Preface. Since this blog focuses on peak resources, I drastically rearranged my notes from this book in the order I found most interesting. I’m also interested in corruption, Putin, fake news, and more, as you’ll see below. Since the book is 405 pages, I’ve obviously left out quite a bit, so buy it if you want to know more and much better flow and continuity.
Although peak oil is often spoken of as a geological issue, it can also stop flowing from wars, financial crashes, and in Russia’s case, from corruption.
By the way, Russia isn’t communist any more. It is a mafia totalitarian state. The only 5 nations that are still “communist” are North Korea, China, Vietnam, and Laos.
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Maddow, R. 2019. Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth. Crown.
Russia Peak Oil & Corruption
Putin had decided that Russia would be a petro-state—choosing an economic future for his country that best served his own needs. Oil and gas could be wielded as an international cudgel to force other countries to respect and deal with Russia no matter anything else Russia did. The industry also—bonus!—trailed enough easy cash to generate almost instant, almost limitless corruption wherever needed. And when you have those kinds of goals in mind for your one indispensable industry, and you run that industry like a Mafia chop shop with less omertà, eventually the actual business side of your dark little authoritarian scheme is going to suffer. Both financially and in its basic technical competence. And indeed, by 2014, the bright red star of Russian energy was dimming.
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