Resource Curse Quotes

I reach out and take his hand. “Well, he probably used up a lot of resources helping me knock you out,” I say mischievously. “Yeah, about that,” says Peeta, entwining his fingers in mine. “Don’t try something like that again.” “Or what?” I ask. “Or . . . or . . .” He can’t think of anything good. “Just give me a minute.” “What’s the problem?” I say with a grin. “The problem is we’re both still alive. Which only reinforces the idea in your mind that you did the right thing,” says Peeta. “I did do the right thing,” I say. “No! Just don’t, Katniss!” His grip tightens, hurting my hand, and there’s real anger in his voice. “Don’t die for me. You won’t be doing me any favors. All right?” I’m startled by his intensity but recognize an excellent opportunity for getting food, so I try to keep up. “Maybe I did it for myself, Peeta, did you ever think of that? Maybe you aren’t the only one who . . . who worries about . . . what it would be like if. . .” I fumble. I’m not as smooth with words as Peeta. And while I was talking, the idea of actually losing Peeta hit me again and I realized how much I don’t want him to die. And it’s not about the sponsors. And it’s not about what will happen back home. And it’s not just that I don’t want to be alone. It’s him. I do not want to lose the boy with the bread. “If what, Katniss?” he says softly. I wish I could pull the shutters closed, blocking out this moment from the prying eyes of Panem. Even if it means losing food. Whatever I’m feeling, it’s no one’s business but mine. “That’s exactly the kind of topic Haymitch told me to steer clear of,” I say evasively, although Haymitch never said anything of the kind. In fact, he’s probably cursing me out right now for dropping the ball during such an emotionally charged moment. But Peeta somehow catches it. “Then I’ll just have to fill in the blanks myself,” he says, and moves in to me. This is the first kiss that we’re both fully aware of. Neither of us hobbled by sickness or pain or simply unconscious. Our lips neither burning with fever or icy cold. This is the first kiss where I actually feel stirring inside my chest. Warm and curious. This is the first kiss that makes me want another. But I don’t get it. Well, I do get a second kiss, but it’s just a light one on the tip of my nose because Peeta’s been distracted. “I think your wound is bleeding again. Come on, lie down, it’s bedtime anyway,” he says.

The main obstacle to further progress on the resource curse is China, and to a lesser extent India.

. . . every society that grows extensive lawns could produce all its food on the same area, using the same resources, and . . . world famine could be totally relieved if we devoted the same resources of lawn culture to food culture in poor areas. These facts are before us. Thus, we can look at lawns, like double garages and large guard dogs, [and Humvees and SUVs] as a badge of willful waste, conspicuous consumption, and lack of care for the earth or its people. Most lawns are purely cosmetic in function. Thus, affluent societies have, all unnoticed, developed an agriculture which produces a polluted waste product, in the presence of famine and erosion elsewhere, and the threat of water shortages at home. The lawn has become the curse of modern town landscapes as sugar cane is the curse of the lowland coastal tropics, and cattle the curse of the semi-arid and arid rangelands. It is past time to tax lawns (or any wasteful consumption), and to devote that tax to third world relief. I would suggest a tax of $5 per square metre for both public and private lawns, updated annually, until all but useful lawns are eliminated.

This less-is-more phenomenon holds true not only for individuals but for entire nations. A good example is the “oil curse,” also known as the paradox of plenty. Nations rich in natural resources, especially oil, tend to stagnate culturally and intellectually, as even a brief visit to Saudi Arabia or Kuwait reveals. The citizens of these nations have everything so they create nothing. China

May your criminal enjoyments vanish as a shadow! may your ill-gotten wealth leave you without a resource; and may you yourself remain alone and deserted, to learn the vanity of these things, which now divert you from better pursuits!

The anti-resource curse initiative has stronger legs than most and that has made me very enthusiastic.

As I like to put it, we have hit pay dirt. The effort to cure the resource curse is a good example of what private foundations working with NGOs can accomplish.

... General Petraeus recognized the sacrifice made by two soldiers who had planned to become naturalized citizens at the ceremony, and were now represented by two pairs of boots on two chairs, having been killed in action two days before. "They died serving a country that was not yet theirs," Petraeus observed... I wish every American who out of ignorance or worse curses immigrants as criminals or a drain on the country's resources or a threat to our "culture" could have been there. I would like them to know that immigrants, many of them having entered the country illegally, are making sacrifices for Americans that many Americans would not make for them.

