

Alaska is a petrol state, but uses its oil wealth in more conservative ways - joeyespo
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_juice/2014/08/alaska_is_a_petrol_state_but_it_uses_its_oil_wealth_in_much_more_conservative.html

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jrapdx3
Very interesting to observe that Alaska is politically conservative, yet shows
"liberal" values in important ways.

I visited parts of the state again this summer, and impressed with it's the
breadth of its multicultural history and the extent it's celebrated and
preserved. There is enormous environmental awareness and effort made to take
care of the state's natural bounty is notable. I always much to learn about
things and places I've never seen or known about first hand.

To the extent "conserve" is the root of "conservative" that must be regarded
as indeed a positive attribute.

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jandrewrogers
This is not that surprising. In terms of the well-known regional cultural
identities in the US, Alaska is a mix of Cascadian culture (i.e. the
Portland/Seattle/Vancouver arc) and Sagebrush culture (i.e. the intermountain
West).

The environmental awareness comes from the Cascadian culture. The Sagebrush
culture comes with the political view that how a person chooses to live their
life is none of the government's business, which has socially liberal
political effects. The multiculturalism comes from both.

Sagebrush regions are politically confusing to people from other parts of the
US. The background culture tend to be socially conservative, and ironically
also among the _least_ religious regions of the US, but in Sagebrush culture
there is a strong distaste for dictating how your neighbor lives their life.
It is politically libertarian, which has socially liberal effects, even though
the people tend a bit more conservative in their personal lives. This leads to
the famous legal minimalism of the Sagebrush parts of the US, where laws
common in other States do not even exist for many things and the laws that do
exist tend to be atypically permissive. Very "live and let live".

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Fjolsvith
Do not ever get in trouble in Alaska - they have very long sentences on par
with Federal sentences. With all that oil revenue, they can afford to lock
people up for long times. I know this from personal experience!

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to3m
Yet more TYPICAL US REVISIONISM. Once again they DENY the role that the UK has
played in international history - this time OMITTING it, NEEDLESSLY, from the
list of profligate petrostates.

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saryant
> Yet more TYPICAL US REVISIONISM. Once again they DENY the role that the UK
> has played in international history - this time OMITTING it, NEEDLESSLY,
> from the list of profligate petrostates.

Are you mad that Slate didn't mention the UK, or mad that they didn't call
them profligate?

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to3m
Both, of course. People always assume it's developing/Middle Eastern/BRICS-
style states that have the monopoly on pissing away their oil bounty, by
taking the revenues and spending them rather than investing them - but it's
not so, damnit!

(As I understand it, since the UK was never part of OPEC, nor restricted by
any self-imposed quota a la pre-peak USA, private companies were allowed to
produce as much oil as they could. This meant working through the available
resources as quickly as possible, with the resulting excess holding down the
prices they were sold at. (The UK - and Norway - were at one point major oil
producers.) All in all, not very strategic - though the UK always seemed to do
very poorly as a command economy, so, even in retrospect, probably not the
wrong thing.)

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justincormack
I don't think that the UK producing excess oil was a significant factor in
keeping the oil price down; peak production was in 1985, when prices were
falling due to excess production (and large falls in demand) but Russia was a
far bigger producer.

The money was not invested it is true, but not producing it at that point
(given the large investments) would probably not have been optimal either.

