[GrileVege]

Damn, Mexico is ****ed if they will have to stop exporting oil, and start importing it.

[Illirmpipse]

Latest buzz word, I see.

[JJoon077]

******

[ITYfl01c]

The mexican currency might lose value without all those oil dollars entering the country, thata affects poor people.
And I dont know how big the Mexican debt is, but it would become more difficult for the government to pay it.

[NudiJuicervich]

state run enterprises are inheriantly inefficient - what is in the interst of the government is not always what is in the interest of the company or in the interest of its people. they can get a higher return on their capital by investing elswhere.

[Ilaubuas]

education, infrastructure, etc, will do a lot more for the country than investing in oil exports and then subsidizing it to score political points with the people to prop up your failing government. (for example)

its not so much the revenus from it, its the negatives that it brings along.

i dont think that the capital they invest has necessairly outweighted the negative effects.

1. capital invested in state oil is used inefficiently (higher returns elswhere, or under different business structure.)
2. too much money/capital flying around from the oil revenues means lower interest rates and allows investments into areas which really shouldnt be invested in (for example, look at all the white elephant projects in the middle east. there have too much capital, dont know what to do with it, throw good money after bad.) can lead to more volatility, bad for foreign investors.
3. less soft money in the treasury means less possibilities of corruption, a big problem in mexico.

there may be larger pecuninary gains from investing (even inefficiently) in oil, but thats not whats going to make mexico a developped country.

getting the govt out of the oil business is not a whole other topic because as long as there is oil, there will be pressure to have it state owned (and look at how many oil exporting countries have state run/ monopolies of oil.) it goes hand in hand with having it in the first place. since its unlikely that the government will ever privatize it (too many incentives not to) the only way to break the inefficieny is for there not to be anymore of it.

[T5qYkHWQ]

Look at the history...other way around.

Edit: Cross post.

[voksveta]

as i was saying . . . inefficient, bad used of capital, etc. . .

[DarrenBent]

I imagine if they start steam injection they'll find this site has many more barrels left.

[replrobin]

Aparently he doesn't realise that if you have a machine which puts out more money than it takes in you are able to use the excess to pay for that other **** he wants.



its one thing to have the moneey to do it, its another to do it. having the money and not doing it is the same as not having the money and not doing it.

Human Development Index (top 15 oil export countries bolded, non democratic countries with **)

