IRAQ
Thanksgiving is always one of my favorite holidays. It gives you an opportunity to celebrate the holiday, give some thought to all the things that we have to be thankful for and still have a weekend!Thanksgiving may be a somewhat American holiday but I think that the sentiments of being thankful for health, family and prosperity are shared by people around the world. Having a free society with personal freedoms and property rights are things that are valued although many countries have governments that often trample those individual liberties. Iraq has the opportunity to become a free country and I have a few ideas how that could be expedited. I think that the insurgents and probably many Iraqis think that the US has an eye on their oil industry. If they stop to do the math, we would need to get 100% of their oil revenue with no deductions for costs for the next ten years to offset the costs that we have already incurred. That's not likely to happen.
My solution takes the Iraqi oil industry and divides it up into 8-10 operating companies. The stocks in those companies would be distributed to schools, police stations, libraries, hospitals and other agencies. The dividends from those stocks would become an important part of the budgets for those organizations. If an Iraqi felt that his kids education or his parent's pension was being paid for by a pipeline or an oil drilling facility, he would be less tolerant of insurgents damaging those facilities. It would also be difficult for a dictator to nationalize the industry to fund army's and palace's and it certainly would send a clear message that the US is not trying to take their oil.
After five years, the organizations could sell the stocks in the various companies that they hold and buy into business units that have a better history of providing profits and dividends. This would help promote competitiveness and efficiency on the part of each of the operating companies. Promoting competition and the free market is always a good thing.
posted by Michael Sick @ 6:26 PM
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