So likely what will happen is that China will do it and pay below market rate for the lithium.
I would not be surprised if the entire Boric fiasco is just Chinese infiltration.
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/99680a04-92a0-11de-b63b-00144feab...
Saudi Arabia on the other hand is fabulously corrupt but they were still able to take over their oil industry (Aramco) without problems and even go upmarket in petrochemicals with SABIC.
https://psmag.com/environment/iraqi-vikings-farouk-al-kasim-...
Of course Norway has strong democratic institutions Iraq didn’t, but so did the Netherlands.
Having a stable Chile as a source of resources to stack against other sources of resources may be worth the markup.
But in the real world, once you nationalize a company, it's a matter of time before it becomes a magnet for corrupt politicians.
The only world in which I would be OK with nationalization is where politician had shock collars connected to a nepotism/corruption detection AI. And where even false positives of such AI were OK.
I don't know enough about the situation to guess if their comment about China is 100% accurate or complete nonsense, but if it is the case then I'm against that and against many of the things the US has done to/in other countries over the past century. I'm not American, but even Americans are allowed to have views that don't align with how their country's political leaders have acted over the years.
Because I'm right. It's not that hard to extrapolate what people think. It's hard for the "rationalist" crowd to understand but not everyone is arguing in good faith, and humans tend to regurgitate the last opinion they heard from a person they like.
Of course, there's a small amount of time I'll be wrong, and I'm happy to apologize and have a proper discussion when that happens.
He said about 1,000,000 chileans had to perish to fulfill the revolutionary dream or something alone those lines.
The belief that Chilean government will magically transform an industry is borderline delusion. The government of Canada has spent billions just on it's payroll system that still does not work, and they're looking for 'alternatives' aka 'it failed'.
Usually it's better to provide incentives, co-investment financing, better trade regs, transparency, rule of law etc..
If as one person note they want to 'go up the value chain' - they could do that with more aggressive pricing measures such as tax on raw material export, and co-investment for refineries etc.. Those things can 'work' to the extend the government has credibility, which can only be developed over time.
Chile was building early some feedback-based information systems like what modern corporations use. They may have worked or failed, but we will never know because the US government indirectly promoted and financed a military coup that installed an actual murderer totalitarian regime.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_intervention_in_...
(Again, is does not excuse overthrowing/murdering him or the US involvement in that).
Nor do we have almost any evidence of the opposite, since the US obliterated most experiments in anything other than plunder capitalism.
I also contest that non-communist governments stay democratic for long. The US, for example, is barely a democracy in a meaningful sense, and is increasingly moving in plutocratic, fascist directions.
2. Both of those things are common practice for the US
3. The US is moving toward fascism because of fascists. The mask is off at this point, it's not even a question of whether or not there's fascism in American politics. (Honorable mention: We can thank Russia for funding and promoting fascism in the US in order to divide us, though. Russia sure does suck for democracy.)
Allende (fyi backed by the Soviets) got 30% of the vote and tried to overthrow the government through constitutional coup (Edit: not really a coup, but a de facto coup by completely ignoring the Judiciary and near super-majority in Congress against him, and by using military and other tactics) and to socialize / take control over vast parts of the economy which completely crashed the system.
And so the result was Pinochet, which is bad, but not nearly as bad as otherwise, but that's what happens as a result.
I don't suggest that what's happening in Chile is the same thing, but it obviously has echoes.
Chile of Allende may actually have had a chance to avoid that destiny had not it been for US actively destroying their economy; they were for once trying modern social and economic projects based on scientific models that might have made a difference, but that was thrown away with the dictatorship.
Democracy exists precisely to protect minorities, not to have aa 50%+1 majority mob rule.
Allende and the other Communist/Anarchists (often Soviet backed) are among the worst people in history, causing mass death and harm on a scale never seen before under the guise of their deluded egos, and it continues to this day.
Allende would have created something akin to Venezuela or Cuba, thankfully he was thwarted, unfortunately, it came at a cost.
I'll bite. What evidence do you have that Allendale was a totalitarian and "tried to tale over the whole game".
Given that we know that Pinochet ended 4 decades of democratic rule to establish a totalitarian regime that lasted two decades, seems like you would need to have pretty conclusive evidence to justify supporting the decision.
