Thomas A. Bowden is an analyst at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, focusing on legal issues. Mr. Bowden is a former lawyer and law school instructor who practiced for twenty years in Baltimore, Maryland. The Ayn Rand Center is a division of the Ayn Rand Institute and promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand–author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.

Venezuela, Russia, and other countries that nationalize natural resources are violating private property rights.

For years, the Canadian operator of a huge Venezuelan gold project known as Las Cristinas has been seeking an environmental permit to start digging. Well, Crystallex International Corporation can stop waiting–the mine is being nationalized as part of dictator Hugo Chavez’s long-running program of socialist takeovers. “This mine will be seized and managed by a state administration” with help from the Russians, said Mining Minister Rodolfo Sanz.

It’s not surprising that a brute like Chavez would want to grab the 16.9 million ounces of gold estimated to lie buried in the Las Cristinas reserve. But what’s more puzzling is why–when gold mines, oil rigs and refineries worth billions of dollars are nationalized by regimes such as Venezuela and Russia–the ousted companies can muster no moral indignation, only tight-lipped damage appraisal.

The reason, in a nutshell, is that resources like gold and petroleum in their natural state are universally regarded as public property that cannot be extracted by private companies except with government permission, revocable at will. “Venezuela will not accept that foreign organizations tell them what to do with their own resources,” said a local journalist recently.

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Marilyn Scales is a field editor for the Canadian Mining Journal, Canada’s first mining publication. She is one of Canada’s most senior mining commentators.

The nationalization of the Las Cristinas gold project by the Venezuelan government looks like a done deal. There has yet to be an official pronouncement, but Toronto-based Crystallex International looks to have lost its chance to develop and operate this project.

Where is the outrage over such actions, asks Fredric Hambler, a financial systems analyst in San Francisco. “I say it’s time for Crystallex, and the Canadian Mining Journal, to loudly condemn the actions of the Venezuelan government. Thomas Bowden of the Ayn Rand Institute has an excellent article on the subject of ownership rights and the Las Cristinas project, which is available online at: http://www.aynrand.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=21879&news_iv_ctrl=1021”

Our reader is right, of course. We are outraged by the turn of events in that Latin American country. The planning, hopes and money expended by Crystallex will never be recovered. The truly angry among the industry can call this an outright theft. But what is to be gained by ranting and raving?

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