[nickkline]

Headline aside, I thought it was an excellent story. The company, Unaoil, is the least important point I took away from the article. I can't believe the fundamental connection between corruption and radicalization isn't reported on or discussed more frequently. It seems like the rise in extremists groups is blamed on the 'vacuum' left by an invasion or an overthrown government. When describing the gradual sympathy for the Taliban by "moderate, normal people" in Afghanistan: >"At the top of the list of reasons cited by prisoners for joining the Taliban was not ethnic bias, or disrespect of Islam, or concern that U.S. forces might stay in their country...At the top of the list was the perception that the Afghan government was irrevocably corrupt."

[tdaltonc]

My biggest Takeaway from Heinlein's Starship Troopers was that a stable society has to be very good at subverting the energies of ambitious people into prosocial activities. And the only way to do that is to make sure prosocial activities are the best way for ambitious people to get what they want. Otherwise, marginalized but ambitious people will conspire to overthrow the social order that spurned them.

This seems like a similar moral.

[emodendroket]

Well, to be fair, the corruption has to be at least somewhat related to the fact that the US took over and was operating in a place where it didn't know anyone on an entirely cash basis.