As far back as 1992, the Union of Concerned Scientists warned that humanity faced a stark choice between spending its resources on war and violence, or on preventing catastrophic environmental damage. The report was signed by 1,700 scientists, including the majority of Nobel Prize winners in the sciences.17 In 2017 the warning was reissued, and this time it was signed by more than 15,000 scientists: it concluded that the state of the world was even worse than before. The first UCS report attracted a good deal of attention; the second one passed almost unnoticed.

I wish every American who out of ignorance or worse curses immigrants as criminals or a drain on the country’s resources or a threat to our “culture” could have been there. I would like them to know that immigrants, many of them having entered the country illegally, are making sacrifices for Americans that many Americans would not make for them.

That life is thus created through the cult means salvation from that distress and destruction which would befall, if life were not renewed. For existence is an everlasting war between the forces of life and death, of blessing and curse. 'The world' is worn out if it is not regularly renewed, as anyone can see by the annual course of life and nature. Thus it is the 'fact of salvation' which is actualized in the cult.

Justin stared at the empty doorway, then dropped his head and cursed viciously. He had to leave. His instincts told him that a silken net was closing around him. If he didn’t escape soon, he would be entangled forever in its soft, tenacious bonds. But he couldn’t leave—he didn’t yet have the strength or the resources to evade Dominic Legare. This fragile masquerade was his only protection. The only question was, which threat was greater? The one posed by Dominic Legare…or the one posed by his own brother’s wife.

This is why today a country’s credit rating is far more important to its economic well-being than are its natural resources. Credit ratings indicate the probability that a country will pay its debts. In addition to purely economic data, they take into account political, social and even cultural factors. An oil-rich country cursed with a despotic government, endemic warfare and a corrupt judicial system will usually receive a low credit rating. As a result, it is likely to remain relatively poor since it will not be able to raise the necessary capital to make the most of its oil bounty. A country devoid of natural resources, but which enjoys peace, a fair judicial system and a free government is likely to receive a high credit rating. As such, it may be able to raise enough cheap capital to support a good education system and foster a flourishing high-tech industry.

Manhattan Prep started out as one lone tutor in a Starbucks coffee shop. Less than ten years later, it was a leading national education and publishing business that employed over one hundred people and was acquired by a public company for millions of dollars. How did that happen? We delivered a service that customers liked more than what was otherwise available. They sought us out and rewarded us with their business. We hired more people, grew, and kept improving. This process—a new company filling a need and flourishing as a result—is an example of value creation. It’s the fuel of economic growth, and what our country has been seeking a formula for. It’s the process that leads to new businesses and jobs. Value creation has a polar opposite: rent-seeking. In the 1980s, economists began noticing that countries with ample natural resources experienced lower economic growth rates than others. From 1965 to 1998 in the OPEC (oil-producing) countries, gross domestic product per capita decreased on average by 1.3 percent, while in the rest of the developed world, per capita growth increased by 2.2 percent (for an overall difference of 3.5 percent). This was a surprise—if you had lots of oil in the ground, wouldn’t that give you more wealth to invest and thus spur more rapid growth? Economists cited a number of factors to explain this “resource curse,” including internal and external conflict, corruption, lower monitoring of government, lack of diversification, and being subject to higher price volatility. One other possible explanation on offer was that a country’s smart people will wind up going to work in whatever industry is throwing off money (like the oil industry in Saudi Arabia). Thus fewer talented people are innovating in other industries, dragging down the growth rate over time. This makes sense—it’s a lot easier for a gifted Saudi to plug into the Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources and extract economic value than to come up with a new business or industry. Does this sort of thing happen in the United States? Yes, you can make money through rent-seeking as opposed to value or wealth creation.

the effects of this commitment throughout the Third World are dramatically clear: it takes only a moment’s thought to realize that the areas that have been the most under U.S. control are some of the most horrible regions in the world. For instance, why is Central America such a horror-chamber? I mean, if a peasant in Guatemala woke up in Poland [i.e. under Soviet occupation], he’d think he was in heaven by comparison—and Guatemala’s an area where we’ve had a hundred years of influence. Well, that tells you something. Or look at Brazil: potentially an extremely rich country with tremendous resources, except it had the curse of being part of the Western system of subordination. So in northeast Brazil, for example, which is a rather fertile area with plenty of rich land, just it’s all owned by plantations, Brazilian medical researchers now identify the population as a new species with about 40 percent the brain size of human beings, a result of generations of profound malnutrition and neglect—and this may be un-remediable except after generations, because of the lingering effects of malnutrition on one’s offspring. 54 Alright, that’s a good example of the legacy of our commitments, and the same kind of pattern runs throughout the former Western colonies. In fact, if you look at the countries that have developed in the world, there’s a little simple fact which should be obvious to anyone on five minutes’ observation, but which you never find anyone saying in the United States: the countries that have developed economically are those which were not colonized by the West; every country that was colonized by the West is a total wreck.

