text: We must remember that this is not a communist planned economy, just because there are natural resources does not mean we can have them. The oil is only OURS so long as it remains in the ground. Once we the people have subsidized its extraction, it belongs to a multi-national corporation who may do whatever they wish with it.\n\nThe decision of which wells to extract oil from depends on how much money per barrel it costs to get the product, which will determine what the profit per barrel is, which determines if it is WORTH the corporation's time and effort to get it out of the ground. If it costs the corporation $20 per barrel to get oil from Texas and it costs $17 per barrel to get oil from Saudi Arabia, then that is what they will do.\n\nThe products made in factories are not OURS. The corporations own the means of production because they have the financial resources to operate them, and as such they can decide where they will spend their money. If we the people do not care where our products are manufactured, or what is done to the people who make them (and we do NOT care, we just want to save a few pennies because we are blindly greedy and are easy to manipulate!), then the corporations will obviously produce the items in an area where the costs are the lowest. I the corporation can save 80% on the costs of manufacture by enslaving people in China or Indonesia and give us a savings of 2%, we are THRILLED. After all, at its greatest extent only about 30% of the American population was working in manufacturing, so even if all of them were replaced with slaves that meant 70% of us were not badly affected by our neighbors being thrown out of work.