Property regimes have been making the news lately in spades. it seems like every time one nation transitions away from nationalized or collectivized resource management, another is waiting in the wings to take its place. The contrast between incredibly short life spans of national property regimes to long-held traditional collective and familial property regimes also refers us back to the social nature of property relations. Shifting ownership entitlements mean shifting social values.

I was really hoping someone would write this article, and Jonah Gindin has done it brilliantly.

"Venezuela's and Canada's Very Different Approaches to Oil," originally published in Alberta Voice (but I found it on Venezuelananalysis.com), runs through the making of oil policy in these nations, pointing to the places where these policies converged and ultimately diverged over time.

Gindin recommends Canada take a page out of Venezuela's book by increasing oil royalties on the Alberta tar sands and diverting these funds towards social programs. He makes two excellent cases for such a move: the first, being the ecological unsustainability of current oil production, ultimately arguing for a reinvestment of oil dollars into a world-leading, renewable, alternative energy industry; the second case, based on fostering a strong, political, civic culture in Canada, where every Canadian has an opportunity to go to university, to get access to free health care, and to eat healthy, nutritious, locally-grown food. At least that's the success Gindin points to of the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela. It's exciting to imagine there being no more excuses for cut after destructive cut to Canadian social programs in provinces across the country.