Kestrel came often. One day, when she knew from Sarsine that Arin had returned home but she had not yet seen him, she went to the suite. She touched one of his violins, reaching furtively to pluck the highest string of the largest instrument. The sound was sour. The violin was ruined--no doubt all of them were. That is what happens when an instrument is left strung and uncased for ten years. A floorboard creaked somewhere in one of the outer chambers. Arin. He entered the room, and she realized that she had expected him. Why else had she come here so frequently, almost every day, if she hadn’t hoped that someone would notice and tell him to find her there? But even though she admitted to wanting to be here with him in his old rooms, she hadn’t imagined it would be like this. With her caught touching his things. Her gaze dropped. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “It’s all right,” he said. “I don’t mind.” He lifted the violin off its nails and set it in her hands. It was light, but Kestrel’s arms lowered as if the violin’s hollowness were terribly heavy. She cleared her throat. “Do you still play?” He shook his head. “I’ve mostly forgotten how. I wasn’t good at it anyway. I loved to sing. Before the war, I worried that gift would leave me, the way it often does with boys. We grow, we change, our voices break. It doesn’t matter how well you sing when you’re nine years old, you know. Not when you’re a boy. When the change comes you just have to hope for the best…that your voice settles into something you can love again. My voice broke two years after the invasion. Gods, how I squeaked. And when my voice finally settled, it seemed like a cruel joke. It was too good. I hardly knew what to do with it. I felt so grateful to have this gift…and so angry, for it to mean so little. And now…” He shrugged, a self-deprecating gesture. “Well, I know I’m rusty.” “No,” Kestrel said. “You’re not. Your voice is beautiful.” The silence after that was soft. Her fingers curled around the violin. She wanted to ask Arin a question yet couldn’t bear to do it, couldn’t say that she didn’t understand what had happened to him the night of the invasion. It didn’t make sense. The death of his family was what her father would call a “waste of resources.” The Valorian force had had no pity for the Herrani military, but it had tried to minimize civilian casualties. You can’t make a dead body work. “What is it, Kestrel?” She shook her head. She set the violin back on the wall. “Ask me.” She remembered standing outside the governor’s palace and refusing to hear his story, and was ashamed once more. “You can ask me anything,” he said. Each question seemed the wrong one. Finally, she said, “How did you survive the invasion?” He didn’t speak at first. Then he said, “My parents and sister fought. I didn’t.” Words were useless, pitifully useless--criminal, even, in how they could not account for Arin’s grief, and could not excuse how her people had lived on the ruin of his. Yet again Kestrel said, “I’m sorry.” “It’s not your fault.” It felt as if it was. Arin led the way out of his old suite. When they came to the last room, the greeting room, he paused before the outermost door. It was the slightest of hesitations, no longer than if the second hand of a clock stayed a beat longer on its mark than it should. But in that fraction of time, Kestrel understood that the last door was not paler than the others because it had been made from a different wood. It was newer. Kestrel took Arin’s battered hand in hers, the rough heat of it, the fingernails still ringed with carbon from the smith’s coal fire. His skin was raw-looking: scrubbed clean and scrubbed often. But the black grime was too ingrained. She twined her fingers with his. Kestrel and Arin walked together through the passageway and the ghost of its old door, which her people had smashed through ten years before.

Are we through here? I wish to go" "Go where?" "Anywhere. Away. Back to America, if need be. It's obvious that Charles's faith and trust in his family's desire to care for his baby daughter were unfounded. Neither she nor I are wanted here." "Don't be absurd." She reached for Charlotte's blanket. "I am being practical." "Practicality is not a quality I associate with most females of my acquaintance." "With all due respect to the females of your acquaintance, Your Grace, I was born and raised in the wilderness of Maine. Those who were not practical, resourceful, and hardy did not survive." "Maine? How is it, then, that you ended up in Boston?" "My father died when I was sixteen, mauled by a black bear defending her cub. He had a cousin in Boston, who'd always fancied my mother from afar. After Papa died, he came for Mama and me, married her, and took us both back to Boston. Mama died in '74. You know about my stepfather."  She picked up her cloak, preparing to leave this house and never look back. "Now, if you'll excuse me, Your Grace, I think I've answered enough of your questions and had best be gone. Good night to you." He never moved as she breezed past his desk, Charlotte in her arms. "Don't you wish to know how Lord Gareth fares?" he asked mildly, in an abrupt change of subject. "Begging your pardon, Your Grace, but you gave me no chance to ask." "I should think he'd like to thank you for saving his life." She paused halfway across the room, silently cursing him between her teeth. What tarnal game was he playing now? Without turning, she ground out, "He saved my life, not the other way around." "Not according to Lord Brookhampton.

