Delete comment from: Captain Capitalism
Josh, you're looking at it uninformedly, and, a la Aaron, are so sure you're right you aren't even checking into the facts. Check out yesterday's FT -- it's not just that van der Veer said he was satisfied with the deal, he counselled oil companies to look at more deals like it!
This: "he puts his company's profits in even greater danger. At this point, he's simply trying to minimize the losses." is wrong, and silly, and not how you run a business. The loss would've been a fixed amount and probably not so bad -- he could've appealed to the Netherlands for help with Chavez (which he didn't even _try_ to do) and anyway gotten at least a tax write off, and then it's done. Much better than hemmhoraging money for God knows how long. And _not one_ of the comnpanies made that choice! The mind boggles at how much you are refusing to consider the evidence here.
As for "I don't think that you can argue that this deal is profitable for the oil companies," um, no, actually you can't argue it's not, unless they;re lying to their shareholders and all about to go to jail. Duh, it's not as profitable as if Chavez were charging less. But it's profitable as hell -- it was years ago and the oil price has just gone up.
As for, "Besides, if the oil companies were truly benefiting from this deal then why would they need to be forced into it in the first place?" are you seriously suggesting they were going to just give Chavez a bigger cut out of the goodness of their hearts? He said, give me a better price, or I find another distributor. It's the same thing any manufacturer might do to his distributors. If it's theft, all of capitalism is theft. It's not. Nobody will agree but Aaron and he's an ass. Theft would've been if Venezuela actually took the property with no compensation --- and that was never on the table.
Look, argue it if you want. But please do read something about it first.
May 16, 2006, 2:25:00 PM
Posted to Best of Captain Capitalism - Why Low Corporate Taxes are Like Cary Grant