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>When resources dominate an economy like in Venezuela or Nigeria or Iraq or Russia then the spoils get contested and that fighting inevitably leads to unstable

>When resources dominate an economy like in Venezuela or Nigeria or Iraq or Russia then the spoils get contested and that fighting inevitably leads to unstable governments, authoritarianism, corruption, economic stagnation, etc. etc. Oh please. Last I checked the midwest and Austrialia were doing just fine. There are tons of commodity exporters that don't fit this pattern.

pydry 4y ago
Are you serious? You picked two places with badly dysfunctional politics. Australia started out pretty good and has a long way to fall, but it is getting worse all the time - and most of its dysfunction is thanks to lobbying from resource extractors like Gina Rinehart. Even so they have actual functioning non-resource economies unlike Nigeria and Venezuela and resource extraction can not dominate politics nearly as much.
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago
  >Are you serious? You picked two places with badly dysfunctional politics. Are you serious? You're comparing Australia to Nigeria? Hell, I almost included Russia(!!) in my comment because even they have quite functional and non-corrupt government relative to the area of the spectrum we're talking about here. Just because some nation doesn't turn the screws on industries you don't like as hard as you want them to doesn't make them dysfunctional and corrupt.
  - pydry 4y ago
    > You're comparing Australia to Nigeria? Yes, because Australia has been developing a resource heavy economy with dysfunctional politics to match while Nigeria's has been completely resource dominated for a long time and been a basket case for most of its history because of it. >Hell, I almost included Russia(!!) in my comment because even they have quite functional and non-corrupt government A country more resource dominated than Australia and less resource dominated than Nigeria is more politically dysfunctional than Australia and less dysfunctional than Nigeria? Shocking (!!). It's weird that I even have to utter this sentence but... Russia is not non-corrupt, by the way.
    - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
      >It's weird that I even have to utter this sentence but... Russia is not non-corrupt, by the way. Russia is corrupt. They aren't "owned by shell". They don't have organized crime siphoning off their pipelines. The gangsters they do have are working with the state at a high level and with the state's permission, not competing with it, paying off locals, etc. That's a whole different categorical level of corrupt than Nigeria and some other select parts of sub-saharan Africa. Trying to play corruption off like a binary is dishonest, screw off with that. >Yes, because Australia has been developing a resource heavy economy with dysfunctional politics to match while Nigeria's has been completely resource dominated for a long time and been a basket case for most of its history because of it. Australia is not of noteworthy levels of dysfunction compared to the rest of the western world. Hell, they're doing pretty good as far as former penal colonies go. They make political concessions for their breadwinner industries like everyone else does. You're just salty that mining is one of their key breadwinner industries. Norway is another resource extraction nation and to portray them as "dysfunctional" would definitely be wrongthink 'round these parts. Canada is doing pretty good too.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
- from 4y ago
  Watch this video: https://youtu.be/watch?v=IQtB4KSzSyY https://youtu.be/watch?v=IQtB4KSzSyY This is not about fuel theft but a related crime called fuel smuggling where they buy subsidized gasoline and then illegally export it to neighboring countries (the government bans this to prevent exactly this kind of arbitrage). If you watch the video they actually follow along with a fuel smuggler, pay bribes (only $1-2 each) at several checkpoints, and just proceed as usual. The checkpoints exist just to facilitate bribe collection! Later in the video they mention that if you go frequently enough you can get some kind of pass or placard on your car so that you only have to pay once per month. This kind of bribery at every level of government does not exist in any first world country. Yes, politicians in most first world countries take campaign contributions from big companies but that is way different than quid pro quo bribery schemes where padded contracts are literally doled out based on who gives a bigger bribe. If you offered food inspectors in America or Australia $500 to ignore violations some might say OK but most would say fuck off. I'm not saying this kind of thing is inherent to Nigeria either -- rampant bribery existed in every major city in America in the 1800 and early 1900s but basically went away due to a persistent effort by good-government reformers, Protestants, and aggressive prosecutors. I don't know about Australia specifically but it seems most countries that are not corrupt today have taken a similar path.
  - pydry 4y ago
    >This kind of bribery at every level of government does not exist in any first world country. I'm acutely aware of what corruption is like there, thanks. I got shaken down by corrupt cops just outside of Ikeja three weeks ago. Unlike Nigeria, first world countries have functioning economies that don't pale into insignificance compared to whatever resource extraction they do. This is the key difference you missed. Where resource wealth doesn't overwhelm everything else, the effect of the curse is lower. Nonetheless, resources are still a curse for the first world even when they dont overwhelm their entire economy. For homework I suggest you contrast Oklahoma and Texas politics to those of New York and Washington State.
    - from 4y ago
      > Nonetheless, resources are still a curse for the first world even when they dont overwhelm their entire economy. For homework I suggest you contrast Oklahoma and Texas politics to those of New York and Washington State. New York had the largest political machine and patronage system in the country for several decades (Tammany). Eric Adams' term has had scandal after scandal (https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/02/eric-adams-scandals.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/02/eric-adams-scandals...., https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/05/nyregion/eric-adams-petrosyants-nyc-restaurant.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/05/nyregion/eric-adams-petro...). Illinois has plenty of corrupt politics despite having very few natural resources (4 of the past 7 governors there have gone to jail): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago-style_politics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago-style_politics, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Madigan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Madigan. I don't know the history of Oklahoma or Texas very well but I would say that the bigger issue is that the ability to authorize tens of millions of dollars of spending is placed in the hands of a few unaccountable poorly paid individuals. Natural resources obviously go hand in hand with this because they provide a giant pile of money for people to divert.

