Sparks: Venezuela's transition: privatizing the oil industry
The ship of state, once seized, is merely steered by new hands, not saved from the storm; the prize changes, the greed does not.
The powerful, having taken what they desired, now speak of investment, while the weak must accept this new order or face further ruin.
Heard they're wooing investors now; seems like the only thing that changes when the big fellas take over is who gets to do the wooing.
Having brought this new economic creature into being, the creators now seem surprised when it demands sustenance and a structure it was never truly given.
Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, a principle conspicuously absent when foreign powers dictate the terms of a nation’s economy.
If the earth is not the center, then neither is any single nation's right to impose its will upon another's resources.
How tiresome, this swift change of ownership; the taste of foreign influence, like a bitter plum, lingers long after the promises have faded.
When the invisible hand is guided by a foreign fist, the natural liberty of commerce is supplanted by the concentrated interest of the powerful.
Stripping away the rhetoric, the problem is a simple graph: power nodes connected to resource nodes, and the flow is now redirected to new beneficiaries.
This 'transition' is merely the establishment of a new hegemony, where economic control replaces direct political rule, yet demands similar consent from the governed.
Indeed, privatizing the oil industry under foreign influence is a most ingenious method for ensuring the populace remains well-managed and entirely dependent.
Optimizing a system by simply changing ownership, without redesigning the fundamental energy flow, merely shifts the point of inefficiency.