peter Zeihan 2020
- Thread starter Cherico
- Start date
Hard to build up the skill base for advanced oil extraction when most of your country is under the control of one cartel or another, and young people aren't exactly going to Mexico for high-end tech jobs either.
It's not skills, it's political culture plus law and order. Corruption, bureaucracy, and what Zeihan calls "one of world's most draconian anti-investment laws".
State monopoly? Incompetent? Can't keep up with modern techs? Poor organization and corruption? Socialist government? Where have we heard that kind of stuff before...
In such circumstances, what idiot would invest into capital, human or machine, to make the energy sector work properly? And as a finishing blow add the current romance of green and red politically...
If it was skills alone, building them would be a formality, and when push comes to shove they could import western workers like Arabs do, and those may even ask less bonus for it than for living in a theocratic desert shithole.
Last edited:
Yes, the anti-investment laws are very much an issue.
However Ziehan also pointed out that Mexico is not producing the skilled workers needed to run the oil fields, which were put in a long time ago, and I guess have mostly been running on 'skill inertia' for a while.
Mexico is fine for mid-level manufacturing; running and drilling oil fields in very much not 'mid-level' anything.
Mexico is fully capable of solving the problem the problem is one of leadership.
Thats honestly the issue for the whole western world though, lots of problems that could be solved if the leadership wasn't so fucking incompetent and malicious.
As i said, if they wanted to get it fixed, they could hire foreigners like other third world countries do, it doesn't take many people to run the oil fields and the lower level techs can be local, unlike in many other countries.
The problem is that those foreigners would not only want the kind of salaries that make socialists seethe, they would also take cushy job spots that would make socialist politicians seethe double because normally their cronies would get those.
And then they would want to keep a lot of money to spend on machines and shit rather than bribing the electorate, and they would also not tolerate corruption and incompetence at lower levels like state monopoly does, which would piss off even more people.
Without fixing that mess, imagine what would happen even if they did have some skilled oil engineers, tutored by US ones or something?
If they didn't get assassinated, bribed, or threatened away by cartel friends of the status quo, socialists would decree that they can't be getting insane wages from state company while people in slums are poor, and so the next thing they would do would be getting a ticket to UAE or something where they would be able to get insane wages the moment they proven they can manage an oil field well.
And back to square one...
Last edited:
Mexico is starting to pull its head out of its ass on the economic front. But yeah that is the current situation.
Lord Sovereign
The resident Britbong
Question.
How on Earth could Mexico solve the Cartel issue with anything less than a Knight of the Long Knives? And if it could do that...what could it do next?
How on Earth could Mexico solve the Cartel issue with anything less than a Knight of the Long Knives? And if it could do that...what could it do next?
Mexico has a relatively young population, one that is more skilled then china, and lots of resources yes their geography is dog shit but their right next to the US and intregated into said market. They have every posibility of becoming a developed country.
Realistically, they can't.
Way too much demand for the product and way too much money is involved.
If one wanted to even make the attempt, the place to start is with the banks. Design a top to bottom, zero trust, banking system and force everyone who wants a bank account to link a finger print to their account. Track, at the national level and with multiple redundancies, every physical dollar entering the banking system and enforce positively draconian penalties on any financial institution in Mexico that violates the regulations.
LordsFire
Internet Wizard
The first thing you'd need is a leadership cadre for the federal government that's willing to go to drastic means to fight the cartels.
Second thing you need, is a leadership cadre in the federal government in the US that's willing to go to drastic measures to secure the border.
Then you need the two of them to work up. A prerequisite will probably be all immediate family and close friends of the federal government leadership leaving Mexico for secure, secret locations in the US, so they can't be used for leverage.
Then you deploy both militaries to the border, and lock it down hard. No more of this 'oh, got across the border, time to start indefinite legal proceedings over whether or not you're allowed here' business.
No, you cross the green line, warning shots are fired. You cross the yellow line, disabling shots are fired, and if you die, that's your own fault.
You cross the red line, heavy weaponry is deployed.
In time, this would choke the cartels out of Mexico. Drug running would still happen, but it would shift back towards getting in on the US's coast, rather than over land, and Mexico would be reduced to having cities that serve as waypoints, rather than being the core pipeline of the entire drug trade.
It would be an ugly, ugly process though, because those cartels aren't just going to let themselves get choked out. They're going to start full-up insurgencies throughout Mexico, and it'd almost certainly develop into a civil war along the way.
Then the Mexican government has to win said civil war. With active support from US forces, it wouldn't actually be that hard, but they'd have to have the political war to openly invite US air strikes, helicopter assaults, etc, into their own territory.
f1onagher
Well-known member
America either needs to magically stop wanting drugs or the border needs to be slammed shut for a few decades. And I do mean shut. Immigration is a release valve for Mexican political dissidents who would otherwise fight for change in their own country and America's fabulously wealthy black market is what feeds the Cartels. Actual immigration from Mexico has declined as the living standards in Mexico rise (and fall in the US) but the dysfunctional border has issues beyond just the people jumping the fence.
You also have to dismantle the legacy of the Institutional Revolutionary Party and free Mexico from the notoriously corrupt government edivices of Mexico City. Once you have a federal service that isn't just another cartel in a nicer suit then you can start purging regional governments. The important thing isn't to kill or punish the cartels themselves, but to keep reformers and legitimate politicans and officers alive and healthy so that a functional governmnet becomes the norm in Mexico and the citizenry treat it as such.
The cartels feed on a combination of American black market funds and Mexican despair. You have to lance both those boils at the same time to end the cartels, which, as LordsFire pointed out, requires good faith cooperation by both the US and Mexican governments.
As much as PRE sucks and they do suck hardcore, as an instiution they gave mexico what it never had before that a way to peacefully transfer power to another generation of leadership with out violence. They actually made mexico more stable, I mean they still suck hardcore but that is one thing in their favor.
Typhonis
Well-known member
The plant itself is fine. It's the extract that causes problems. Natives chew the leaves for a boost of energy.
Peter's thoughts on energy independence under Biden:
TL;DW:
-Public lands are regulated by the federal government
-Federal government only encourages energy production on federal lands when energy is scarce
-Time to permitting was lowest in Trump admin
-Biden increasing permitting time for onshore shale barely slows anything down due to how fast shale wells can be set up
TL;DW:
-Public lands are regulated by the federal government
-Federal government only encourages energy production on federal lands when energy is scarce
-Time to permitting was lowest in Trump admin
-Biden increasing permitting time for onshore shale barely slows anything down due to how fast shale wells can be set up
essentially he hurt things but things arnt as fucked up as they could be because the limitations of federal government.
that said
In no circumstances should the federal government ever own more then half of a state.
No wonder why Nevada is so fucked.
they have brought it up before because thats just rediculous but the states east of the miss always shut it down because their incapable of getting just how bad this hoses the western half of the country.
Personally I think a rule where only a maximum of 20% of a states land can be federal land is in order.