5. Avoid a rush to privatize everything. Oil countries anyway inevitably have large public sectors. Impediments to entrepreneurship should be removed, but well-run state enterprises can have their place in a modern economy, as some of the Asian nations have demonstrated. Rajiv Chandrasekaran demonstrated in his Imperial Life in the Emerald City how the US fetish for privatization destroyed state factories that could otherwise have been revived and that could have supplied jobs.
You do need to be careful certainly. I think I mostly agree.
6. Consult with Norway about how it is possible for an oil state to remain a democracy. The petroleum income can make the state more powerful than civil society, and there is [pdf] a statistical correlation between have a state that depends heavily on a single primary commodity and a tendency to despotism (as well as a tendency toward violence, since such commodities can be smuggled and cartels emerge to fight over smuggling rights). These problems of dependence on a high-priced primary commodity can be seen in Iraq, where the prime minister has increasingly become a soft strong man, in part because of government petroleum revenues.
Agreed.
8. Democratization and economic growth cannot be attained through oil exports alone. Having a pricey primary commodity like petroleum causes a country’s currency to harden. A harder currency means that manufactures, handicrafts, and agricultural produce from that country artificially cost more to countries with softer currencies. This effect is called the “Dutch disease” because the Netherlands developed natural gas in the late 1960s and found it actually hurt some parts of their economy. The cure is to diversify the economy. The most clever way to do so is to use the petroleum receipts to promote other industries and services. Libya has a high literacy rate and could potentially attract investors to put its population to work in other sectors.
Yes. SOLAR!!!!! And roads through the desert. The Sahara is begging to be harnassed and reclaimed.
The novel Dune is all about this topic. Look at its afterword. It's an analysis of desert reclamation and terraforming.
10. Once it gets on its feet socially and economically, Libya should go forward with bruited plans to get into solar and wind energy big time. Petroleum will always have value in petrochemicals, but burning it is bad for the earth because extra carbon in the atmosphere causes global warming, which will hit Libya especially hard. It is a delicious irony that the petroleum revenues could make it possible to ease the transition to solar power. Libya’s big desert is ideal for photovoltaic panels. Transitioning away from petroleum exports as the major industry would help economic diversification and increase the likelihood of a retention of democracy, as well as likely contributing to social peace. Not to mention that you don’t want it hotter in Libya in the summer than it already is.
Exactly.
Originally posted by no1marauderThe focus of this thread is the future energy dispensation of Libya. It's just possible that you might have something to contribute to this topic. If so, you're welcome.
Juan Cole should be named King of Libya since he has soooooooooooooo many great ideas. It would be all legal if there was a Security Council resolution authorizing it.
Originally posted by Bosse de NageThat's an internal affair of Libya. At least it would be if the West wasn't presenting a bill to be paid.
The focus of this thread is the future energy dispensation of Libya. It's just possible that you might have something to contribute to this topic. If so, you're welcome.
Originally posted by no1marauderIf you're going to pull that one - in future please limit yourself to discussions that concern your country - preferably, your neighbourhood. Thanks. You can leave this thread now.
Just checking: are you or Juan Cole Libyan? Is anybody posting on this forum Libyan?
Originally posted by Bosse de NageI rarely post in threads concerning the internal political/economic arrangements in other countries. Then again, I rarely support bombing the crap out of them either.
If you're going to pull that one - in future please limit yourself to discussions that concern your country - preferably, your neighbourhood. Thanks. You can leave this thread now.
Here's something from Counterpunch regarding Libya, oil and Juan Cole:
Crude Analysis of Libyan Liberation
by CHRIS FLOYD
Another war for oil? Surely not! But just to be on the safe side, the world’s oil barons are already moving in to seal some sweetheart deals on that sweet, sweet crude with the new, NATO-installed masters of Libya.
And guess what? It turns out that companies from the Western countries that eagerly rained tons of death-metal on the Libyan people are being given the inside track to the post-Gaddafi gusher. Meanwhile, countries that had urged caution in humanely intervening with thousands upon thousands of bombs, drones and missiles to, er, protect human life now face relegation to the outer darkness.
Libya’s old colonial masters, Italy, are leading the way in the new scramble, even ere the Green Pimpernel has been found. They, along with other Western oil behemoths, are being welcomed with open arms by the peace-loving democratic rebels, who murdered their own chief military commander just a few weeks ago. But for intervention skeptics like Russia, China and Brazil, there may be “some political issues” in renewing old deals and inking new ones, say the new regime’s oil honchos. NATO si, BRIC no.
