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June 9, 2006
The Myth Of Outside
by Brian Yanity, insurgent49

     The relationship between Alaska and the world beyond its borders is more important than ever.

     The Alaskan concept of Outside is a reflection of geographic isolation, and also a unique form of 'national' chauvinism, or maybe 'sub-nationalism'. Alaska is certainly a special place, but in the grand scheme of human affairs, it is not that special. In the Great Land, water still runs downhill, holes are still dug with shovels and crap still stinks.

     In an increasingly globalized world, talk of those "from the Outside" reeks of narcissism and arrogance, and is an exceedingly superficial view of Alaska's present and future reality. Alaska needs to think about its place in the world, not what the rest of the world "owes" it. As long as there have been people in Alaska, its social and economic development has always been connected to the Outside.

     Starting with the great human migration from Asia to America during the Ice Ages, this status of 'transit' route has had a huge affect on life in the Great Land. In the 20th century, Alaska's strategic position was realized during World War II and the Cold War, and by the airline/air cargo industry.

     Of course, Alaskan exceptionalism in demanding an ever-bigger piece of the federal pie is a vital issue. Perhaps this exceptionalism is merely a cover for the insecurity of being so dependent upon the Outside. About 65% of Alaska is owned and managed by the U.S. Federal Government as national forests, parks, wildlife refuges, military and BLM lands.

     Myths about of the uniqueness of Alaska's 'statehood compact' aside, the U.S. Constitution still reigns as the supreme law of the land and our currency is still the U.S. dollar. Federal courts have struck down 'Alaska hire' laws, as well as the state government's inept management of federal lands in the past. When Senator Stevens and Representative Young are no longer in office, Alaskans will just have to learn to be more self-reliant.

     We must look at the context in which the term Outside is used most often: advancing conservative, pro-corporate agenda politics, even if the corporations in question are from the Outside. One must remember that the most vehement voices of opposition to Alaskan statehood during the 1950s were the fish-cannery companies, who wanted bare minimum taxes and regulation. If the big oil companies were producing oil on the North Slope prior to 1959, they would have lobbied against statehood as well, just as they lobbied against the creation of the North Slope Borough in 1972.

     Interestingly enough, around the same time as Alaskan statehood, many nations around the world were winning their independence from colonial rule. These 'new' nations across Africa and Asia had many of the same hopes and dreams as the Alaskan and Hawaiian statehood movements: new freedoms, soverignty, and more locally controlled economic development.

     Alaska needs to address the question of what the rest of the world can teach us about the connections between sustainable rural development and urban problems. Julius Nyerere, the first president of Tanzania, once said that while the U.S. has reached the moon, Tanzania is still trying to reach its villages. The U.S. reached the moon almost four decades ago, but the nation is still struggling to reach Alaska's villages.

     Alaska's Outside-'Inside' dichotomy is roughly parallel to what is commonly referred to worldwide as the division between the industrialized "North" or "center" and the "global south" or the "third world majority" (North-South). This same dichotomy is also called Center-Periphery, as first described in the 1940s by Argentine economist Raúl Prebisch, one of the founders of 'dependency theory'.

     The common denominator of Alaska, and much of the Global South, is a dependency on a single resource product for export, not to mention a one-party political system. A similar situation exists in other resource extraction states in the U.S. such as Montana, and in countries across the global South.

     Alaska is entirely dependent on the Outside for both imports and oil/gas markets. Whether imposed by the outside or the inside, autarky (not trading at all with the outside world) doesn't work.

     What, and who, in Alaska comes from Outside? Lets look at a few important examples:

    Population

    The majority of Alaskans were born Outside, including Ted Stevens, Don Young and Frank Murkowski. Maybe a lot of "Outsiders" who want to move to Alaska today will contribute something positive. Particularly important is the reported 'brain-drain' of Alaska's young people, especially those who move out of the state to go to college. For all of Alaska's natural beauty and wealth, just what about Outside makes it so appealing for them? How many Alaska-born residents leave the state each year? The state's population is less transient than it used to be, but still we must ask ourselves these questions.

