How Bad Off Is Oil-Rich Venezuela? It’s Buying U.S. Oil

Re:How Bad Off Is Oil-Rich Venezuela? It’s Buying U.S. Oil by rayiner on Tuesday September 20, 2016 @03:42PM (#12542657)

That's probably reading too much into it. The #1 problem is the resource curse, which happens also in capitalist economies that are singularly dependent on resource extraction. Imagine West Virginia without federal subsidy amounting to 25% of its GSP. The second problem is nationalizing companies. The government sucks at operations--that's been proven time and time again.

But Venezuela's example really tells us nothing about market-oriented welfare states, like the US and much of the EU.

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Re:How Bad Off Is Oil-Rich Venezuela? It’s Buying U.S. Oil by SilasX on Tuesday September 20, 2016 @03:53PM (#12542763)

Wait, what? There are numerous countries with the resource curse; the typical result is, "wow, they're not growing as fast as they could"; it's not "so devastated that people have to hunt for rats in the street".

Even Saudi Arabia -- which does redistribute oil wealth like Venezuela and is far from the enlightened Norweigian policy -- is smart enough not to draw down the seed corn.

And are you seriously claiming the only thing stopping West Virginia from this kind of downward spiral, is free highways from Uncle Sam?

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Re:How Bad Off Is Oil-Rich Venezuela? It’s Buying U.S. Oil by alphydan on Tuesday September 20, 2016 @04:29PM (#12543088)

> The second problem is nationalizing companies. The government sucks at operations--that's been proven time and time again.

You mean like Saudi Aramco? That little company with $380bn of revenue (about 4 times larger than google but with the same number of employees?). /s

edit: meant to reply to parent

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