Hi all,
I’m seeing a lot of hate for capitalism here, and I’m wondering why that is and what the rationale behind it is. I’m pretty pro-capitalism myself, so I want to see the logic on the other side of the fence.
If this isn’t the right forum for a political/economic discussion-- I’m happy to take this somewhere else.
Cheers!
I think you’re misidentifying what’s happening. The petrochemical industry is capitalist in capitalist countries (or not, see Aramco) and communist in communist countries. Communist countries have various arrangements of state owned and run petrochemical industries. There was a petrochemical industry in the USSR. Present day Venezuela has PDVSA, Vietnam has PetroVietnam, and Cuba has CUPET. Laos is a little unclear and North Korea is shrouded in mystery.
Oil production and distribution is an international operation, and oil markets are just that, Markets. Very few if any countries drill, produce, refine and consume their own petroleum sources. Most countries may have only one or a couple facilities that can extract or refine oil. All crude oil is assessed by its grade and given a value on the international market. Extractive economies (Russia for example) have to either refine and consume their own product which they can’t use to put currency in their economy or they sell raw crude to, say, India for US Dollars. India will either refine it for it’s own needs or sell it at market. Canada extracts it’s oil from oil sands, sends it down to the gulf coast for refining and transshipment to other markets. This is classically a Capitalist supply and demand market, and oil producing countries use oil proceeds to buy foreign currency reserves, regardless of their political system. The entirety of it is Capitalist from beginning to end.
That you’re even attempting to try and deflect the various excesses of Capitalism with specious reasoning like “Communist countries produce oil too so not Capitalism” is puerile and an argument in bad faith. You’re trying to work back towards your hypothesis “Capitalism good” without doing the work of actually building the argument. Your ineffective points are useless and wholly unconvincing. You’re just a shill without an intellectual understanding of what you are attempting to put across. Your ham-fisted defense of Capitalism is simple refutation, you haven’t posited anything yourself, you’re just attempting to refute what other’s have responded to your bait question. Saying “nuh-uh” isn’t a defense or a rationale.
I’ve wasted more time on this than I cared to.