Ayn Rand on Crude

Oil Monopoly

Iakovos Alhadeff

Journalist: You do not believe in government intervention. You believe

in the free market. Do you therefore believe that the oil rich countries,

which have monopoly power in the oil market, should be able to sell their

oil to us at any price they wish?

Ayn Rand: Not at all. I believe exactly the opposite. These countries

have monopoly power because we allowed them to steal oil that belonged

to American companies, we allowed them to steal our oil. That’s how

they obtained monopoly power.

Journalist: What do you mean by ‘our oil’? We do not own Saudi Arabia

or Iran.

Ayn Rand: Of course it was our oil. American companies owned the oil

facilities by contracts. These countries broke these contracts by literally

killing us, and nationalized what was the property of American

companies. That’s how they obtained monopoly power.

The oil was there for centuries and they were not able to do anything with

it. They asked for our help, they signed contracts, and then they attacked

us and stole our property.

Journalist: Do you suggest that we should have used force to prevent

them from nationalizing the oil facilities?

Ayn Rand: Of course we should have. They were not even capable of

running our facilities and they had to hire Americans to do so. They were

primitive societies that could have not done anything with their oil

without our help.

Note! I lightly changed the conversation to make it a bit shorter, but I did

not change at all the Ayn Rand spirit. You can see the full interview at the

following link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rydsea_Y8xI