Asymmetrical Information

This seems to strengthen the case for an Alaskan-style "oil trust", rather than the Iraqi state simply taking the oil and selling it.

Certainly the oil money can't corrupt the government if the government can't spend it (or, can't spend it without royally pissing off the entire population by taking *their* money arbitrarily...).

The argument is not that only poor people are incapable of liberal society, or that materially better off people automatically will form a non-despotic society. It is HOW people prosper, and what opportunities thay have to prosper, and the freedom to define prosperity, that is critical. Yes, the people of Fallujah were, on average, more prosperous than the rest of Iraq. That prosperity, however, was directly derived from the application of mass terror, which is not the basis for forming a liberal society. Oil wealth is a problem because it's presence gives a simple means of attaining prosperity through theft or violence.

Of course, part of the problem with doing more to ensure that Iraq becomes a democracy is that most of our allies don't want to help unless and until Iraq has its own government without US intervention.

The multilateralists are making it much harder for us to do more in Iraq to give the Iraqis a good shot. Perhaps we'll treat the new government as a protectorate for some time, and there'll be some sort of compromise that will work. Generally, though, the anti-imperial urge is stronger than the urge to improve Iraq's chances for democracy on the broad Left, it seems.

Because an oil state "doesn't rely on [the citizens] for its revenues", it "doesn't need to make itself accountable to its citizens". There is so much in that sentence that I never thought about before.

The mainstream press doesn't stimulate the mind and they never would say anything close to that statement above.

I believe there are ways to surmount that hurdle, such as giving "private property" rights to sets of employee owner companies in Iraq. This way the oil would be privatized. Wells would be divied up between many sets of citizen employee owners. There would be competition between companies. There would be taxes levied by the Iraq government off of the corporations. Other corporations would flourish such as plumbing, construction, computer, paper, glass, accountant, etc.

Because an oil state "doesn't rely on [the citizens] for its revenues", it "doesn't need to make itself accountable to its citizens". There is so much in that sentence that I never thought about before.

The mainstream press doesn't stimulate the mind and they never would say anything close to that statement above.

I believe there are ways to surmount that hurdle, such as giving "private property" rights to sets of employee owner companies in Iraq. This way the oil would be privatized. Wells would be divied up between many sets of citizen employee owners. There would be competition between companies. There would be taxes levied by the Iraq government off of the corporations. Other corporations would flourish such as plumbing, construction, computer, paper, glass, accountant, etc.

"There are ample reasons to worry about the prospects for democracy in Iraq, without bringing in racialist theories."

I just looked up the word "racialist" in the dictionary. Didn't even know that was a real name. At first I thought that Megan was going to the Shakespeare route and making up her own verbiage.

That's why I come on by every day. I always learn something.

James

"No justice, no peace." I thnk the sense of justice is what is missing and diifficult to teach. If you had a mob dragging charred bodies through the street of an American city, there would be candle-light vigils, demonstrations, the whole nine yards. We don't tolerate that garbage.

I agree with Jane. We are not doing enough to lay the foundations of a successful democracy, which include a large helping of justice. The concept is not in their tradition, and to transform a society to understanding the concept and incorporating it into what they do takes a whole bunch of one-on-one interactions. I would love to see a "Justice Core" where tens of thousands of Americans would volunteer to go over there and teach these people how to behaved like a civilized society. The Fallujah thing could even be a big learning experience in the effort. But then again, when there is a radical element that would drag burnt bodies through the street, who in their right mind would volunteer?

-Brad

Oddly enough I was thinking about this on the way into work today and had the following thought.

This seems to be true not only of nations but of regions. The regions of the U.S. subject to the most systemic and persistent poverty, outside of isolated urban enclaves, seem to be those most dependent on resource extraction, e.g. coal dependent Appalachia and the mineral dependent areas of the mountain west.

Some of the oil areas of Texas and Oklahoma seem to be an exception, but I'm not sure. I'm not enough of an economist to know what to make of it, but it seemed an interesting oddity.

