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Subject: The High Cost Of Cheap Oil
SYSOP    12/20/2014 5:57:49 AM
 
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Tucci78    Try getting government out of the economy   12/20/2014 8:05:56 AM
Great Britain was (in the modern era) the nation that invented mercantilism, and yet when H.M. government found themselves responsible for the Crown Colony of Hong Kong - a seaport that had little land and essentially no other resources - they were obliged to understand that playing their usual game ("picking winners" by government regulation) wouldn't work.
 
 
So they let the market operate.  They established Hong Kong as a free port and - to the surprise of nobody who has ever considered the subject of political economics from an intellectually honest perspective - the colony thrived.  
 
Considering the conditions of misgovernment in the Mediterranean basin and economic stultification imposed thereby, a considered decision by the government in Algiers to turn their country into a free-trade zone (precisely as H.M. government had administered Hong Kong) would most definitely draw in both trade and private-sector capital investment to confer genuine prosperity upon the population of their polity. 
 
Government expenditures are turned only to politically "sweet" (expedient) projects and are rife with corruption.  
 
Let the private sector allocate resources, and those resources will tend far more reliably to go into sustainable enterprises which are undertaken not for purposes of "legal plunder" but to make profits and thereby confer returns upon investment.
 
There's the route to real prosperity for Algeria.  
 
 
 
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HR    Tucci   12/20/2014 1:49:15 PM
"They established Hong Kong as a free port and - to the surprise of nobody who has ever considered the subject of political economics from an intellectually honest perspective - the colony thrived."
 
I wish you where right. I really do... but Hong King was "picked" as a winner when it was given its special status. This is a piece of land that cannot defend itself or exist with out the proximity to mainland China and the special relationship at that time with Great Britain.
 
Even today it is a "picked" winner as an alternative to main land China for wealthy people who want to hide money. This could end with a simple police raid to a few banks.
 
 
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