"The devil's excrement"
Turns out that having a lot of oil can be a long-term curse. Reminds of Spain and all that New World silver.
And the best answer for resource-blessed countries turns out to be similar to those for blessed families--save some on that wealth!
This is not a problem of oil, this is a problem of autocratic governments.
We have no, that I am aware of, counter example.
What if instead of socializing the oil resources, the governments instead privatized them by issuing stock to each of it's citizens allowing the citizens a claim on the resource?
The governments could have gone further by creating exploration and drilling concerns to bid on the extraction of the oil, again issuing stock to each of it's citizens in each of the drilling concerns.
Stand back and watch the fun begin.
The only entities I can think of that might have taken this approach are the resource poor areas of Hong Kong and Singapore.
To think that Alaska, with it's socialized oil policy, is somewhat better just because the money still goes to the citizens is foolish. Once the politicians figure out how to have more control over those disbursements, they will, and the corruption will escalate dramatically.
Posted by: Mike | October 29, 2011 at 07:22 AM