But remember. This is not a war for oil. Oil has nothing to do with it. Of course, you can find cranks and crackpots like, say, Patrick Cockburn, who has only been doing frontline reporting in the region for decades, coming out with nonsense like this, in a recent piece about the “murderous rebels in Libya”:
“The enthusiasm in some 30 foreign capitals to recognize the mysterious self-appointed group in Benghazi as the leaders of Libya is at this stage probably motivated primarily by expectations of commercial concessions and a carve-up of oilfields.”
But what does he know? Especially compared to progressive, peace-loving, war-hating supporters of the war like Professor Juan Cole. As the professor himself tells us, he is someone “who has actually heard briefings in Europe from foreign ministries and officers of NATO members.” I’ll bet you haven’t done that! Anyway, Cole assures us that the very idea of oil playing any part in this noble endeavor is “daft,” because Libya was “already integrated with the international oil markets.”
Well, loath as one is to quibble with a man who has actually heard briefings from NATO officers and all, even the New York Times notes that:
“Colonel Qaddafi proved to be a problematic partner for international oil companies, frequently raising fees and taxes and making other demands. A new government with close ties to NATO may be an easier partner for Western nations to deal with. Some experts say that given a free hand, oil companies could find considerably more oil in Libya than they were able to locate under the restrictions placed by the Qaddafi government.”
Less regulation, fewer restrictions, sweeter deals, more oil, higher profits — no, there’s nothing there to interest the oil companies. Or the governments they “influence” so persuasively — and pervasively. So it must be true, as Cole asserts, that this noble endeavor was no more and no less than a humanitarian intervention designed to safeguard human lives (with those thousands of bombs and missiles), protect the right of free assembly (or at least the right to mill around in one of those wired, barricaded, kettled, corralled “free speech zones” now so prevalent in the freedom-loving, liberating lands of the West), and uphold “a lawful world order.”
Cole now looks forward to seeing Gaddafi and sons in the dock for war crimes, for, as he rightly notes: “deploying the military against non-combatants was a war crime, and doing so in a widespread and systematic way was a crime against humanity.” Unless, of course, you quote “just war” theologians as you, say, conduct a widespread and systematic terror bombing campaign of defenseless villages in an allied nation with drone missiles, as Barack Obama has been doing in Pakistan from the moment he took office. But Cole “agree[s] with President Obama and his citation of Reinhold Niebuhr. You can’t protect all victims of mass murder everywhere all the time. But where you can do some good, you should do it.”
If only Gaddafi had thought to quote a man whose “influence has been acknowledged by such recent leaders of American foreign policy as Jimmy Carter, Madeleine Albright, Hillary Clinton, [and] John McCain”! Perhaps that would have absolved him from the other crimes Cole lays at his door: “bankrolling brutal dictators and helping foment ruinous wars.” Certainly none of our Niebuhr-quoting leaders have ever done anything like that!
In any case, the deed is done and now, as the Times headline says, “The Scramble for Access to Libya’s Oil Wealth Begins.” But the latter is just incidental, of course — a spandrel, a happy accident, an unintentional by-product of a noble deed done by noble men for noble purposes.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/08/25/crude-analysis-of-libyan-liberation/
Originally posted by no1marauderThis doesn't in any way address the points I selected for discussion.
I rarely post in threads concerning the internal political/economic arrangements in other countries. Then again, I rarely support bombing the crap out of them either.
Here's something from Counterpunch regarding Libya, oil and Juan Cole:
Crude Analysis of Libyan Liberation
by CHRIS FLOYD
Another war for oil? Sure ...[text shortened]... noble purposes.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/08/25/crude-analysis-of-libyan-liberation/
To make it nice and simple for you: the object here is to discuss Cole's ideas on their merits, especially as some are linked to policies operating in the real world, such as Norway's oil policy and the Alaska dividend.
Spammer.
Originally posted by AThousandYoungI would opt for an annual dividend. This model could serve in other African oil states, too.
[b]7. Use the Alaska dividend system to share the oil wealth with Libya’s 6.5 million people. This model was often discussed with regard to Iraq but was never implemented.
I'm suspicious because it's a one-time thing. Or would it be an annual payment?[/b]