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Page added on April 12, 2016
Cursed by oil? Academic says production often leads to misery.
What do the migration crisis, ISIS-led terrorism in Europe and Russia’s alignment with Syria’s Assad government have in common?
“All of those stories come from countries that export oil,” says Leif Wenar, author of “Blood Oil: Tyrants, Violence, and the Rules that Run the World.”
“There is something about oil which is very dangerous to the people of the country and that danger ends up spilling back onto us too.” says Wenar, a professor of law and philosophy at King’s College London.
That danger is what is called the Resource Curse, a paradox where countries rich in oil and other natural resources tend to have more oppressive regimes than those with fewer natural resources.
The problem, says Wenar, is that American consumers are perpetuating the resource curse.
“Whenever we go to the checkout, we might be financing the spread of ideologies which are hostile to our way of life,” he says.
“Oil is everywhere. So basically If it’s plastic, it’s oil. Oil might be in my waistband or in your glasses, it might be in your shoes. Everything that is transported with oil is also something that we pay for, where the money goes back to authoritarian or armed groups.”
So how do we wean ourselves from supporting the resource curse? To Wenar, we make sure we only buy oil from countries that are functioning democracies.
“The first and most important thing for us to do is to pass a clean trade act, which would just peacefully, responsibly taper off our oil imports from authoritarian countries,” he says. “We don’t need authoritarian oil any more.”
20 Comments on "Cursed by oil? Academic says production often leads to misery."
Anonymous on Tue, 12th Apr 2016 7:52 pm
america, worlds leading manufacture of bullshit, and non-sequiturs. Naturally, there is absolutely NO connection between official uS support for tyrants, for ‘school of the america’s type operations’, countless billions in aid and military training provided by the uS to regimes that give uS oil corporations a free hand. Its just a coincidence that places like Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and many others on the uS payroll are as oppressive as they are. You see they dont share ‘our’ values, whatever those are. Oh wait, maybe they DO share ‘our’ values after all.
Lets see….
-Hypocrisy
-Controlled press and opposition
-Bloated military budgets
-Elites protected by physical and legal walls.
-Income inequality.
-Shadowy elites and ‘intelligence’ agencies, accountable to no one but themselves.
-Oppressive, corrupt, trigger happy cops and soldiers.
Wtf is this turd going on about? All those uS supported regimes they’ve installed over the years, DO share a great many uS values.
LoL, authoritarian oil. This fool sounds like that jew Ezra Levant. All oil in the uS, including the shrinking supplies of homegrown uS oil, qualifies as authoritarian. The uS is hardly a ‘functioning democracy'(though it does play one on TV).
makati1 on Tue, 12th Apr 2016 8:04 pm
Anonymous, you are correct. Those places were doing fine until the Empire meddled and claimed that it should own/run everything for it’s corporate leaders. For at least the last 30 years, it has been nothing but invasion of sovereign countries and poorly planned attempts to do take over. The Empire loses every time. Typical since WW2. But that chaos is coming to America. Be patient.
makati1 on Tue, 12th Apr 2016 8:04 pm
Anonymous, you are correct. Those places were doing fine until the Empire meddled and claimed that it should own/run everything for it’s corporate leaders. For at least the last 30 years, it has been nothing but invasion of sovereign countries and poorly planned attempts to take over. The Empire loses every time. Typical since WW2. But that chaos is coming to America. Be patient.
Sissyfuss on Tue, 12th Apr 2016 9:27 pm
I’m confused. If corporations are people and Soylent Green is people, does that mean the corpratacracy is eating us alive? Yes, I believe it does. True Americans lost control of our democracy 35 yes ago and it’s never coming back.
Plantagenet on Tue, 12th Apr 2016 10:27 pm
Blaming oil for the problems in some oil-rich countries doesn’t make any sense. If oil was the problem then Norway and Scotland would be corrupt violent dictatorships instead of pleasant wealthy socialist democracies.
Cheers!
GregT on Tue, 12th Apr 2016 11:12 pm
Reading comprehension has evaded you once again eh planter.
sxm on Wed, 13th Apr 2016 1:25 am
Yes. It is not oil. Violence is normal there regardless oil or other. Oil only allows to buy bigger guns.
theedrich on Wed, 13th Apr 2016 1:54 am
“That danger is what is called the Resource Curse, a paradox where countries rich in oil and other natural resources tend to have more oppressive regimes than those with fewer natural resources.”
Of course, what Mr. Leif Wenar carefully omits to mention is that the countries “rich in oil” which he refers to are not Norway, the pre-1970 U.S., the U.K. before its own peak, or other northwestern European countries. Because that might veer too closely to the issue of race. And we wouldn’t want to touch that, now, would we?
The Sand Negroes and other non-Whites have a pronounced proclivity to engage in violence, tyranny and corruption, either as governments or as non-governmental organizations, whenever they can make big money selling to Whites. Mexican and Colombian drug cartels come to mind as an example of non-oil actors. International prostitution and people-smuggling rings are another. But as usual, we must never mention what really happens when we get involved with the lower races. Because the power wielders might not like it if the masses knew the truth. And the masses themselves might prefer not to know, because they might feel embarrassed about it if the true costs of their dolce vita were exposed. So keep up the charade until death.
dooma on Wed, 13th Apr 2016 2:51 am
Three dicks, good old whitey as never ever been involved in drug selling, slavery, genocide and countless other barbaric acts throughout history.
Do the opium wars the British conducted ring a bell in your hollow head?
To blame all the current ills of the world on people of different races to your own is about as hypocritical as you can get.
