Sui Generis

Today's (dead trees) NYT has a clash betwixt Bruni and Stephens. As usual, the MAGAnaut lacks the insight to name the simple fact: countries/economies which run on extraction of natural resources are always Fascist. And not even countries, even right wingnut parts of countries.

And, of course, Stephens lays the condition in Venezuela to 'socialism', when the fact is Maduro was/is just another right wingnut tin pot dictator. Just like Führer Trump. Or Führer Trump's idol, Putin.

Walk back the BoM of any product, and there you will find some number of natural resources plucked from the belly of Mother Earth. The issue becomes a problem when most, if not all, of the state's GDP is that extraction. It then becomes a much more tractable problem for the dictator to control a single sector of the economy, and, as often as not, in a relatively small part of the state. Texas is the perfect example.

I expect that Führer Trump is planning to garrison the oil fields down there, and let the rest of the country go to Hell.

Of course, an economy highly, if not wholly, based on pulling stuff out of the belly of Mother Earth will die when the stuff runs out. And, of course, when the 'owners' of the extracted resource feel the heat as new technology makes the resource less profitable. Führer Trump has it in for any non-fossil fuel source of electricity. I wonder why? Could it be he intends, like any good dictator, to siphon off much of the oil revenue to TRO? It has at least 500 entities now. What's a couple more hidden in that deep state?