    Oil and Gas Companies

     The price of oil and gas are set by global markets, and arguably not by anyone in the U.S. (despite the current administration's efforts to permanently control Persian Gulf oil reserves), and certainly not anyone in Alaska.

     By the way, where is the bulk of the Permanent Fund invested? Outside. BP is headquartered in London, while ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips are both based in Texas. Most of the diesel and gasoline fuel used in Alaska is refined in Washington or California, so for at least the sake of jobs we should demand more refining within Alaska itself. If the Big Three balks, bring in some more independent refiners, or better yet, scare them by threatening to bring in companies from China, Russia or South America.

Food and Manufactured Goods

     The state has a near total dependence on the Outside for food and consumer goods. Aside from fish, crab, and a handful of specialty meats, just about everything for sale in an Alaskan Wal-Mart, Carrs or Fred Meyer store is imported from Outside. Most manufactured goods bought in the U.S. these days come from Asia.

     While the Matanuska-Susitna Valley still produces small amounts of vegetables, dairy products, nursery stock and livestock, it has never reached a scale promised to the New Deal farmer colonists who moved there in the 1930s. Large-scale production of barley and dairy was planned during the 1980s, but both efforts turned into financial fiascos for the state government.

     Despite these efforts, Alaska has the lowest agricultural output of any state in the union (and that includes Rhode Island). Alaskans sure know how to grow world-record sized cauliflowers ... we just need a million more of them. Agriculture is one industry that could actually improve in the higher latitudes with global warming. If Alaskans really want self-sufficiency, creating more local food production would be a great place to start.

     A policy of 'food security' or 'food sovereignty' is needed for the state.

     Medical Care

     All of Alaska's medical doctors are trained Outside, and most of state's hospitals are owned by Outside corporations. Alaska is one of five U.S. states (Idaho, Wyoming, Montana and Delaware are the others) that does not have its own medical school. Vermont and North Dakota are states with smaller populations than Alaska, but each has their own medical school. The District of Columbia, which also has fewer people, has three medial schools.

     A great site for Alaska's first medical school would be in midtown Anchorage's U-Med district, in between UAA and the three existing hospitals.

     Tourism

     Over 1.5 million visitors come to Alaska from Outside each year, over 900,000 of these on cruise ships, spending almost $2 billion in the state annually. In the years ahead, Alaska better get ready for more tourists from Asia. We are not just talking about Japan and Korea, but also China, SE Asia, even India.

     The World Tourism Organization expects mainland China to generate 100 million international travelers by 2020. If 0.1% of this number come to Alaska, we are talking about 100,000 tourists a year from the P.R.C. Alaska's Occident (Asia) will only become more important in the years ahead, and international tourists are not the kind of people who want to visit xenophobic places.

     Alaska's Mainstream Media

     Last but certainly not least, the majority of the state's key media outlets are owned by Outsiders.

     For example, the Media News Group of Denver owns the Fairbanks Daily New-Miner, the Kodiak Daily Mirror, and Anchorage's KTVA (CBS) channel 11 TV station. Morris Communications, Inc. of Atlanta owns the Juneau Empire, the Alaska Journal of Commerce, the Alaska Star, the Peninsula Clarion, Alaska magazine, the annual Milepost travel guide and a handful of radio stations. The infamous Clear Channel owns six Anchorage-area radio stations and four radio and one TV station in the Fairbanks area, while Seattle-based New Northwest Broadcasters owns five Fairbanks-area radio stations and four Anchorage-area radio stations. The McClatchy Co. of California has long owned the Anchorage Daily News, the state's largest newspaper.

     The print media that is fully Alaska-owned includes the Anchorage Press, the Alaska Humanity News, the Ester Republic and, of course, Insurgent49.

