Energy prices and freedom move in opposite directions. Thomas Friedman, author of the bestselling book 'The World is Flat" continuously outputs some of the smartest and spot-on observations in the media today in my opinion. I hope our governmental and business leaders read his stuff. I firmly believe in 'The Law of Unintended Consequences" and it is important to business leaders to try and predict what these consequences might be and Mr. Friedman's writing is once source I would want to consider.

Here is an excerpt from a recent article he wrote:

What I would call "petro-ist" states - highly dependent on oil or gas for their G.D.P. and having either weak institutions or outright authoritarian systems - have started asserting themselves. And they are weakening, for now at least, the global democratization trend.

Economists have long taught us about the negative effects that an overabundance of natural resources can have on political and economic reform in any country: the "resource curse." But when it comes to oil, it seems that you can take this resource curse argument a step further: there appears to be a specific correlation between the price of oil and the pace of freedom.

I call it the "First Law of Petropolitics," and it posits the following: The price of oil and the pace of freedom always move in opposite directions in petro-ist states.

According to the First Law of Petropolitics, the higher the price of global crude oil, the more erosion we see in petro-ist nations in the right to free speech, a free press, free elections, freedom of assembly, government transparency, an independent judiciary and the rule of law, and in the freedom to form independent political parties and non-governmental organizations. Such erosion does not occur in healthy democracies with oil.

Read As Energy Prices Rise, It's All Downhill for Democracy