With oil cheap, Arab states cannot balance their books
1–10 of 202 posts
Re: With oil cheap, Arab states cannot balance their books
#2Paywall bypass: http://archive.vn/MJKQ1
Re: With oil cheap, Arab states cannot balance their books
#3Previous conversation about this topic here:
Re: With oil cheap, Arab states cannot balance their books
#4It’s hard to feel bad for them but there are a lot of outcomes here which result in a lot of people dying. Pretty sure half the reason SA and friends promote violent, reactionary interpretations of Islam is to serve as a dead man’s switch in case of regime change.
Re: With oil cheap, Arab states cannot balance their books
#5The shallow pro market idealism that too often colors the Economist's analysis is hard to swallow. Give me the confidence to pronounce: 'If Arab rulers want citizens to pay their way, they will need to start earning their consent' in a complex and unstable region. As thou they can see the consequences of complex change. The ghosts of the dead in Libya, Syria and Egypt (remember that brief flame of democracy) should be a constant presence in the author's mind.
Re: With oil cheap, Arab states cannot balance their books
#6It’s hard to feel bad for them but there are a lot of outcomes here which result in a lot of people dying. Pretty sure half the reason SA and friends promote violent, reactionary interpretations of Islam is to serve as a dead man’s switch in case of regime change.
It is easy to feel bad for the citizens who don't really get a say in the matter and live under a repressive regime.
Re: With oil cheap, Arab states cannot balance their books
#7I mean, this happened just a few years ago back in 2015, right? And 2008, and 2001, and 1998...
These petro states suffer from the curse of natural resources combined with leadership that is too busy feasting off of the intermittent boom cycle to prepare their people constructively for the bust that comes later. So you have entire countries that are basically dependent on the oil handout, and in bad times, have little industry to fall back on and wait for the next rise (or foment civil unrest).
Some of the leaders do know that they can't live on oil forever, so you see some sovereign wealth funds investing in things that their people can learn and use to build their society more resiliently. But in general the improvements are not very deep -- the money comes too easily and people get used to state intervention and not having to work.
It's a problem.
Re: With oil cheap, Arab states cannot balance their books
#8It’s hard to feel bad for them but there are a lot of outcomes here which result in a lot of people dying. Pretty sure half the reason SA and friends promote violent, reactionary interpretations of Islam is to serve as a dead man’s switch in case of regime change.
It is easy to feel bad for the citizens who don't really get a say in the matter and live under a repressive regime.
I feel worse for the non-citizens they effectively enslave in their households, controlling their passport while under employment.
Re: With oil cheap, Arab states cannot balance their books
#9The shallow pro market idealism that too often colors the Economist's analysis is hard to swallow. Give me the confidence to pronounce: 'If Arab rulers want citizens to pay their way, they will need to start earning their consent' in a complex and unstable region. As thou they can see the consequences of complex change. The ghosts of the dead in Libya, Syria and Egypt (remember that brief flame of democracy) should b…
Eh, what do expect from the Economist? They write as if they just read something about the topic and now after 2 paragraphs came to the conclusion on how the world should be updated. That's their style.
Re: With oil cheap, Arab states cannot balance their books
#10I feel like this might go the other direction once the lockdowns end and once people realize a huge chunk of their "green" energy labeled as biomass is actually just burning down trees.
Even if you use the fast growing forests used for paper in places like Oregon, there is still petroleum used in planting, cutting and fertilizing biofuel forests. In many ways, it's even worse for the environment than just burning the oil directly.
Baring some massive breakthrough in fusion, society as a whole needs to consume less energy, purchase less stuff and make durable goods that last a lot longer (a cellphone should last 8 years, not 3). Mass consumption is going to kill our environment a lot faster than energy consumption or CO2 emissions. CO2 pales in comparison to the ecological devastation in Chinese factory cities, the large amount of plastic particulates/trash in our oceans and completely unsustainable economic doctrine of infinite growth.