Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Fabulous Quote about the Oil Experience

"Oil creates the illusion of a completely changed life, life without work, life for free…. The concept of oil expresses perfectly the eternal human dream of wealth achieved through lucky accident…. In this sense oil is a fairy tale and, like every fairy tale, a bit of a lie."

- Ryszard Kapuściński, Shah of Shahs

6 comments:

  1. Yes, I really like this quote. In France, a really famous (probably just in France) economist uses to speak about "oil's tragedy". From the moment that a country has got oil, its economy, and the rest are going to decline progressively. And just a small part of the society "the elits" will profit of this wealth. The only one exception to this rule is Norway!
    What do you think about that?

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  2. florent,

    i think that norway is very very lucky :)

    we'll see how everyone else fares.

    how are you? want to contribute to my blog?

    besitos!
    alena

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  3. It is very dangerous to blame a very human falsehood on a substance sitting in the ground.

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  4. not a bad point, david :P
    it is all about people, not about things

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  5. It is, however, easier to blame it on the oil.

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  6. any change creates both loss and gain. when one side of the equation become overloaded with greed and personal gain versus community opportunity, equilibrium is lost and the slope is slippery in the downward direction.

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