A couple of weeks ago I reported on my impressions of my travels on the Silk Road, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. When I filed my report, I had not yet visited the last country on my itinerary, Turkmenistan. The first four Stans I visited seemed to be stumbling to some sort of accommodation with free market capitalism. In Turkmenistan, not so much. First the country has been cursed with abundant oil and gas wealth, all controlled by the government. Said government is a Republic in form but in practice is an autocracy controlled by the President who succeeded his father as President in 2022. It's hereditary one man rule. The legislature and judiciary rubber stamp the President's wishes.

The abundant and comfortable lifestyle ;to which Americans have become accustomed is a result of the fortuitous combination of an abundance of the four factors of production; land, labor, capital and entrepreneurship to turn the first three factors into widespread wealth.

Land encompasses agricultural output, mineral resources, forests and fresh water. We have those in abundance and they're not disappearing soon.

Hi, this is Richard Fields with this week’s Report From the Fields. I’m reporting from the Silk Road, the overland trade route that connected China with Central Asia and Europe from the third century BC until the 15th century AD. Central Asia is currently the Stans, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, now independent nations but until recently under the control of the USSR. That’s where I am.