Libya has been a classic case of the resource curse: enormous resource wealth (even on a per-person basis), but instead of prosperity, the windfall has coincided with poverty and political oppression. The new government now has the job of finding a way to lift the curse on Libya. A recent editorial by Kevin Voigt of CNN suggests that one of the best ways to do so would be to embrace, what he calls, the “Alaska solution:” distribute some of the oil revenue directly to the people. The article examines other cases such as Norway, Mongolia, and Bolivia to find lessons for how to avoid the resource curse and to bolster the case for the Alaska solution.
The editorial, “The ‘resource curse’: An Alaskan solution for Libya?” by Kevin Voigt of CNN
September 6, 2011, is online at:
https://edition.cnn.com/2011/BUSINESS/09/05/libya.oil.resource.curse/index.html
