It would give the new state administration of free Iraq an immediate, directly appealing way to register citizens — and voters — and to reward their loyalty.

By ensuring that all Iraqis will have access — on reaching adulthood — to significant sources of money — it would spur entrepreneurship, revitalize the whole economy, distribute real resources to the most remote and poor regions of the country and create a very strong interest among all ethnic and confessional groups and tribes in ensuring their nation’s future stability.

We’re not talking small money here. Once its oil facilities are repaired and production is ramped up, Iraq can earn $50 billion a year from its oil. 50% of that would be about $1,000 a year per person…and funds would accumulate for young people to even more significant sums — until they came of age… I would suggest to you that such a proposal, properly structured and publicized, would have the kind of impact — in Iraq and on world opinion — that Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation did on the domestic politics — and nternational diplomacy — of our own Civil War. It would be the same kind of profoundly moral — and revolutionary — stroke.

I cannot, by God, think of a sharper, clearer bolt from the blue that would clarify what it means to “liberate” this country. And it is very hard to think of any long-term downside to this proposal.

I don’t have to tell you that centralized government control over oil and its revenues elsewhere in the world has very often been a spur to horrendous corruption, rent-seeking, and capital flight.

There’s a reason why many people refer to oil as “the Devil’s Excrement.” I believe we could turn that manure into fertilizer.

- Lou Dolinar

I would hate to see a small junta of tribesmen, or Saddam-opposers, or some other ‘royal family’ like Saudi Arabia (where it seems we actually really get most of the people who terrorize the US), get the power and money that comes from the oil.

Hell yeah give it to the people.

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