Both Canada and the US have a solid middle class and residents enjoy quite a bit of freedom. Norway is also near the top of the list, and have made oil into a huge boon for the citizenry.
The biggest thing is countries need to either have a diverse economy or they need to use the oil wealth to build such an economy. Many of the countries on that list have not and they are in for a bad time when the oil runs dry or others simply produce enough that they no longer matter. Venezuela should be higher on that list, but they really screwed themselves. (Countries like China, despite producing a fair bit of oil, actually import a shitload via sea routes they have no ability to protect. It’s actually a huge vulnerability for them if they find themselves on the wrong side of a blockade.)
But, back to the point, it isn’t so much that oil makes your country shit. It’s just that oil happens to exist heavily in a region filled with shit countries (and don’t be mistaken, their are many shit countries in the world). The Middle East has been a disaster area for a long, long, long time.
That hasn’t worked out well for the people of many countries that have oil. In Saudi Arabia, women only got the right to drive legally in 2017.
Here’s the 2022 top 10 oil producing nations. How many of those would you like to live in?
source
Both Canada and the US have a solid middle class and residents enjoy quite a bit of freedom. Norway is also near the top of the list, and have made oil into a huge boon for the citizenry.
The biggest thing is countries need to either have a diverse economy or they need to use the oil wealth to build such an economy. Many of the countries on that list have not and they are in for a bad time when the oil runs dry or others simply produce enough that they no longer matter. Venezuela should be higher on that list, but they really screwed themselves. (Countries like China, despite producing a fair bit of oil, actually import a shitload via sea routes they have no ability to protect. It’s actually a huge vulnerability for them if they find themselves on the wrong side of a blockade.)
But, back to the point, it isn’t so much that oil makes your country shit. It’s just that oil happens to exist heavily in a region filled with shit countries (and don’t be mistaken, their are many shit countries in the world). The Middle East has been a disaster area for a long, long, long time.