A sad but undisputed syndrome of humankind's unquenchable thirst for oil is that the discovery of rich petroleum deposits in Third World nations usually brings few benefits to their impoverished residents while fueling corruption, despotism, internecine warfare and economic decay.

Quite often, international financial bodies such as the World Bank intervene and compel these nations to adopt more realistic, if austere, fiscal policies because they have proven themselves incapable of managing their own affairs.

The latest poor nation to experience an oil boom is Chad, where an international consortium led by Exxon Mobil Corp. is investing $3.5 billion to develop oil fields. But this time, the World Bank is trying to interrupt the familiar pattern by setting up a broadly based committee to ensure that the $100 million annual revenue flow to Chad is spent for public benefit, not siphoned into Swiss bank accounts.

The new approach could, the Wall Street Journal says, "reverse the violent curse of oil money in Africa. In recent years, the gross domestic product of some oil-rich nations has actually declined, amid bloodshed and corruption."

Here's a thought: When the World Bank is finished with Chad, it should come to California, whose public finances these days resemble those of a Third World corruption pit more than those of a modern, presumably enlightened, industrial society.

When Gov. Gray Davis and the Legislature received a $12 billion windfall of tax revenues in 2000 they, like the ruling clique of an oil-boom nation, lavished it on the politically connected with no thought as to the long-term consequences. Now California has an immense budget deficit, is dependent entirely on loans from out-of-state bankers and is locked in a seemingly intractable political war over the crisis.

The state will begin a new fiscal year Tuesday without a budget in place, and few in the Capitol doubt that it will be many weeks, perhaps months, before the underlying conflicts are resolved. In the meantime, those dependent on Sacramento for money -- schools, local governments, the poor, medical care providers, etc. -- will be scrambling to survive. Despite the immensity of its economy and its riches, in other words, California finds itself in exactly the same condition as one of the World Bank's basket cases.

Were California, in fact, to place itself in some sort of receivership -- which the state itself does to school districts, insurance companies and other vital institutions in financial trouble -- its overseer would prescribe spending austerity, shedding the least important of its financial responsibilities and at least some new taxation to bring its income and outgo into balance. The state would also be told to get its deficit debt under control, with a realistic repayment plan.

That's what the World Bank does to troubled nations; that's what the state does to school districts; and that's what corporations and individuals must undergo when they seek the protection of the bankruptcy court. The universal prescription for financial irresponsibility can be boiled down to two words: "Get real."

When one considers California's fiscal crisis in that broader context -- what would happen if there were outside intervention -- the Canciamilla-Richman plan takes on added luster. Assemblymen Joe Canciamilla, D-Pittsburg, and Keith Richman, R-Northridge, are the two survivors of what was a bipartisan group of Assembly moderates who sought a compromise to the budget dilemma. With the 2002-03 fiscal year rapidly coming to a close, the two bravely proposed a two-pronged, World Bank-like scheme to bring order to California's finances.

They would cover the deficit accumulated from two years of head-in-the-sand avoidance of the problem with a $10.7 billion bond issue, repaid through a temporary half-cent boost in the sales tax, and then bring the 2003-04 budget into near-balance with deep spending cuts. The Democrats don't like the spending cuts; the Republicans don't like the new taxes; and Davis, facing a recall, is hiding out in the bunker. But to date Canciamilla and Richman have offered the only real-world approach.

If we're going to act like a Third World nation, we should be treated like one.