It is not always easy to live in abundance. Sometimes we lose count of what we have. Ultimately, we don’t know what we have or what it means to us until we lose it.

This is evident in the case of a resource-rich country like Indonesia. Tapping fossil oil wells exhaustively led the country to an oil bonanza in the 1980s that fostered in prosperity during the Soeharto era. Those who were fond of him might still attribute the prosperity we had during his time to his iron grip. But no, he would not have appeared that strong if the country did not strictly control its oil wells that much, hence, just as in other large oil producers, heavy fuel subsidies were introduced.

It took a financial crisis and four presidents before the country realized that the oil honeymoon was well and truly over.