Throw Yourself on the Train

No doubt I'm late to the train and there are dozens of good books out there about peak oil, oil politics, oil economics and similar nastiness surrounding our current spice melange.  But here I am hopping aboard and as one might expect, it's a bumpy (constantly threatening to derail) ride full of villainous banditos attempting to hold us up.

Why such a ride?  Convenience.  Profit.  Power.  Momentum.  Trains are hard to stop once they get going.  In fact, it's more like a slide than a halt, a painful grind during which everyone holds their ears and wonders just how late all this nonsense is going to make them.

The point?  Countries who are oil rich are cursed.  Huh?  But what about all the money they get for oil?  Doesn't help.  Corruption and monopoly thrive in a monoculture, weather it be of corn or oil.  The money ends up in the hands of a few.  The poor, meanwhile are given no jobs because the oil industry is not very job intensive and what jobs it does create are largely skilled jobs (engineers) which are often lacking among the locals.

While Maass is not a fantastic writer, he's good enough.  The images of Nigerian fisherman sneering at oil filled rivers devoid of fish is enough.  The descriptions of despotic parades of kleptocrats who rule oil "rich" countries and spend their summers in Malibu is enough.  The interviews with oil executives who defend themselves with lines like "everyone else is doing it" is enough.  The oil business is dirty stuff - and why wouldn't it be?  Like the drug business, the demand is there and the addicts aren't about to quit.  It's hard to imagine this train stopping, slowly grinding to a halt or even slowing down anytime soon.  Until then, expect the banditos to get increasingly nasty.