My favorite country happens to be Brazil. Want to buy a OLD Volkswagen bug? I mean like a 69? Ok. 4000 dollars please!! Many do not have cars there. Yet here in the USA a fusca ( volkswagen ) of the same variety costs you 500 max if you are foolish enough to make the purchase.

Yet in both cases capitalism is working. In Brazil a fusca is a large step up from shanks mares. In the USA even the poor have a car in contrast with Brazil exactly because you can buy a used one for so little.

As to the first poster talking about how oil revenue has decoupled the governments from the people I have a reply: Talk about wanting instant gratification!!!! The situations in the oil rich countries depending solely on oil revs are CLEARLY temporary and in addition a step up from not having oil revenue at all. Many of these countries had both feet in the 10th century only a short time ago. Or in other words….do you REALLY think a goof like Hugo Chavez maintains power without oil revenue? That stuff runs out you know!

An old boss of mine used to talk about how you do the business of an engineering project. You get the client “pregnant” so they can not back out of the business marriage. Well Saudi Arabia is pregnant. There is no going back. When oil revs run out you’ll see a whole new day and one more step towards democracy. However if you are looking for instant gratification…go rent a porno.

Lewis contends that democracies failed to flourish in the oil-rich regions of the mideast because oil-money allowed leaders in those regions to rule without collecting taxes or establishing support from the citizenry:

“You know, there’s this old American dictum: no taxation without representation. What is sometimes overlooked is that the converse is also true: no representation without taxation. And with our revenues, they didn’t need taxes; therefore, they didn’t need assemblies to levy taxes. And they were made independent of public opinion in their own countries with this untold wealth accruing from oil revenues. This greatly strengthened the power of autocratic governments, far greater than it had ever been in the past. Now if traditional Islamic government is authoritarian, but it is not dictatorial or despotic, it is governed under certain rules and so on.

In modern times, the power of the ruler has been vastly augmented by these huge revenues so that he doesn’t need public support or public approval of his taxes. It has also been increased by all kinds of modern devices for surveillance and repression so that any tin pot dictator today wields far greater powers than were ever wielded by Suleyman the Magnificent or Harun al-Rashid or any of the legendary rulers of the Islamic past.” – Bernard Lewis