ABSTRACT
The total purification of the Venezuelan oil industry, its ritual cleansing, will remain impossible until the companies have paid adequate financial compensation to our country. The claims behind every single positive aspect of this law are ones which might quite justifiably be made in any country, and in some cases the claims do not go far enough. The companies should be forced to pay a lump sum in compensation. Private citizens who decide to invest their money in industries of this kind must be ready to accept special conditions, and are never in a position to argue that the high profit rates which might be tolerable in private industries are fair ones under these different conditions. The theory of lesion in canon law, which gradually caught on in positive law, was concerned with this very topic, the definition of a just profit in every kind of human relation.