#1 Norway: 0.963
#2 Iceland: 0.956
#3 Australia: 0.955
#4 Luxembourg: 0.949
#5 Canada: 0.949
#6 Sweden: 0.949
#7 Switzerland: 0.947
#8 Ireland: 0.946
#9 Belgium: 0.945
#10 United States: 0.944
#11 Netherlands: 0.943
#12 Japan: 0.943
#13 Finland: 0.941
#14 Denmark: 0.941
#15 United Kingdom: 0.939
#16 France: 0.938
#17 Austria: 0.936
#18 Italy: 0.934
#19 New Zealand: 0.933
#20 Germany: 0.93
#21 Spain: 0.928
#22 Hong Kong: 0.916
#23 Israel: 0.915
#24 Greece: 0.912
#25 Singapore: 0.907
#26 Slovenia: 0.904
#27 Portugal: 0.904
#28 Korea, South: 0.901
#29 Cyprus: 0.891
#30 Barbados: 0.878
#31 Czech Republic: 0.874
#32 Malta: 0.867
#33 Brunei: 0.866
#34 Argentina: 0.863
#35 Hungary: 0.862
#36 Poland: 0.858
#37 Chile: 0.854
#38 Estonia: 0.853
#39 Lithuania: 0.852
#40 Qatar: 0.849 **
#41 United Arab Emirates: 0.849 **
#42 Slovakia: 0.849
#43 Bahrain: 0.846
#44 Kuwait: 0.844 **
#45 Croatia: 0.841
#46 Uruguay: 0.84
#47 Costa Rica: 0.838
#48 Latvia: 0.836
#49 Saint Kitts and Nevis: 0.834
#50 Bahamas, The: 0.832
#51 Seychelles: 0.821
#52 Cuba: 0.817
#53 Mexico: 0.814
#54 Tonga: 0.81
#55 Bulgaria: 0.808
#56 Panama: 0.804
#57 Trinidad and Tobago: 0.801
#58 Libya: 0.799 **
#59 Antigua and Barbuda: 0.797
#60 Macedonia, Republic of: 0.797
#61 Malaysia: 0.796
#62 Russia: 0.795
#63 Brazil: 0.792
#64 Romania: 0.792
#65 Mauritius: 0.791
#66 Grenada: 0.787
#67 Belarus: 0.786
#68 Bosnia and Herzegovina: 0.786
#69 Colombia: 0.785
#70 Dominica: 0.783
#71 Oman: 0.781
#72 Albania: 0.78
#73 Thailand: 0.778
#74 Samoa: 0.776
#75 Saudi Arabia: 0.772 **
#76 Venezuela: 0.772 **
#77 Saint Lucia: 0.772
#78 Ukraine: 0.766
#79 Peru: 0.762
#80 Kazakhstan: 0.761
#81 Lebanon: 0.759
#82 Ecuador: 0.759
#83 Armenia: 0.759
#84 Philippines: 0.758
#85 Suriname: 0.755
#86 Paraguay: 0.755
#87 Saint Vincent and the Grenadines: 0.755
#88 China: 0.755
#89 Belize: 0.753
#90 Jordan: 0.753
#91 Tunisia: 0.753
#92 Fiji: 0.752
#93 Sri Lanka: 0.751
#94 Turkey: 0.75
#95 Dominican Republic: 0.749
#96 Maldives: 0.745
#97 Jamaica: 0.738
#98 Turkmenistan: 0.738
#99 Iran: 0.736 **
#100 Georgia: 0.732
#101 Azerbaijan: 0.729
#102 West Bank: 0.729
#103 Gaza Strip: 0.729
#104 Algeria: 0.722 **
#105 El Salvador: 0.722
#106 Cape Verde: 0.721
#107 Syria: 0.721
#108 Guyana: 0.72
#109 Vietnam: 0.704
#110 Kyrgyzstan: 0.702
#111 Indonesia: 0.697
#112 Uzbekistan: 0.694
#113 Nicaragua: 0.69
#114 Bolivia: 0.687
#115 Mongolia: 0.679
#116 Moldova: 0.671
#117 Honduras: 0.667
#118 Guatemala: 0.663
#119 Vanuatu: 0.659
#120 Egypt: 0.659
#121 South Africa: 0.658
#122 Equatorial Guinea: 0.655
#123 Tajikistan: 0.652
#124 Gabon: 0.635
#125 Morocco: 0.631
#126 Namibia: 0.627
#127 São Tomé and Príncipe: 0.604
#128 India: 0.602
#129 Solomon Islands: 0.594
#130 Burma: 0.578
#131 Cambodia: 0.571
#132 Botswana: 0.565
#133 Comoros: 0.547
#134 Laos: 0.545
#135 Bhutan: 0.536
#136 Pakistan: 0.527
#137 Nepal: 0.526
#138 Papua New Guinea: 0.523
#139 Ghana: 0.52
#140 Bangladesh: 0.52
#141 East Timor: 0.513
#142 Togo: 0.512
#143 Sudan: 0.512
#144 Congo, Republic of the: 0.512
#145 Uganda: 0.508
#146 Zimbabwe: 0.505
#147 Madagascar: 0.499
#148 Swaziland: 0.498
#149 Cameroon: 0.497
#150 Lesotho: 0.497
#151 Djibouti: 0.495
#152 Yemen: 0.489
#153 Mauritania: 0.477
#154 Haiti: 0.475
#155 Kenya: 0.474
#156 Gambia, The: 0.47
#157 Guinea: 0.466
#158 Senegal: 0.458
#159 Nigeria: 0.453
#160 Rwanda: 0.45
#161 Angola: 0.445
#162 Eritrea: 0.444
#163 Benin: 0.431
#164 Côte d'Ivoire: 0.42
#165 Tanzania: 0.418
#166 Malawi: 0.404
#167 Zambia: 0.394
#168 Congo, Democratic Republic of the: 0.385
#169 Mozambique: 0.379
#170 Burundi: 0.378
#171 Ethiopia: 0.367
#172 Central African Republic: 0.355
#173 Guinea-Bissau: 0.348
#174 Chad: 0.341
#175 Mali: 0.333
#176 Burkina Faso: 0.317
#177 Sierra Leone: 0.298
#178 Niger: 0.281
weighted average = 0.7

top 15 exporting countries weighted average HDI = 0.768. and this includes canada and norway, two countries who do not depend on oil in the same way as the others, and who becamed developped countries not by exporting oil but by developping human capita.

not only that, we have some of the worlds worst human rights violators and most corrupt and authoritarian governments,and terrorist sponsering governments.

so tell me what i dont understand now.

