It's not about the price of oil? This chain of comments was sparked by yummyfajitas asking "does the US pay less to import oil or steel than Sweden or something?", which seems fairly focused on price. And he was replying to a comment that claimed that American prosperity was due, in part, to "military might abused to ensure cheap oil and resources". Which, again, seems awfully focused on price.

Now, you might want to change the subject to talk about oil company profits, but I'm not sure why you'd want to, because that makes even less sense. It's frankly ludicrous to suggest that American prosperity is in some way linked to the fact that ExxonMobil is headquartered in Texas rather than Canada or Europe. It's a publicly traded multinational corporation!

Sure it paid $15 billion in income tax in 2009, but none of it was in the US. Think that number would be higher if they were incorporated offshore? (Hint: No.) Yes, it pays dividends, but it does so regardless of whether those shareholders are citizens of the country it is headquartered in. Think the ratio of dividends paid to Americans versus Swedes would change if ExxonMobil moved offshore? (Hint: No.) And since this "isn't about the price of oil", we don't need to even ask if prices at the pump in the US would change if they moved offshore. (Although, obviously, they wouldn't.)

So I'm curious: The original post was talking about how America is richer than Sweden 'cause the American military is used to do something relating to oil. You say it's not about the price, but about oil company profits. Okay. Even if we accept that the US military has done wonders for the bottom line of ExxonMobil...how does Joe Bloggs become better off because a nominally American oil company is making a higher profit this year? Answer: He doesn't. So maybe we need to look a little further.

(And that's not even touching on the idea that military might is exogenous - this thing that some lucky countries have, and others don't.)