PJ Vogt

I've read a decent amount about the resource curse.

I thought I understood it, but I'd never seen a resource curse story like Venezuela.

The story of Venezuela is a story of leader after leader using oil wealth to try some of the most imaginative arrangements of government and economy I had ever heard of.

The country itself almost like a laboratory for all the different ways you could try to structure a society.

Okay, so we're going to start our story in a place I think you have to.

Chapter one, oil.

So I want to dive into that history.

Right before Venezuela finds oil, what is the country like?

The economy, the government, what does it look like in Venezuela?

And so what does that look like?

What does it mean for this one resource to be so central to the country itself?

And so people are seeing this very early, even if it's more like an instinct, like just this feeling of like, oh, this goopy...

Black discharge from the soil that's so valuable.

Like, people have a feeling that this could be a problem.

Chapter two, Venezuelan democracy.

What is his prescription for the relationship between how Venezuela controls its own oil and whether or not it's democratic?

Because what you have in the early decades is essentially like dictators making deals with foreign oil companies like

I will violently subjugate people here, and I'll make sure the oil flows.

Exactly right.

Before the oil shock, because it seems like it's kind of a very, I don't want to say utopian moment, but like...