" Canada was a highly developed economy before the era of big oil. It has the third largest proven oil reserves after Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. Despite high production, primary industries constitute less than 6.2% of GDP. Contrast this with embryonic economies that were just emerging from colonial control, where a few million dollars was disproportionately above average income and you could buy yourself a government by creating a ruling oligarchy. "We only negotiate with terrorists when they're selling oil." The capitalist deception is that money bought weapons for the ruling class to do the dirty work of taking these resources by force when necessary. Doing big business with a thug empowers him; when he's several orders of magnitude wealthier than everyone in his community, you get a polarized society of highly successful armed gangs and oppressed people. When he's also a religious extremist you get the Taliban. Can a free market exist without a free society?