[DavidQD]

Look at it this way Lawrence, Lybia has oil, and it is much wealthier than Morocco, Algeria or Tunis.

Yemen is the only very poor arabian country, and it is the only one in the arabian peninsula with no oil.

Oil matters and helps a lot

[GrolmangHat27]

algeria has oil too, yet 121 countries have a higher HDI that it does.

tunisia's HDI is greater than 4 of the worlds largest exporters in oil.

infact, oil has had very little effect on the HDI of these countries. with the amount of money that they make, the average of the 15 largest oil exporting countries is only 68 points higher (0.097 about 10% higher) than the world average (which includes, lets not forget, such places as the DRC and its 2 million casualities in the last civil war, and other notable failed states like Haiti). this means that these countries are in general not much better off, despite all this oil.

add the fact that one of these countries' head of state was implicated in the bombing of a commercial airliner, and you see that having all of this oil is not as great as it seems.

[sandracuk]

Viewing mineral wealth as dooming a country to failure is quite interesting.

[Liaptoono]

Originally posted by Barnabas
Look at it this way Lawrence, Lybia has oil, and it is much wealthier than Morocco, Algeria or Tunis.

Yemen is the only very poor arabian country, and it is the only one in the arabian peninsula with no oil.

Oil matters and helps a lot Syria, Jordan, Yemen, Sudan, Morocco, Tunis, Lebanon, and Egypt all have little to no oil. I'd add Palestine to that list but there's no such country.

[kazinopartnerkae]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
I think you mischaracterize his argument. Indeed. He also argues that low interest rates are bad because they lead to more development, and other absurd things.

[doxinwasido]

Indeed. He also argues that low interest rates are bad because they lead to more development, and other absurd things.



what are you, retarted? i argue that too much capital can lead to difficulties in assessing which projects are more more likely to succeed/ are most useful because it creates artifically lower interest rates. when money is cheap, people (especially the government) invests it in the wrong places because they either a) believe that there will be more coming/ there is lots of it, so a failure now doesnt mean much or b) believe that since rates are low, all projects are profitable/ useful.

poor investment decisions eventually fail, leading to a) a loss of capital that could have been invested elswhere and b) all sorts of macroeconomic problems (in the most general form, there is an increase in the standard deviation of gdp growth) or result in a loss, which is the same as a).

[Narkeere]

Originally posted by DanS
Much of this seems to be government-sector negligence. The oil majors look angelic in comparison. Water/oil separators are amazingly simple devices. The article makes it sound like these types of things are super magic high tech devices or something. QFT. You can make one with concrete or if you just use a settling tower the oil will float up and the water will sink. Stopping production on wells which are still 90% oil and 10% water is stupid and just means the company/government doesn't want to spend the money building a few cheap oil-water separators. If they're not willing to do something so cheap then that's a sure sign of under investment in the state run oil sector. With old but slightly more expensive technology like steam inject, which was started in use in the late 60's, you can get a huge amount of life out of old fields.

[C7JjVczP]

The question isn't about oil or no oil.

The question is how to organise society and what role governments should play, and a lot more than that in the social sphere.

The question goes way beyond being resource rich or poor. Mexico's problems have near zero to do with having oil. They would have similar problems with or without it.

[StevenS]

Originally posted by notyoueither
The question isn't about oil or no oil.

The question is how to organise society and what role governments should play, and a lot more than that in the social sphere.

The question goes way beyond being resource rich or poor. Mexico's problems have near zero to do with having oil. They would have similar problems with or without it. Oil is potentially negative in the sense that it sometimes disassociates government services from the dictates of the voting taxpayers. This interplay is the bedrock of democracy.

[Espacamlisa]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse


What's great about this listing is that it demonstrates that oil exporting countries tend to have higher HDIs than their non-oil exporting neighbours with similar histories.

Are you being ironic? I can think of vastly better ways to display that relationship than with this list. I can't see how you think it does a great job of demonstrating that oil exporting countries tend to have higher HDIs than their non-oil exporting peers.