October 31, 2006 9:13AM # Racing toward Socialism By [David Boaz](https://www.cato.org/people/david-boaz) --- SHARE When [Washington Post racing columnist Andrew Beyer](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/30/AR2006103000924.html) says “democracy,” he means “communist country”: > At a time when the populations of Arab countries are seething with resentment against their own leaders, the rulers of Dubai don’t hesitate to engage in self-indulgence on a gargantuan scale. They are unembarrassed that this money is derived from the natural resources of their country — resources that, in a democracy, would belong to the nation. He’s writing about the use of oil wealth to build a powerful and expensive stable of racehorses. He’s right that in a free society, all that oil wealth wouldn’t belong to a small group of hereditary rulers. But countries that declare that their natural resources “belong to the nation” end up poor countries. ##### Related Tags [General](https://www.cato.org/general) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).