In 1900, Argentina was a happy member of the worldwide British Empire, supplying its beef demand and absorbing British capital. Later, the Americans expulsed British companies and banks and took over. The Americans explored the land and founded a local oil industry. In the sixties, after an epic political battle led by Arturo Frondizi, the American "seven sisters" were expulsed from Argentina and their nationalized holdings were consolidated into the YPF, Yacimientos Petroliferos Fiscales.
The century ending, nationalism lost its magic and YPF was sold to Repsol, a Spanish company owned by catalan La Caixa and Sacyr, a real estate developer. Now YPF is being sold to the CNPC, the Chinese oil monopoly, for 14 billion dollars. Argentine oil industry is at the margins of the world economy, but I think that it reveals what is happening in general. And the final outcome of the 19th Century as shown in this case study is the expulsion of the Americans from their "empire" and their replacement by the dynamic Chinese People's Republic. I am not the first to notice this trend, but I am familiar with YPF and the mass movement that brought about its creation.
Illustration: General Mosconi on how the Americans created (stole, according to the author) the Argentine oil industry. The book was published by the prestigious Circulo Militar and started the process that led to the creation of YPF. I wonder what he would say now.
8 comments:
In 1898 the US defeated the Spanish during the SpanAm war and in the process assumed headship of Latin America. Aside from the nationalization in Argentina, the Mexicans nationalized US oil interests in the early 1940's and the Cubans stole everything in the early sixties. In addition to those nationalizations there have probably been others that I am not aware of. On top of that Carter gave the Panama Canal to the Panamanians and in the late 90's the Chinese bribed Panamanian officials in order to win the contract to run the canal. So now the Chinese will probably take over LA. In fact the Chinese now have a massive electronic listening post at Lourdes, Cuba next to the Russian one.
Thinking about the American Century in Latin America, the only time I can think of the region as being stable is during the period before the Second World War when the US practiced Dollar Diplomacy and simply invaded insolvent and disorderly countries and ruled them against their will.
What I don't understand is why LA's native White class is so unproductive. These people have the same blood or similar to what we do and they achieve nothing. I know saying as much is hypocritical considering my job, but I have always thought that LA could achieve quite a bit on its own without us and they don't.
Here are the only explanations I can think of as to why they achieve jack shit:
1. Indian/Negro blood. This one doesn't explain why Argentina is a basket case though. Also, the remaining Whites in the region also seem to achieve nothing.
2. The US has millions of Jews while LA does not and these Jews are the driving force of the American economy.
3. Catholicism
4. The soil north of the Rio Grande has magical properties that cause the people who live there to be successful while those south of the RG don't get to experience this magical force and therefore are poor.
5. Bueno! Bueno!
RonDuck says:
2. The US has millions of Jews while LA does not and these Jews are the driving force of the American economy.
Yes, but most of the Jews are lawyers, and as we all know, lawyers fuck things up magnificently.
I agree that lawyers, when they grow beyond their niche of settling disputes, are a sign of a country in decline. Most of America's lawyers specifically work on regulatory compliance, representing clients before government agencies, not courts. Expanded liability before the law for trivial matters that a business shouldn't be liable for also retards economic progress. However, both expanded legal areas are the result of expanded government regulation, and the passage of unnecessary laws. However, if the laws didn't exist the lawyers in this field would find other employment. That or they would starve.
Not all of these lawyers are Jews, and the dead weight on the US economy would still exist even if the Jews were to disappear tomorrow, with the positions being filled by gentiles.
A large minority of Jews work in science and engineering, and are benefit to our standard of living. The Jews in other fields are almost certainly a financial benefit too.
Of course, I'm not counting Rahm Emmanuel or others that work in policy positions in the federal government.
Without commenting on the Jewish aspect, I will agree that lawyers in general are on balance a huge drag on all the Western economies and a source of inefficiency,and unproductive fear, rather than the opposite. In this they are ably assisted by the judiciary, who routinely render judgements that are totally and utterly beyond comprehension.
I bet they know how to control the lawyers in Israel, which is fast acquiring a reputation as a high-tech success story.
Anon.
Lawyers are necessary. In the Government, no letter is sent out without the vetting of the legal adviser. The problem is in the laws and the regulations, that are idiotic. Society is becoming to complex for our minds to manage.
Society is becoming to complex for our minds to manage.
I disagree. The problem is that government regulation is expanding more than is necessary. For every regulation that is passed a company must often hire a lawyer to handle their relations with the agency enforcing the law.
I have wasted some tine reading about Nordic construction projects, and my impression is that they didn't have this problem as late as the early 1990's an may not now. I was on the website of the national roads administration of Norway, and the project was planned, costed out, and simply approved by the parliament. I think the national legislature had the final say on whether the bridge would be built, in effect they have a unified permitting and appropriations process.
A lot of our national permitting process here could be simply abolished, with the lawyers finding other work.
"Society is becoming to complex for our minds to manage."
Yes it certainly is -- an economist recently wrote a piece called "Complexity kills" stating that all complex systems have a noted tendency to break down to more basic and simple levels that are easier to comprehend - http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/1723 - i.e. complexity can only be sustained for a short time before it collapses.
What is happening now is the breakdown of very complex systems in favor of more simple ones.
Sometimes an increasingly complex world develops higher order control systems to handle such complexity, instead of collapsing back into simpler forms.
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