Y The "civilized" US Gov. or any other Gov. that are looting and pirating oil from undeveloped & ....?

Question

......disadvanced countries with strong religious

or fundamental infrastructure and causing The

American or other people suffer by paying

higher prices for "gas, food & etc..." ; and

themselves are sitting on underground lakes

of oil do not use theirs ! ?

* * * Is their act honorable ?

Answer 1

Well, This is a not uncommon misconception, but there are several areas which are not apparently well informed.

The United States and or the corporate interests of the United States (Halliburton, Connoco,Exxon, Raytheon, Sunoco, Fluor and various other multi-national corporations, operate worldwide.

Many other "Western" powers do this as well, Japan's Mitsui, Sumitomo, Matsushita, and other firms also operate in nearly identical fashion,  Total , BP,Royal Dutch/Shell, Siemens AG, all hail from the EU, even RAO Gazprom, is Russian.

However, your point being is there oppression, or exploitation , the answer is yes - to a point. Countries which are not well developed , differ from well developed countries in a couple of critical areas.

1. Property law and workers rights & environmental laws, which by and large, developed countries have by virtue of a sustained court system and generally LOW corruption.

2. Underdeveloped countries, do not generally have these laws and protections and FURTHERMORE, are susceptible to high levels of corruption and/or violence.

There is an old saying about religion that, the People find religion necessary and true, the wise find religion false, and the powerful find religion useful.

Your observation that religious fundamentalism or high religiosity correlates to areas where there is extensive corporate influence or control is also NOT inaccurate.

Broadly speaking, for most countries, educational level of the population is inverse to religious influence upon the local society.

It gets to the idea of how we as a planet deal effectively with the negative effects of corporatism, the answer, surprisingly is NOT through armed insurrection or violence.

That might be viscerally satisfying to many people, but it's rather totally unproductive.

The keys to success for - not just any developing country - but any country are actually pretty simple.

1. Develop a GOOD working judicial system that is as free from corruption as possible. It is also helpful if the judiciary is not too close to the governing parties or persons in government.

2. Government should be small and limited, efficient and preferably representative in nature.

3. The PEOPLE, should at every turn seek education and the opportunity to do business with one another and should demand honesty on the part of their government and judiciary.

4. The military should be limited to a constabulary, and to the defense needs of the nation, which is of limited power and with indirect access to the political process and the judiciary.

Having said that, VERY FEW countries, qualify in this category, not even the United States, fits this model  particularly well, as our military expenditures and the size of our government are totally out of control.

Just because these things are relatively simple by no means should suggest they are EASY to achieve. A functioning judiciary and a body of laws or constitutional norms could take DECADES to form and work out.

Many countries are very small in population, and as such , exploration and discovery of natural resources can be a great source of revenue for the nation. However, this is where corruption and good judicial systems are critical.

Consider countries like Saudi Arabia, where so much money goes to the extraordinarily extended royal family, that when adjusted for inflation, the GDP is actually negative.

Then if you consider places like some of the aboriginally administered regions of the outback of Australia.

The Aboriginal authorities granted mineral extraction rights and receive revenue which is then put into educational and other infrastructure programs.

While this won't make everyone super-rich, but can make a province or region wealthy enough to educate the young and adult populations so they would be qualified for jobs - either in the province or elsewhere. It may not even be a perfect system, but it's much better - dollar for dollar than the Saudi system.

So when you see suppression on the part of some government, or some religious group being violent or being oppressed, understand that corporations are - by and large - PROFOUNDLY indifferent to what the land-owners DO with the money they receive.

The United States Government, many times, does in fact try to put conditions upon the local and regional governments to enact reforms, or setup a judiciary or whatever.

Recently, the US insisted that their corporations NOT accept work in Sudan because there was no proper legal authority in many parts of the country, and the government that exists in many areas is both highly corrupted and religiously thuggish.

China, which has no real conditions regarding the benefit of the local people, happily accepted contracts, and setup the infrastructures needed for mineral and resource extraction.

To be fair, there are instances where the US has not always acted in accordance with these enlightened ideals, and in those instances, the bottom line is not a functioning judiciary or a reasonably uncorrupted government, but rather stability, usually through the support of a dictatorship.

While it would be ideal to setup a situation, where long term democratic stability and enduring markets persist, this is not always possible.

Examples where this has worked wonderfully, include South Korea and Japan.

The Examples of countries where this has not worked so wonderfully is MUCH longer, Indonesia, The Philippines, Iraq, Guatamala, Columbia etc.

It is not REALLY the intent that is problematic, but rather I think the execution and the overall end-result.

Other countries have had similar successes and failures, which is why the world - more or less looks the way it does.

Great Britain has had the case of India and Pakistan, but while these countries are occasionally marred by violence, even today, and the transitions to non-colonial governments was by no means - either fast, violence-free, or in any way easy, both countries have managed to endure and prosper on their own.

As far as pirating oil, or other resources, largely speaking it is not possible to prevent all instances of rampant corruption, but I'm sure many instances of regimes gone BAD exist, and were supported by any number of great powers, The US included.

To be perfectly fair, there is no abject looting on the part of US firms - to any large extent, in fact US corporations are bound to bring these resources to market and thus are usually eager to pay some value/ or market rate.

So while most Iraqi's probably never saw a dime of the Billions of dollars the Hussein regime brought in, it wasn't like the oil was being given away, it was being sold on the open world market.

The average Saudi may have all the opportunities for education and other social services, available to them , but there is an obscene difference between those in power and those out of the power equation.

This fact is one of the primary complaints of both the United States AND Al Qaeda.

Disturbing as it may sound to many readers, if you exclude the rather unreasonable or patently objectionable demands, the two parties actually have a laundry list of reform items which are quite concordant when considering the Saudi Government.

Answer 2

good luck

Answer 3

And your evidence to prove we are  "Looting" oil from any other Country? looks to me like we are buying it on the open market just like every other Western Nation is.

Answer 4

Y would we listen to you an uneducated nobody that can't spell or write a coherent sentence.