I don’t get it.

The Northern Star quotes sociology Professor Kay Forest as claiming Iraq has “legitimate complaints” against Kuwait, because Kuwait has been “violating Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’ agreements” by overproducing oil.

To set the record straight, the organization is no United Nations. It is a market-sharing arrangement among some of the oil-producing countries.

If U.S. oil companies make such an arrangement, they violate our anti-trust laws, as some of those companies learned when they indeed made such an arrangement during the Depression.

I wonder by way of analogy if Forest would describe a drug dealer’s shooting of a price-cutting competitor as the expression of a “legitimate complaint.”

I just don’t get it.

Stephen H. Karlson

Associate professor

Economics