Like their counterparts in other Third World nations, Middle Eastern socialist-orientated regimes are inefficient and mismanaged, and they tolerate t… - Neil H. Jacoby

In a world market that was free of all taxes, royalties, or other governmental constraints, and in which competition was effective, the price of oil would be very low. But the real-world market for oil is dominated by high taxation by the oil-exporting nations, and, since 1972, by concerted efforts of the members of the OPEC to raise prices and to restrict output. Because of effective competition in the industry and the power of OPEC, an international oil company today has relatively little influence on the price of oil to consumers.

In many foreign nations, especially those in the Third World, political and social evolution has been such as to produce a monolithic state that lacks any clear division between a public and a private sector. Indeed, throughout much of the world today, official political ideology is hostile to the concepts of the private-enterprise market economy.

A static technology is, however, almost inconceivable. It runs so strongly against established drives in American society as to be practically impossible. So long as we are thinking beings, we will find new ways to increase the productivity of work! The basic point, however, is that economic growth is needed to improve the quality of life. A rise in the GNP, taken by itself, is neither good nor bad. Everything depends upon what kind of production has increased, its costs to society, and who benefits from it. What people now want and need is resource-conserving, pollution-free growth—growth that does not harm the environment and demands less of the earth’s limited resources.