{"id":2960,"date":"2002-10-20T21:30:39","date_gmt":"2002-10-20T21:30:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/staging.armedliberal.com\/?p=359"},"modified":"2002-10-20T21:30:39","modified_gmt":"2002-10-20T21:30:39","slug":"see-i-told-you-so","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=2960","title":{"rendered":"SEE!! I TOLD YOU SO!!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Via <a href=\"http:\/\/sketch.blogspot.com\/\" target=\"browser\">Andrew Edwards<\/a>, Thomas Friedman&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2002\/10\/20\/opinion\/20FRIE.html\" target=\"browser\">column<\/a> in the NYT. The key excerpt:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>Think of it like this: There are two ways for a government to get rich in the Middle East. One is by drilling a sand dune and the other is by drilling the talents, intelligence, creativity and energy of its men and women. As long as the autocratic leaders of Iran, Iraq or Saudi Arabia can get rich by drilling their natural resources, they can stay in power a long, long time. All they have to do is capture control of the oil tap. Only when a government has to drill its human resources will it organize itself in a way that enables it to extract those talents \u0097 with modern education, open trade, and freedom of thought, of scientific enquiry and of the press.<br \/>\nFor all these reasons, if we really want to hasten the transition from autocracy to something more democratic in places like Iraq or Iran, the most important thing we can do is gradually, but steadily, bring down the price of oil \u0097 through conservation and alternative energies.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Yeah!! What he said!!<br \/>\nThe sad fact is that the oil-producing countries are rich junkies; their lives and health are falling apart, but the trust fund manages to keep them afloat, hooked, and unhealthy. Without it, they would hit bottom and have to change. With it, the decline is prolonged.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Via Andrew Edwards, Thomas Friedman&#8217;s column in the NYT. The key excerpt: Think of it like this: There are two ways for a government to get rich in the Middle East. One is by drilling a sand dune and the other is by drilling the talents, intelligence, creativity and energy of its men and women. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2960"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2960\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}