He then went on a rampage to socialize large swaths of the economy (without a mandate mind you aka no real popular support) and then crashed the economy. Limiting emigration, arbitrarily crushing strikes as he saw fit, the usual stuff.
He lost congressional support and began to rule by decree, and then began to avoid both congressional and judiciary acts.
Just a typical tin pot dictator with socialist/utopian aspirations, assured that his bullshit vision was better for the country - even if they didn't want it.
And then they ended him. It has echoes of the socialist/communist takeover in Spain, resulting in Franco.
Seems to have happened a few times in the 20th century.
Pinochet was authoritarian, not totalitarian.
This kind of split vote was actually very typical in Chile at that time. The tradition was that congress would pick whomever had the highest popular vote. While I would agree that this isn't a strong basis for a mandate, it also doesn't indicate that Allende has unusually low popular support.
> a military general supporting the notion of non-intervention in politics to tilt favour was 'mysteriously killed' paving the way for Allende's ascension
Your description of this seems inaccurate. My understanding is that General Schneider was against the military taking a stand in politics by opposing Allende. Schneider was killed resisting a kidnapping attempt (allegedly by those who opposed Allende) which galvanized public disapproval against the military trying to oppose Allende's election in the Congressional runoff.
You seem to be suggesting that the kidnapping was a false flag operation by Allende or his supporters to achieve that result? Do you have evidence to support this?
> He then went on a rampage to socialize large swaths of the economy (without a mandate mind you aka no real popular support)
The nationalization amendment was passed by the Chilean Congress. Some of the nationalization did have some popular support, at least initially.
> and then crashed the economy
It's hard to give full credit to Allende for this. The US cut off support to Chile, price of Chile's main export, copper, tanked and Chile already had pretty bad levels of inflation. It seems quite likely that Chile was headed for an economic crash without Allende, though he may well have made it worse.
> Limiting emigration, arbitrarily crushing strikes as he saw fit, the usual stuff.
Yes, he did a number of things I would not support. That doesn't mean that supporting a coup to terminate 4 decades of democratic rule was justified.
> Pinochet was authoritarian, not totalitarian.
I really struggle to see how you are justifying applying the label to one but not the other. The degree to which opposing parties were suppressed under Pinochet far exceeds the measures taken under Allende.
This kind of split vote was actually very typical in Chile at that time. The tradition was that congress would pick whomever had the highest popular vote. While I would agree that this isn't a strong basis for a mandate, it also doesn't indicate that Allende has unusually low popular support. Indeed, his was not the lowest popular vote to result in presidency.
> a military general supporting the notion of non-intervention in politics to tilt favour was 'mysteriously killed' paving the way for Allende's ascension
Your description of this seems inaccurate. My understanding is that General Schneider was against the military taking a stand in politics by opposing Allende. Schneider was killed resisting a kidnapping attempt (allegedly by those who opposed Allende) which galvanized public disapproval against the military trying to oppose Allende's election in the Congressional runoff.
You seem to be suggesting that the kidnapping was a false flag operation by Allende or his supporters to achieve that result? Do you have evidence to support this?
> He then went on a rampage to socialize large swaths of the economy (without a mandate mind you aka no real popular support)
The nationalization amendment was passed by the Chilean Congress. Some of the nationalization did have some popular support, at least initially.
> and then crashed the economy
It's hard to give full credit to Allende for this. The US cut off support to Chile, price of Chile's main export, copper, tanked and Chile already had pretty bad levels of inflation. It seems quite likely that Chile was headed for an economic crash without Allende, though he may well have made it worse.
> Limiting emigration, arbitrarily crushing strikes as he saw fit, the usual stuff.
Yes, he did a number of things I would not support. That doesn't mean that supporting a coup to terminate 4 decades of democratic rule was justified.
> Pinochet was authoritarian, not totalitarian.
I really struggle to see how you are justifying applying the label to one but not the other. The degree to which opposing parties were suppressed under Pinochet far exceeds the measures taken under Allende.
> It has echoes of the socialist/communist takeover in Spain, resulting in Franco.
By "takeover" you mean the 1936 election where the left won power?
