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Alaska is a petrol state, but uses its oil wealth in more conservative ways
- jrapdx3 12y agoVery interesting to observe that Alaska is politically conservative, yet shows "liberal" values in important ways. I visited parts of the state again this summer, and impressed with it's the breadth of its multicultural history and the extent it's celebrated and preserved. There is enormous environmental awareness and effort made to take care of the state's natural bounty is notable. I always much to learn about things and places I've never seen or known about first hand. To the extent "conserve" is the root of "conservative" that must be regarded as indeed a positive attribute.
- jandrewrogers 12y agoThis is not that surprising. In terms of the well-known regional cultural identities in the US, Alaska is a mix of Cascadian culture (i.e. the Portland/Seattle/Vancouver arc) and Sagebrush culture (i.e. the intermountain West). The environmental awareness comes from the Cascadian culture. The Sagebrush culture comes with the political view that how a person chooses to live their life is none of the government's business, which has socially liberal political effects. The multiculturalism comes from both. Sagebrush regions are politically confusing to people from other parts of the US. The background culture tend to be socially conservative, and ironically also among the least religious regions of the US, but in Sagebrush culture there is a strong distaste for dictating how your neighbor lives their life. It is politically libertarian, which has socially liberal effects, even though the people tend a bit more conservative in their personal lives. This leads to the famous legal minimalism of the Sagebrush parts of the US, where laws common in other States do not even exist for many things and the laws that do exist tend to be atypically permissive. Very "live and let live".
- fleitz 12y agoThe words conservative and liberal in American politics are more of a collection of platform policies than an ideology.
- to3m 12y agoYet more TYPICAL US REVISIONISM. Once again they DENY the role that the UK has played in international history - this time OMITTING it, NEEDLESSLY, from the list of profligate petrostates.
- saryant 12y ago> Yet more TYPICAL US REVISIONISM. Once again they DENY the role that the UK has played in international history - this time OMITTING it, NEEDLESSLY, from the list of profligate petrostates. Are you mad that Slate didn't mention the UK, or mad that they didn't call them profligate?
- to3m 12y agoBoth, of course. People always assume it's developing/Middle Eastern/BRICS-style states that have the monopoly on pissing away their oil bounty, by taking the revenues and spending them rather than investing them - but it's not so, damnit! (As I understand it, since the UK was never part of OPEC, nor restricted by any self-imposed quota a la pre-peak USA, private companies were allowed to produce as much oil as they could. This meant working through the available resources as quickly as possible, with the resulting excess holding down the prices they were sold at. (The UK - and Norway - were at one point major oil producers.) All in all, not very strategic - though the UK always seemed to do very poorly as a command economy, so, even in retrospect, probably not the wrong thing.)
- saryant 12y agoActually, the UK half-heartedly considered joining OPEC at one point.
- justincormack 12y agoI don't think that the UK producing excess oil was a significant factor in keeping the oil price down; peak production was in 1985, when prices were falling due to excess production (and large falls in demand) but Russia was a far bigger producer. The money was not invested it is true, but not producing it at that point (given the large investments) would probably not have been optimal either.
- Fjolsvith 12y agoDo not ever get in trouble in Alaska - they have very long sentences on par with Federal sentences. With all that oil revenue, they can afford to lock people up for long times. I know this from personal experience!