I don’t remember (in history) a single native African saying “yeah sure, I will come to your country as a slave”
FOR THE LAST TIME PISS OFF BACK TO STORMFRONT!
JuanP on Wed, 13th Apr 2016 7:34 am
American oil production falls by 90,000 bpd in March! https://www.rt.com/business/339416-us-oil-production-prices/
Americans better get ready for their country’s continuous decline ASAP! This sucker is going down! All the rest of us need to prepare to deal with the Americans as they lash out in anger and frustration like Davy does here every day. The USA is the most abusive, violent, and agressive contry in human history and they are trying to destroy the whole world as they collapse.these suckers won’t go down alone, they want to take all the rest of us down with them. Fuck the USA!
PracticalMaina on Wed, 13th Apr 2016 7:39 am
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/04/13/coal-titan-peabody-energy-files-for-bankruptcy/
This may change things. Right as natgas production is starting to go down.
joe on Wed, 13th Apr 2016 8:16 am
I know some Scots, many are vile dictators. Ever try getting a Scot to spend money?
As for Norway, THEY ARE VIKINGS!
PracticalMaina on Wed, 13th Apr 2016 9:11 am
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/13/business/acreage-for-genetically-modified-crops-declined-in-2015.html?&moduleDetail=section-news-3&action=click&contentCollection=Business%20Day®ion=Footer&module=MoreInSection&version=WhatsNext&contentID=WhatsNext&pgtype=article
This would explain why they are getting into using microbes. Turns out we cannot force evolution to be as competitive as mother natures symbiotic relationships.
Azurean on Wed, 13th Apr 2016 10:34 am
First thing that’s going to blow up in the United States is a monetary implosion that resulted from the American worker being overpaid relative to their productivity, followed by excessive, sustained debt levels over a long period of time coming home to roost; along with the necessary but huge economic dead weight of the defense sector. We may not even need to police immigration as Mexico is fully leveraging its peace dividend, along with its licit and illicit money chains flowing southward out of the United States. This combined with growing availability of work and a much lower cost of living down there means that the draw of the United States will rapidly decline with Mexicans.
Second, is the big-huge implosion that results in massive wealth destruction for everything that isn’t set in steel, concrete and brick due to massive breakdown in economies due to energy constraints.
If a nuclear war doesn’t happen and wipe us out, we will have some interesting times ahead of us.
Plantagenet on Wed, 13th Apr 2016 11:18 am
The Norwegians are no longer Vikings. Today they are pleasant middle class folks enjoying the benefits of a egalitarian socialist economy paid for mostly with state oil revenues.
If there is an oil curse, then it doesn’t affect Norway or several other wealthy oil-rich democratic countries. It seems to mainly affect corrupt countries ruled by corrupt dictators as in Venezuela or Nigeria—-and these countries would be even worse hellholes if they didn’t have the oil wealth. So maybe there isn’t an oil curse at all—consider that amazing idea!
Cheers!
Apneaman on Wed, 13th Apr 2016 2:45 pm
Planty you are amazingly retarded. The curse has worked it’s corrupting magic in Alberta, N Dakota, Texas, Alaska, etc. It’s just worse in the countries with brown people – they seem to get plenty of outside help making it so.
Listen to the man.
https://youtu.be/fgAVpPNusTs
Anonymous on Wed, 13th Apr 2016 3:12 pm
The so-called ‘resource curse’ is a something of a myth. There is no iron law, or any law period, that says oil production in of itself, automatically leads to tyranny. The observation that oil-rich nations (tend) to be despotic(which many are to be sure), is the result of highly selective bias’s in reporting. Or to put more bluntly, racism in many cases. The problem is, many nations are despotic tyrannyes, like the uS, Israel for examples. It hardly matters if tryannys wrap themselves in the language and outward appearance of truth, justice and freedom fries. Its actions in the real world that count.
The united states for example, is not exactly ‘oil rich’ anymore, but is an amazingly corrupt country ruled by corrupt dictators. Back when it could qualify as ‘oil rich’, it was still a corrupt country ruled by corrupt dictators. They just had better PR depts. But it would be a logical fallacy all the same to suggest that americans epic corruption is solely, or even largely the result of them (used) to having lots of oil. Did it play a part? Im sure it did, but its not even close to a full explanation.
The so-called ‘oil curse’ is a good example of the
SINGLE CAUSE FALLACY
Definition:When it is assumed that there is merely one cause of a phenomenon, while other possibly contributing causes go undetected, are ignored or are illegitimately minimized.
(also known as: complex cause, fallacy of the single cause, causal oversimplification, reduction fallacy)
Not that this describes anyone here that does that….
Dredd on Wed, 13th Apr 2016 4:59 pm
“Cursed by oil? Academic says production often leads to misery.”
Yes, every single time is often isn’t it (The Extinction of Robust Sea Ports – 4).
joe on Wed, 13th Apr 2016 6:10 pm
Seriously though guys, oil curse? Its so obvious. When answering this stupid debate ask 1 question. Did the oil nation in question exist on a western map 200 years ago. If yes, then its probobly already a nation with stability and law, if not or it was a colony, then probobly the oil nation is an oil creation and that tells you all you need to know about the ‘curse’.
theedrich on Thu, 14th Apr 2016 3:55 am
Any time big money can be made through oppression, crime and tyranny, you can be sure that the muds will opt for that curse. Only the White man has the ability to restrain the urge to return to the jungle, and then only as long as he is not overwhelmed by parasites from Third World hellholes. Given his genosuicidal religion of Christianity, it does not look like his temporary state of comparative order can much longer survive the torrential influx of sludge now destroying the highest civilization that has ever been created.