[clue-talk] oil...

[Angelo Bertolli]

Grant Johnson wrote:
>
>>> Like Venezuela?
>>
>> I don't know that much about how Venezuela does their drilling, do 
>> you?  I'm guessing you don't,  you just thought it would be a good 
>> argument to pick a poorly-run country that happens to do what I made 
>> a side suggestion about.
>>
> No, what they did was nationalize their oil industry.   The took what 
> belonged to private companies and individuals, put them out of 
> business, and took it for the government.   Now the government takes 
> all of the money, and the people get nothing.
>
> The point is that when you try to make things fair by letting the 
> government step in, usually, they just steal it from the people, and 
> give nothing back.

Maybe creating an agency that manages oil is a bad thing,  but my only 
sentiment is that unless the oil companies are going to drill on the 
land they already have saved for themselves for drilling, let's not give 
them any more public land.  (And I never implied nationalizing all of 
the oil.)

When the government spends the tax money, where does it go?  It pays 
people, contracting companies, and buys things from businesses.  Whether 
it's a large company, or the government, if they just take and don't 
give back to society, it's all the same to me.  I guess with deficits, 
we can be guaranteed one thing:  the money isn't being hoarded by the 
government.  So where is it all going?  (Yes, some value gets 
"destroyed" through inefficiency of an entity that doesn't have to fully 
compete, but not all of it.)

Angelo