Being a landlocked nation without access to shipping ports is one kind of poverty trap; being stuck in a cycle of civil war is another. One of the most insidious of these is the resource curse, which goes like this: When a developing nation discovers a new natural resource, this causes its currency to rise against other currencies and has the downstream effect of making other exportable commodities uncompetitive.

The International Monetary Fund defines a “resource-rich” country—a country that is at risk of succumbing to the resource curse—as one that depends on natural resources for more than a quarter of its exports. At least twenty African countries fall into this category.12 Resources account for 11 percent of European exports, 12 percent of Asia’s, 15 percent of North America’s, 42 percent of Latin America’s, and 66 percent of Africa’s—slightly more than in the former Soviet states and slightly less than the Middle East.

She touched the journal she kept in her pocket---every morning, she reviewed the wishers she and Agata would visit and cross-referenced their requests with similar ones that had been made before. She'd been up since dawn looking up the way to break a bear curse. Agata assured her that such spells and their remedies were like recipes and would become second nature to her given time and experience. "Climb to the top of Mount Reve and take nine leaves from the crooked tree that grows there," said Chiara from memory. Reading off her notes wouldn't instill confidence in Rosa or her ursine betrothed. "Brew a tea from the tree and have him drink it. By the morn, he will be born again.

For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse; for it is written, i“Cursed is everyone who does not continue in all things which are written in the book of the law, to do them.” 11But that no one is 4justified by the law in the sight of God is evident, for j“the just shall live by faith.” 12Yet kthe law is not of faith, but l“the man who does them shall live by them.” 13mChrist has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, n“Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”),

We keep on saying Africa is cursed, because we are suffering , but Africa is not cursed . Africa is blessed with minerals, gold, diamond, coal, animals, cultural diversity , heritage, wildlife , nature and natural resources. It is the leaders we select that are cursed to Africa . It is because of them , people are suffering in Africa .

Africa has been equally cursed and blessed by its resources – blessed in so far as it has natural riches in abundance, but cursed because outsiders have long plundered them. In more recent times the nation states have been able to claim a share of these riches, and foreign countries now invest rather than steal, but still the people are rarely the beneficiaries.

The flaw is when the "might makes right" rule vests property rights in whichever local actors can be the most ruthless or terrifying. That first step is the flaw that any market system worthy of the name must correct.

We should stop the worst even if we haven't already entirely agreed on what is the best.

WHERE ARE THE FATHERS? I have seen this cry in countless men and women in the body of Christ. Most of them are young and with a strong call of God on their lives. They cry out for a father, a man to disciple, love, support, and encourage them. This is why God said He would “turn the hearts of the fathers [leaders] to the children [people], and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the earth with a curse” (Mal. 4:6). Our nation lost its fathers (dads, leaders, or ministers) in the 1940s and 1950s, and today our condition is getting worse. Not unlike Saul, many leaders in our homes, corporations, and churches are more concerned with their goals than with their offspring. Because of this attitude, these leaders view God’s people as resources to serve their vision instead of seeing the vision as the vehicle to serve the people.

Invoked a curse and swore (Matt. 26:74; Mark 14:71). The text does not specify on whom Peter called down curses, though the ESV and other translations include “on himself,” implying that he was calling for curses to come upon him if he was lying. Alternatives are that he was cursing the ones who were accusing him of knowing Christ or that he was actually cursing Christ, amplifying his sense of guilt. Certainty is not possible.

When the central bank lowers interest rates below what they would have reached on the market, it sets in motion a series of responses by investors and consumers that will prove to be incompatible. The result is the recession, which is the economy’s return to health: the economy’s unsustainable configuration is unwound, and resources (including labor) are reallocated to lines of production that make sense in terms of resource availability and consumer preferences.

We curse, blame God for the disparity in life compared with others for many things, ignoring the best resource, the TIME that comes equal to all, that has to be mastered to get the best out of our life.