In 2015 I was on a big road trip around South America and in Bolivia they had rules preventing the sale of petrol or diesel to cars with foreign plates. In order to get gas, we had to park around the corner from the gas station, walk over with portable 5 gallon containers, fill them, then go back and fill the truck.

In some gas stations they even had police there to prevent the sale of gas to foreign cars.

But the crazy thing is, they could tell i’m not Bolivian, and knew I was buying gas for my car, which it was extremely unlikely that I had a Bolivian car. The police were perfectly happy to let me buy gas as a foreigner, as much as i wanted, without a problem, as long as i didn’t put it directly in to my car!

When i asked they claimed this was an attempt to prevent foreigners from buying gas for cocaine production. I have no idea why the way they were enforcing it would limit gas for cocaine production, you’d think the narcos, even if they’re foreigners, would just buy Bolivian vehicles.

I thought this was all insane, until I read Seeing Like A State, the state isn’t like us, but it does have an internal logic which you can understand. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeing_Like_a_State

I'm so old, I remember when gasoline was rationed by license plate number here in the US.

I'm betting it will happen again in my lifetime, too. People never learn. 😢