elruso.com Blog » Politics http://elruso.com/blog Evgueni Pervago writing about Web 2.0 and technology in general Wed, 12 Jul 2006 18:54:10 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 Here we go: Bolivia nationalizes the gas industry http://elruso.com/blog/2006/05/02/here-we-go-bolivia-nationalizes-the-gas-industry/ http://elruso.com/blog/2006/05/02/here-we-go-bolivia-nationalizes-the-gas-industry/#comments Tue, 02 May 2006 15:17:05 +0000 Evgueni Pervago http://elruso.com/blog/2006/05/02/here-we-go-bolivia-nationalizes-the-gas-industry/ As CNN reported yesterday, Bolivian president Evo Morales ordered nationalization of natural gas industry. I honestly believe this is a decision that will hurt Bolivia in the long run: state-owned companies suffer from acute sense of myopia in terms of extracting money now vs. investing in exploration & production.

In the Soviet Union, for example, maybe one third of all hydrocarbons underground in a particular well were extracted in a rush to move to the next one. In developing countries, the tendency is to suck the money out of the monopoly for electoral purposes while neglecting to find additional reserves.

Update: Nice round up of reactions to Bolivia nationalization over at Off Topic

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]]> http://elruso.com/blog/2006/05/02/here-we-go-bolivia-nationalizes-the-gas-industry/feed/ 0 Drug legalization http://elruso.com/blog/2006/04/29/drug-legalizaiton/ http://elruso.com/blog/2006/04/29/drug-legalizaiton/#comments Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:46:24 +0000 Evgueni Pervago http://elruso.com/blog/2006/04/29/drug-legalizaiton/ While Economist.com writes about medical benefits of marijuana, Mexican congress approved a bill legalizing small amounts of pot, cocaine and heroin.

Nice sampling of reactions over at Hammer of Truth.

Overall, a lot of knee-jerk reactions, but what I find most interesting is that the conservative, Catholic Political Action Party (PAN) also supported the bill. Tells you something about different political alignments down here.

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