Sorry for the multiple postings. I kept getting error messages.

the state doesn't need to make itself accountable to its citizens, because it doesn't rely on them for its revenues.

Kind of the way the Bush administration hasn't had to justify its policies in any way more substantive than a sound bite. They're financing it all through massive debt, so it has no concrete effect on the ordinary citizen.

They are literally putting offf the day of reckoning.

Brad: "I would love to see a "Justice Core" where tens of thousands of Americans would volunteer to go over there and teach these people how to behaved like a civilized society."

Well a "Justice Corps" might be a nice idea, but how are a bunch of Americans gonna teach a bunch of Iraqis about civil society?
They're going to learn Iraqi Arabic? Lots of luck, they'll be ready for action in about three years.
They'll use English? That'll reinforce the idea that civil society is a foreign concept, probably not what we most want to do.

For my snarking, I don't have any brilliant ideas except for a secular Arabic language system of education and trying to build transparent institutions and I kind of like the oil trust idea (and making diversifying the economy a priority).

Brad,
I'd volunteer. Language immersion techniques can teach a lot in a short amount of time. And we could use translators. I'm thinking something more like a nation-building corps; though, covering everything from secular education (which, btw, Iraq has already) and enterpreneurship on up to government and law. And you don't teach all the Iraqis, what you do is teach the Iraqis how to teach other Iraqis...

It occurs to me (not for the first time) that countries of Central Europe should be maybe playing a bigger role.

Unlike the US, they have direct, recent experience on sorting out the mess after a very bad government.
This includes telling the sheep from the goats among those who participated in the government, that is sorting out who actively participated in oppression vs. paid lip service to a party in order to get ahead professionally.
It also includes deciding questions on how and where to start patching up a failing decimated infratstructure and lots of other related issues.
Listening to what non-Americans say has never been a national strong point, but I bet it could be _very_ useful at present.

Sigivald had it right. Divide oil royalties equally between the people, then make the government have to justify their holdout percentage. People generally have more fun spending their own money.

I actually what we're doing is about as good a plan as possible right now (worries about oil wealth preventing democracy aside). The biggest part of that is we're taking a shot at building democracy from the ground up. Most of Iraq is ruled locally by town councils, for instance. This is real stuff of effective democracy, and signals a break from past efforts at nation-building.

It's not that oil is a natural resource or that it can be stolen that creates the largest problems. No, the problem is that even if the oil could be socially controlled and simultaneously run efficiently, it still wouldn't do much of anything. Oil has a low degree of labor-intensity. To make millions of dollars on oil, you need to build thousands of dollars of machinery, and hire a couple of people to stand around and watch. (That's an exaggeration, of course, but the idea, that the sallaries derived from production are far less than the returns to capital and resources, is important.) In short, oil can be the basis of a productive economy with a higher per-capita income, but unless very well centrally managed it is incompatible with the uniform increase of wages which is indisputable linked to the success of democracy. Kuwait has this down pat, because the moeny they make from selling a bit of oil to the world allows them to hire a rediculous number of people who work in the production of far more oil that just sits around doing nothing. This is clearly impossible on the scale of Iraq, so the issue is a simple one: how to increase the standards of living for Iraqis across the board? Government checks aren't going to do much, nor private ownership of oil. What it comes down to is the need to rapidly create a post-agricultural and -industrial revolution society so that the poor can work productively without need of jealousy of a rich government or economic elite.

Sigivald and Doug L are right. Democracy is really about government being accountable to the governed. The basis of that accountability should be a requirement that the government has to ask the people for its revenue. This is what was behind the three great western revolutions. Absolutist English and French monarchs and a colonial government in America blew their revenues on unpopular projects, had to increase taxes, and thereby touched off armed rebellions that ultimately, after much bloodshed and dictatorship in the Puritan and French examples and 'ethnic cleansing' of Loyalists in the American example, resulted in more liberal and democratic and accountable government.

Iraq's oil rights should be leased to the highest bidders and ALL the revenue should be distributed equally and directly to the people. From that point it would be up to the Iraqi government to raise the taxes it needs through a democratic process. Is this not how things are done in Alaska?

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