BTW Charon, I recall pulling a few articles from NPN for a legislative member I was working with a couple of years ago. He hadn't heard of the practice of zone pricing before. I can't recall the author, but your name sounds familiar.
Probably me Crow. Was it the "Are the Majors Exiting Retail" article? I just did another 5,000 words on zone pricing and non-price vertical restraints last month. One of the two or three articles from hell you create each year where you have 10 sources and 10,000 words of quotes and 15 ideas trying to sort themselves out 2 days after edit close.
Honest statment. Far better then deniying what is going on and for whos benifit. But the 80% of the population whose lives might be made a little better by a more fair distribution of the oil revenues do not see it that way and the only way to keep it as controled as Bush and co want it is to remove thier ability to select thier own leaders.
So back to my original question for which I have been soundly roasted.
Why is democracy bad for Venezuela?
Cause its bad for big oil..
Correct?
I agree with Crow about our track record at nation building in Latin America and the fact that we should just keep our hands off. Let them get the democratic dictator they deserve. But, it's not really clear that Bush is going to heroic efforts to get rid of Chavez (unlike Hussein), though clearly life would be easier without him in power. In fact, the strikes generally serve to distract the uneducated poor who vote for him from the fact that for all the promises he has made there has been little real change. Before the last one there was growing unrest and sinking support among his base, but Chavez's ability to outlast the strikers gave him a public relations "victory" that boosted support back up above pre-strike levels. I suppose we’ll really see how democratic Chavez is when he loses his first election.
Frankly, I don't really know that in the long term Big Oil really cares all that much about Venezuela. There are price spikes now over his threats to cut production (which boost oil industry profits btw -- what a tragedy for big oil), but I doubt we'll see a 1973 any time soon unless there is a major disruption in the Middle East. (We may see record prices this summer btw, for a variety of reasons. Just have to wait and see.) Plus you don't necessarily need to replace Chavez, you can just continue to work to steadily to replace Venezuelan crude with other sources of supply. Now there’s Iraq. More a Saudi hedge, IMO, but oil is oil.
Charon