     So to sum it all up, Alaska is a long way from anything remotely resembling "rugged independence". As described in the “Alaska Notebook" by Matt Zencey on the October 21, 2005 editorial page of the Anchorage Daily News:

     It's a classic example of what's known as "the resource curse." Countries that are rich in resources often lag far behind less well-endowed nations. As a New Yorker article in 2001 reported, "A 1995 study of ninety-seven developing countries by the economists Jeffery Sachs and Andrew Warner found that the more important natural resources were to a county's economy, the lower its [economic] growth rate was."

    Why?

     "A dependence on natural resources fosters the illusion that you get rich by taking what's already there, rather than creating something new," the New Yorker article wrote. It discourages entrepreneurialism. It "encourages people to look to the state, instead of themselves, for solutions." (Sound familiar Alaskans?)

     Due to the temporary high profitability of limited natural resources, the attempts at diversification that often occur in 'resource-cursed' nations are often grand public works projects, such as bridges or dams, which may be misguided or mismanaged. The government in question has less need to build up the institutional infrastructure to regulate and tax a productive economy outside the resource sector, so large sections of the economy may remain undeveloped.

     Valuable resource exports, such as petroleum, usually creates a new 'dependency' for countries or regions. In the Netherlands, there was the so-called "Dutch disease": a de-industrialization (decline of manufacturing sector) in the Netherlands in the wake of the discovery of North Sea natural gas in the 1960s, which caused an increase in that country's real exchange rate.

     Mexico's oil boom, led by high prices of the 1970s and early 1980s, had similar de-industrializing effects. Countries that rely on natural resource exports may also tend to neglect education because they see no immediate need for it. Resource-poor economies like Taiwan or South Korea, by contrast, spent enormous efforts on education, and this contributed in part to their economic success.

     An important example is the powerful social movements in contemporary Latin America concerning local control of oil and gas resources, which have built upon decades of struggle against Yanqui Imperialismo. The U.S. media has talked a lot about how the election of leftist governments in the oil and gas-rich countries of Venezuela and Bolivia threatens the 'stability' of world energy supplies. In this context, 'stability' usually just means a state of affairs most favorable to U.S.-based oil corporations, regardless of how 'stable' life is for the majority of people in these resource-exporting countries.

     For example, Venezuela's oil industry was nationalized in 1976, but corruption in the 1980s led to oil wealth being mostly invested abroad. The Hydrocarbon Law passed in November 2001 finally gave enough teeth to the Ministry of Energy and Mines so that it could stand up to the international oil corporations. Before, the national oil company PDVSA was a 'state within a state'. Oil revenues now fund health and social programs.

     For all their threats to leave or cut back on investment, the big international oil companies (in minority-stake ventures with PDVSA) simply cannot afford to walk away from Venezuela. The main is reason is that the Orinocco Belt is attracting new exploration and development, and no new oil prospect compares to it in the hemisphere. Around 90% of Venezuela's oil production is expected to come from this region in the future, and $17 billion has already been invested.

     Bolivia's struggles for national control over gas resources has permanently changed the political landscape of the country. Evo Morales was elected in a landslide victory, and recently has pledged to nationalize all of Bolivia's gas production, declaring it 'property of the Bolivian people'.

     More recently, the government of Ecuador gathered the strength to kick Occidental Petroleum out of the country after decades of the company's misconduct.

     Alaska needs to follow their example and increase taxes on the big oil companies, and demand more local control. Not to mention, hydrocarbon wealth should invested in preparation for the post-oil era, such as the construction of renewable energy projects, or more rail and public transportation facilities.

     To close, a word to those reading this from Outside of Alaska:

     Come on in. We welcome you and any new ideas you may have. More Alaskans need to start thinking Outside the box.









Brian Yanity is a graduate student at UAA, activist and freelance writer. He resides in an undisclosed location in Southcentral Alaska, and can be reached at byanity@insurgent49.com.
- Columnists -

Editor's Desk
by Aaron Selbig

Rank and File
by Nova Stubbs

Red Alert
by Soren Wuerth

Alaskan In Exile
by Neil Zawicki

The
Bramble Bush
by Kevin Morford






- also by this writer -
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in-sur-gent (in sur'jent), n. 1. a member of a group which revolts against the policies of its leadership.