Por acá hablamos varias veces de la “maldición de los recursos naturales”

Argentina es un caso especial. Se trata de una especie de Arabia Saudita agrícola ganadera. Tiene la ventaja de que, a diferencia del petróleo o la minería, la actividad agrícola ganadera no se puede estatizar. Alguien tiene que seguir produciendo. Creo que eso le da alguna oportunidad de cambio.

No se pierdan esta columna, de lo más claro que he leído sobre el tema. Lamentablemente, la descripción le va como anillo al dedo a la Argentina kirchnerista. Cambien “oil” por “soybean” y listo calisto:

Perhaps even more significantly, the oil curse nurtures bad politics. Because governments of such countries do not need to tax the population to amass giant fiscal revenues, their leaders can afford to be unresponsive and unaccountable to taxpayers, who in turn have tenuous and often parasitic links with the state. With their ability to allocate immense financial resources pretty much at will, such governments inevitably grow corrupt.

Once in power, such oil-rich governments are hard to dislodge, spending vast public resources to buy out or repress political opponents. Statistically, an authoritarian oil country is far less likely to move to democracy than a resource-poor autocracy. Oil-rich governments in developing countries spend two to 10 times more on their militaries than poor or middle-income countries, and are more prone to go to war. Most oil-exporting countries that do not have strong democratic institutions before they start exporting crude create an inhospitable environment for democracy.

(Gracias, Kuna)