It's similar in that it was a military coup against a democratic leftist government that resulted in decades of authoritarian military rule. There are major differences in that Spain was a pretty young democracy and the coup lead to a civil war before the authoritarian regime began.
"The degree to which opposing parties were suppressed under Pinochet far exceeds the measures taken under Allende."
That's like saying if Stalin didn't kill people directly, it'd have been 'all good'.
The 'widespread interventions' by these Communist tin pots is 'very destructive' to people's lives and they touch everyone. That is the measure of oppression, not the number of 'protesters that got arrested'.
Pinochet was about as bad as 'early Putin', and many other turds that we deal with today. It was 'acutely' bad for the socialist usurpers who imprisoned, but it wasn't a horrible state for most others, and that matters a lot.
Pinochet was a pendulum swing as a direct result of a clear and unambiguous Soviet-supported takeover, that doesn't justify much of his actions but it certainly explains it.
"By "takeover" you mean the 1936 election where the left won power?"
I mean the left in 1930's Spain were agitating murderous thugs using every means to take over the country, including rigging elections (including 1936), voter intimidation and suppression, rigging ballots, violence/murder etc. and that Franco was a reaction to that. In that story, the Communists/Anarchists are absolutely the violent instigators (and inspiration for Orwell's writings) and definitely without material popular support for their revolutionary terms (obviously some support but not the kind of supermajority you need to socialize everything). And so, the pendulum swings.
And that's not even the only analogy, there are a handful of those in the 20th century.
Pinochet wasn't a pendulum swing, he took power via a coup and refused to pass it back to the democratic process. He murdered thousands and tortured even more.
> That's like saying if Stalin didn't kill people directly, it'd have been 'all good'.
It isn't at all like that, but we've already established your weak relationship with the truth
So that makes it ok to install dictator and kill and imprison people. So much love for human rights. I guess you can validate any atrocity using this fucked up logic.
This is pretty trivial to see if you look at the relative costs compared to the economic benefits the US secures - all US adventurism is a total loss in pure economic terms. You’d never do it if it was about money.
CITATION BADLY NEEDED.
The Korean war cost something like 20-30 billion/year in today's dollars [1]. That's just the military expenditure, not counting lost income from alternative uses of manpower and material, veteran care etc.
The bill for the Vietnam war was $120 billion. [2]
Iraq: $1.1 trillion. [3]
Afghanistan: $2.3 trillion. [4]
Can you even think of something hypothetically worth stealing from any of those places which could even just come close to covering the costs?
The only remotely plausible candidate I can come up with is Iraqi oil. At the time it was indeed a common refrain from the usual suspects that the US was only there to grab the oil. But that's not what happened. Iraq's 2005 constitution made it clear that Iraq's oil belongs to the Iraqis, who have since adopted a fee system under which oil companies get a few bucks per barrel (something between $1.6 and $6), and the rest goes to Iraq. [5]
For reference, a barrel currently trades at around $75. Iraq made more than $115 billion on that arrangement during 2022. [6] Even if you generously assumed that oil companies got 10% of that, and that it was all profit, and that they are all American (not even remotely true [7]) it would take a century just to recoup the cost of the Iraqi war.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1344315/us-military-expe...
[2] https://theveteransmuseum.org/visit/exhibits/vietnam/
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_War
[4] https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/figures/2021/human-and-b...
[5] https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=45a8132e-8291...
[6] https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20230103-iraq-oil-reve...
[7] https://www.aa.com.tr/en/energy/oil/mesopotamian-exodus-why-...
Yes, they did.
> The war itself achieves the states political goals, the spending props up the economy.
It props up the economy less then alternative spending of the same ampunt with a higher domestic velocity.
> It pays for itself
It may be a net benefit considering the value of the war aims against the opportunity cost, but that doesn’t change that it has a cost, it just means that (in the right value system) the cost is justified.
Your argument of efficiency is inherently flawed. It implies that war is good as long as it's cost effective, which isn't true.
Yes, they do.
> they invest.
Even if all government spending was investment, investment is just spending in the expectation of future return.
> It's not like there were trillions of dollars sitting around waiting to be spent.
