The Saudi Economic Bet Experts Dismissed — And Why It’s Actually Working

For decades, economists warned that oil-rich nations were doomed by the resource curse — trapped by easy money, weak institutions, and failed diversification. From Venezuela to Nigeria, history seemed clear: post-oil transitions almost always failed.

Saudi Arabia was supposed to be next.

When Vision 2030 launched in 2016, critics called it unrealistic, contradictory, and destined to collapse. Mega-projects like NEOM were mocked as vanity fantasies. Social reforms were labeled risky. Diversification, they said, couldn’t work in an oil-rent economy.

But something unexpected happened.

Saudi Arabia didn’t follow the usual script.

Instead of reforming after crisis, it moved before collapse. Instead of austerity, it used oil revenue as venture capital. Instead of fragmented reform, it executed a centralized, state-led transformation rooted in historical industrialization playbooks.

This video breaks down:

Why the resource curse model failed to predict Saudi Arabia

How the Public Investment Fund (PIF) functions as industrial policy

Why social reforms were actually economic infrastructure

What the data shows so far — and what still could go wrong

This is not a victory lap. It’s a historical analysis of how Saudi Arabia moved from theory to execution — something most resource states never achieve.

The experiment isn’t over. But the skeptics were wrong about one thing:

This wasn’t supposed to work — and yet, it is.

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