pydry 4y ago

Are you serious? You picked two places with badly dysfunctional politics. Australia started out pretty good and has a long way to fall, but it is getting worse all the time - and most of its dysfunction is thanks to lobbying from resource extractors like Gina Rinehart. Even so they have actual functioning non-resource economies unlike Nigeria and Venezuela and resource extraction can not dominate politics nearly as much.

dsfyu404ed 4y ago
>Are you serious? You picked two places with badly dysfunctional politics. Are you serious? You're comparing Australia to Nigeria? Hell, I almost included Russia(!!) in my comment because even they have quite functional and non-corrupt government relative to the area of the spectrum we're talking about here. Just because some nation doesn't turn the screws on industries you don't like as hard as you want them to doesn't make them dysfunctional and corrupt.
- pydry 4y ago
  > You're comparing Australia to Nigeria? Yes, because Australia has been developing a resource heavy economy with dysfunctional politics to match while Nigeria's has been completely resource dominated for a long time and been a basket case for most of its history because of it. >Hell, I almost included Russia(!!) in my comment because even they have quite functional and non-corrupt government A country more resource dominated than Australia and less resource dominated than Nigeria is more politically dysfunctional than Australia and less dysfunctional than Nigeria? Shocking (!!). It's weird that I even have to utter this sentence but... Russia is not non-corrupt, by the way.
  - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
    >It's weird that I even have to utter this sentence but... Russia is not non-corrupt, by the way. Russia is corrupt. They aren't "owned by shell". They don't have organized crime siphoning off their pipelines. The gangsters they do have are working with the state at a high level and with the state's permission, not competing with it, paying off locals, etc. That's a whole different categorical level of corrupt than Nigeria and some other select parts of sub-saharan Africa. Trying to play corruption off like a binary is dishonest, screw off with that. >Yes, because Australia has been developing a resource heavy economy with dysfunctional politics to match while Nigeria's has been completely resource dominated for a long time and been a basket case for most of its history because of it. Australia is not of noteworthy levels of dysfunction compared to the rest of the western world. Hell, they're doing pretty good as far as former penal colonies go. They make political concessions for their breadwinner industries like everyone else does. You're just salty that mining is one of their key breadwinner industries. Norway is another resource extraction nation and to portray them as "dysfunctional" would definitely be wrongthink 'round these parts. Canada is doing pretty good too.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
from 4y ago
Watch this video: https://youtu.be/watch?v=IQtB4KSzSyY https://youtu.be/watch?v=IQtB4KSzSyY This is not about fuel theft but a related crime called fuel smuggling where they buy subsidized gasoline and then illegally export it to neighboring countries (the government bans this to prevent exactly this kind of arbitrage). If you watch the video they actually follow along with a fuel smuggler, pay bribes (only $1-2 each) at several checkpoints, and just proceed as usual. The checkpoints exist just to facilitate bribe collection! Later in the video they mention that if you go frequently enough you can get some kind of pass or placard on your car so that you only have to pay once per month. This kind of bribery at every level of government does not exist in any first world country. Yes, politicians in most first world countries take campaign contributions from big companies but that is way different than quid pro quo bribery schemes where padded contracts are literally doled out based on who gives a bigger bribe. If you offered food inspectors in America or Australia $500 to ignore violations some might say OK but most would say fuck off. I'm not saying this kind of thing is inherent to Nigeria either -- rampant bribery existed in every major city in America in the 1800 and early 1900s but basically went away due to a persistent effort by good-government reformers, Protestants, and aggressive prosecutors. I don't know about Australia specifically but it seems most countries that are not corrupt today have taken a similar path.
- pydry 4y ago
  >This kind of bribery at every level of government does not exist in any first world country. I'm acutely aware of what corruption is like there, thanks. I got shaken down by corrupt cops just outside of Ikeja three weeks ago. Unlike Nigeria, first world countries have functioning economies that don't pale into insignificance compared to whatever resource extraction they do. This is the key difference you missed. Where resource wealth doesn't overwhelm everything else, the effect of the curse is lower. Nonetheless, resources are still a curse for the first world even when they dont overwhelm their entire economy. For homework I suggest you contrast Oklahoma and Texas politics to those of New York and Washington State.
  - from 4y ago
    > Nonetheless, resources are still a curse for the first world even when they dont overwhelm their entire economy. For homework I suggest you contrast Oklahoma and Texas politics to those of New York and Washington State. New York had the largest political machine and patronage system in the country for several decades (Tammany). Eric Adams' term has had scandal after scandal (https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/02/eric-adams-scandals.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/02/eric-adams-scandals...., https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/05/nyregion/eric-adams-petrosyants-nyc-restaurant.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/05/nyregion/eric-adams-petro...). Illinois has plenty of corrupt politics despite having very few natural resources (4 of the past 7 governors there have gone to jail): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago-style_politics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago-style_politics, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Madigan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Madigan. I don't know the history of Oklahoma or Texas very well but I would say that the bigger issue is that the ability to authorize tens of millions of dollars of spending is placed in the hands of a few unaccountable poorly paid individuals. Natural resources obviously go hand in hand with this because they provide a giant pile of money for people to divert.