It is literally exactly like that.
> The real tragedy of war is not that trillions were spent
True, that's not the real tragedy of war.
But that's because spending money isn’t tragedy (though the opportunity cost of the choice of how to spend it can be), not because government spending is not-spending, so the trillions spent on war are not-spent.
> Your argument of efficiency is inherently flawed. It implies that war is good as long as it's cost effective, which isn't true.
I thought the context was clear that I was referring to utilitarian justification, whether it is good is a differebt story, sure.
Rich people love pillaging and raping resource laden countries in the global south, assuming history is any indicator.
Edited for spelling
Latin isn't native language anywhere except Latium. English isn't native language anywhere except England (even excluding places like Cornwall that used to speak Celtic languages until the modern era). Arabic isn't native language anywhere except the Arabian peninsula. Heck, Quechua isn't native language anywhere but a very small region around Cuzco and was deliberately introduced by the Incas to make management of their huge, multiethnic empire easier.
I don't think that ancient imperial language policies in itself are particularly shameful. Possibly the opposite. You can pillage and rape people without even talking to them, but if you want to trade and develop deeper relations, mutual understanding is a must.
I mean, if you really want to play the game, the Angles (along with the Saxons) aren't native to England (i.e. Angle-land); they were a germanic tribe.
Of course, old english is a pretty far cry from the modern incarnation of the language.
Large claims require citation. Got any?
If you look at the history of the hydrocarbon industry during the 20th century, you saw the exact same trend over and over in countries without a history of private ownership of mineral resources. Exploration contracts were granted to foreign operators on favorable terms, and as the concessions were proved up (and petroleum gained geopolitical significance), those terms were slowly made less favorable to the operators, or the foreign operators were forced into local joint ventures, or their holdings were simply expropriated (or some combination of the above).
It looks to me like Chile thinks they have leverage and are beginning to turn the screws. If their reserves are sufficiently vast and economic, this might not appreciably affect the overall trajectory of the Chilean lithium industry for decades, if ever.
In other words, would an economist be able to point out any benefits?
Another gain is more control over the investments the company makes. The profits can be reinvested in the country instead of in the neighboring country that just slashed their corporate tax.
Another gain is reduced foreign influence over a critical portion of the nations economy.
Of course there are also drawbacks. Reduced access to international knowhow and capital etc. It's a trade off.
Typically, it means the local warlord and his family get to pocket it.
I'm not saying a state entity would be inherently better (though a case could be made for the benefits of long-term thinking that are more built-in) but I'd like to see the evidence that corporate businesses are inherently better themselves.
If we don't count "missing the boat" (as happened regarding search/mobile/social media), which arguably happens because of disruption from the newcomers and not mismanagement/underperformance at the oldtimers, what large companies have failed in the last 20 years?
Core to this point is that mega companies are only at threat from disruption, and it doesn't matter whether they're private or state owned for that
(I am of course ignoring companies that go under from criminal, as in corruption, mismanagement. I guess those are much more prevalent between the state-owned, for obvious reasons)
There's a shortage of key mineral reserves, but an abundance of corporate entities.
The entire company will go up or down according to output, even if due to external circumstances. Capital gets reallocated to better performing companies.
Examples: IBM, HP, Dell went from dominating to the doghouse; Microsoft made excellent strategic choices and remained relevant; Apple went from the doghouse to dominating, and so on.
This filters down to the employees. There is much more turnover and harder work (and higher pay) in private companies than at the government.
The Norwegian one was a gov corporation from the beginning though and was there from the beginning of exploration/development.
There can also be a long-term benefit that post-nationalized orgs from their past state as private structures, living off the fat as they say. The existing talent/prior knowledge/industry relationships are still there, just with a new owner and more capital. Similar to NASA absorbing a well established and already highly productive private industry / university researcher pool, and merging them under one umbrella and then having a golden era of productivity before sliding back into a more normal public agency.
That sort of productivity naturally fades over time as the gov bureaucracy increasingly takes over and the natural constraints of politicized funding.
It helps if your business is a slow changing monopoly industry like oil/gas though.
Extraordinarily claims require extraordinary evidence, of which none is provided. Public actors do not have, among many other negative characteristics, enshittification incentives. Greed is a malignant cancer that ruins human lives if left untreated.
