In The Dictator's Handbook, by Bruce bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith, the authors outline why those who live in an extraction economy often do so under what we term dictatorships. Briefly, the supporters that are needed to maintain that extraction economy are a very small subset of the population and, from a government perspective, are not essential. The supporters you end up needing are the portion of the working class needed to run the extraction operation and a police force to keep the rest of the population in check. (Well, and a treasurer and some other bureaucrats, but the application here is to Texas in the U.S., where those services, and an army to defend your territory, are provided by the federal government.) In banana and oil republics, it's actually beneficial for the ruling class if most of the population is weakened and starving, as they are less able to organize.
Contrast this with a classical democracy, where the support base is the general population, and the treasury is made possible by the increased productivity of an educated populace who have access to infrastructure that supports their economic activity. In that instance, it is, broadly speaking, the health of the populace that feeds the health of the state.
I bring this contrast up at this time for two reasons. First, in the present case of an extraction colony existing inside a U.S. state, we can find a coherent theory of the difference between Republican/Conservative policies, such as states rights, authoritarianism, veneration of the mythology of the (by definition unempowered) individual, and left policies (I leave out Democrats, our centrist party): The former policies are tailored to preserve capital concentrations, favor extractive economic activity, curb controls on pollution, and suppress unions, all with the all-too-easy resort to violence (or it's equivalent, the all-too-common occurrence of looking the other way). The latter policies, from the left, are the opposite, intended to protect the (in fact) powerless and to broaden economic benefit, often through redistribution. Republicanism in this country, allied with business, exists in order to set up and protect banana republics at the state level.
Second, we can point to other trends that are worrying in the U.S. For example, infrastructure decay should be seen as a lagging indicator of the economic vitality of a democratic nation; if the benefit of infrastructure accrues indirectly to the ruling class through the productivity of the working classes, then it (infrastructure) will be maintained. After that benefit has gone away (say after manufacturing, technology, and information jobs have moved overseas) the infrastructure can be allowed to decay, as other economic systems arise to extract what's left. Unfortunately, what's left is the remaining savings of the working classes. Think ad revenue for eyeballs, opaque healthcare markets and lack of medical accountability to generate and capitalize on health calamity, cornered apartment markets to extract rent, isolated extraction economies like Dakota shale and the Permian basin, farmland, and so on. No longer relevant to the productivity of a nation, the citizen becomes, at best, a resource; at worst, a burden.
Anyhow, for the reasons above, I find the presence of these extractive economies inside the U.S. worrying, more so if they are increasing. The dynamics of power, namely wealth extraction in order to pay supporters, do not bode well if it really has come to this.
The US is just returning to its traditional political economy, where the land is pillaged by elite interests, the rabble is dealt with as it can be, and any "freedom" anyone has is totally coincidental and mainly stems from the failure of elites to even pay attention to them because they are making so much more money subjugating and impoverishing rabble elsewhere.
The mid-20th century was a bizarre anomaly brought on by a number of non-repeatable factors, most notably WW2, the arms race, and Jim Crow, where we accidentally had broad-based economic growth that included a (almost totally white portion of the) working class. For centuries before that, the entire economic purpose of America was to be a literal extraction colony.
The infrastructure needed to run the wealth pumps (for example, the pipelines needed to pump crude from the Permian to the Gulf, or the West Coast ports needed to import Chinese-made dollar store tchotchkes) will not decay, but things like public transit, water treatment, and midcentury highway tunnels will probably get worse, at least outside elite enclaves like New York and San Francisco.
if the benefit of infrastructure accrues indirectly to the ruling class through the productivity of the working classes, then it (infrastructure) will be maintained. After that benefit has gone away (say after manufacturing, technology, and information jobs have moved overseas) the infrastructure can be allowed to decay
I'm trying to apply this reasoning to a different place (Los Angeles), but it doesn't seem to fit. Trucks, owned by the ruling class (i.e. shareholders of trucking companies) depend directly on those roads to make money. But the infrastructure is decaying anyway.
Contrast this with a classical democracy, where the support base is the general population, and the treasury is made possible by the increased productivity of an educated populace who have access to infrastructure that supports their economic activity. In that instance, it is, broadly speaking, the health of the populace that feeds the health of the state.
I bring this contrast up at this time for two reasons. First, in the present case of an extraction colony existing inside a U.S. state, we can find a coherent theory of the difference between Republican/Conservative policies, such as states rights, authoritarianism, veneration of the mythology of the (by definition unempowered) individual, and left policies (I leave out Democrats, our centrist party): The former policies are tailored to preserve capital concentrations, favor extractive economic activity, curb controls on pollution, and suppress unions, all with the all-too-easy resort to violence (or it's equivalent, the all-too-common occurrence of looking the other way). The latter policies, from the left, are the opposite, intended to protect the (in fact) powerless and to broaden economic benefit, often through redistribution. Republicanism in this country, allied with business, exists in order to set up and protect banana republics at the state level.
Second, we can point to other trends that are worrying in the U.S. For example, infrastructure decay should be seen as a lagging indicator of the economic vitality of a democratic nation; if the benefit of infrastructure accrues indirectly to the ruling class through the productivity of the working classes, then it (infrastructure) will be maintained. After that benefit has gone away (say after manufacturing, technology, and information jobs have moved overseas) the infrastructure can be allowed to decay, as other economic systems arise to extract what's left. Unfortunately, what's left is the remaining savings of the working classes. Think ad revenue for eyeballs, opaque healthcare markets and lack of medical accountability to generate and capitalize on health calamity, cornered apartment markets to extract rent, isolated extraction economies like Dakota shale and the Permian basin, farmland, and so on. No longer relevant to the productivity of a nation, the citizen becomes, at best, a resource; at worst, a burden.
Anyhow, for the reasons above, I find the presence of these extractive economies inside the U.S. worrying, more so if they are increasing. The dynamics of power, namely wealth extraction in order to pay supporters, do not bode well if it really has come to this.