I believe that the resource curse mostly applies to economies that are very poorly diversified and have a GDP based largely on exports of relatively raw materials. The U.S. Has an extremely diverse economy with a large base in services and domestic consumption, even though we export lots of commodity materials and agricultural products.
Canada (and in a smaller scale, Alaska and Louisiana) are better examples of developed economies with relatively good governance but an overreliance on resources and under-developed services. Maybe Australia/NZ too?
Venezuela seems to have had major problems with price controls as well as resource production (the federal oil company became staffed with under qualified people due to political patronage and even before the oil crash, production and efficiency dropped dramatically compared to Colombia's which is similar in scale, culture and geology but better run). I don't know the contribution of infighting (in a Gang of Four sense, obviously there were contentious elections) but it's at least not the only factor.