But bureaucrats are greedy for power.
The point is for the country to take the role of "business owner", and to relegate the private businesses to the role of an "employee" (with a commensurately smaller slice of the upside) ... and if they don't like it, someone else will take their place ... after all the country has a guaranteed monopoly (they own the entire resource).
That sounds... racist.
https://psmag.com/.amp/environment/iraqi-vikings-farouk-al-k...
> Norway’s anti–resource curse is often attributed to exceptionalism: Viking genes or the like. But one secret of its success—maybe the secret—is not Norwegian at all, but a twinkly 77-year-old Iraqi-born oil geologist named Farouk al Kasim.
I'm asking about the Chile situation, not a 100% nationalized situation.
Biggest one in that region is Argentina, and the US has been sanctioning them a lot lately, to the point where their country reached 3 digit increased inflation, 3 digits!
So I suspect this is all done on purpose to further lower the price of lithium (corroborated with the lithium price in the global market, fishy fishy) so the US can have their green transition at lower cost, it's a sad era for South Americas yet again..
This nationalization is a step in the right direction, but that doesn't matter if it ends up in the end of foreign countries for cheap...
They should keep the lithium for themselves, manufacture batteries themselves and sell them with very high margins, if they don't do that, then something is fishy in the Chile/Argentina government..
Huh? Second largest producer with by far the largest reserves.
https://www.volkswagenag.com/en/news/stories/2020/03/lithium...
"opportunities"
Raising the royalties on the reserves, on the other hand, is something that could have actually worked.
Sure, don’t nationalize your semi-conductor industry, but we’re talking about primitive mineral extraction for a very abundant and very in-demand commodity, and without the need for much exploration.
You know mining is like printing money but just darker and dustier, right? And I very much mean printing money. See: Dutch disease. A lack of a regulated economy and a free-for—all of resource extraction can lead to massive hangovers.
This is more in the ballpark of the machinations of the Federal Reserve than anything else.
The problems with Venezuela are not the problems with Norway. Norwegians are rich and can afford the time and energy to work within the practicalities of a mixed economy. Venezuelans are poor and seem more swayed by hope on big bets. It takes ample patience to throw out ideology and tease things apart for what they actually are. I don’t fault people in substandard conditions for being swayed by ideology, but for the rest of us can we be a bit more pragmatic?
2005: The leaders of La Concertacion, Chile’s center-left ruling government coalition, want to eliminate the private profits of the private bus system [1]. They sell the new system as a way to make public safer and cleaner [2].
2007: A consensus builds, and Santiago (Chile's capital) nationalizes urban transport network. It is a customer service disaster. Commuters wait at stops for 2 hours[2] as they see multiple buses drive by [1]. The 3000 bus companies get cut to 10, one of which (the public company) becomes the target of the largest class-action lawsuit in Chile, with thousands of commuters suing the new entity [2]. It is also a financial bomb, as the system goes from $60M in profits, to > $600M in losses[1], overnight, with 290M bailout after only 9 months [2]
2019: The "Estallido Social" (Social explosion) riots start, centered in santiago. The reason * Rise in public transport fares in Santiago * [3]
2021: A student leader and prominent figure in the 2019 riots [4], with a coalition of leftist groups and the communist youth of chile [4], is elected president. A new left government is now in power
[1] https://scholars.duke.edu/display/pub1127207
[2] https://www.npr.org/2007/10/08/15100976/in-chile-commuters-s...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%932021_Chilean_prot...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Boric#Role_in_the_Esta...
the govt tried to please the existing company owners and they of course undermined everything and came out better than before. (the "private" transportation business on south America runs 100% on subsidies, even though it's expensive for the users)
this is not an example against state ownership of a service cost center. but simply data that it can't be done by a centrist govt.
NPR, duke.edu, and Wikipedia!? Those are left, lefter than left, and center-left.
It's a suppliers market and Chile has decided to "eminent domain" their resources and remove private ownership from the game, as is their right.
Yesterday would have been the best time to do this, and now is the next best time. At some point battery chemistries will shift to Na or solid state will take the crown, but until then...