The oil curse in America

By Fester:

I have been keeping an eye on netroots' peak schradenfreude concerning the indictment of Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaskas & the Bridge to Nowhere) and I have been enjoying myself.  The basic story is that Senator Stevens is accused of allegedly taking unreported home renovations from a major oil field service contractor and then pushing favorable legislation for that company.  There are several other things going on too, but that is the gist of the story. 

Besides learning that seeing Republicans indicted for corruption related to the oil industry is always good for the Republican running for President, I saw a pretty perceptive comment over at the Next Right regarding oil and corruption:

There's just something about Alaska politics, it's like a Republican version of Lousiana.  It needs to stop now...

Remember, Louisiana is the state where a sitting Dem. Congresscritter (allegedly) had a $90,000 block of cash sitting in his freezer and where most of his family is already indicted for corruption and influence peddling charges.  So what is the commonality?

Both states are heavily dependent on oil revenue and they don't have a whole lot of other economically viable propositions going to support themselves.  Oil produces rent seeking behaviors as it produces a higher rate of return than anything else in the local economy.  The political fighting is over rents.  This means the fight is over a single pie of revenue instead of the opportunity to creat new revenue pies, corruption and insider dealing are a natural response to zero-sum games.  Lousiana through an accident of history happens to have Democrats as the primary beneficiary of these fights while Alaska produces Republican 'winners' of these fights.