35 ms·

"I don't see a reason to bring your political leanings into a discussion of straightforward economic cause and effects." Really? Can't you really step out a li

• dragonwriter 11y ago
  > Can't you really step out a little and try to think why oil represents 95% of Venezuela's export earnings? Yes, and it has nothing to do with leftist populism (just as the dominance of oil among Saudi Arabia's exports has nothing to do with leftist populism, and the dominance of copper among Chile's exports -- which is true now, and was under both the Allende and Pinochet regimes in the past -- has nothing to do with leftist populism.) There have been whole shelves of books written on how the dominant international trade regime locks countries whose existing comparative advantage is in extractive industries to those sources of income in international trade and makes it difficult for most of them to successfully diversify; this problem is independent of whether the local government is left- or right-leaning, and whether it is populist or not. > Are you really sure that pointing the cause of Venezuela's collapse on leftist policies is just a fruit of "policial leanings"? Pointing with significant evidence to specific effects of specific policies might not be, blaming it generically on leftism or leftist populism is, OTOH, a different story.
• nitrogen 11y ago
  What's going to run this whole conversation off the rails is that "leftist", "populist", "socialist", etc. are emotionally loaded strawmen. Politics and economics have many more interesting dimensions to discuss than just "left vs. right". So asking for an argument against "leftist populism" is a waste of everyone's time because nobody will agree on what those words mean, they'll all talk past each other, and it's missing 99% of the interesting things to discuss about Venezuela as compared to other countries.
• crdoconnor 11y ago
  Saudi Arabia, despite being not in any way leftist, is in pretty much the same boat. They've just got more money in the bank at the moment. Similarly, Ecuador is pretty leftist. It just has a substantially better run economy.
  • varjag 11y ago
    Saudis are the ones waging the price war. Without their effort, oil prices would've been quite a bit higher now.
    • Riod 11y ago
      Waging a war by not supporting artificially low quotas enacted by a cartel? That makes no sense
      • varjag 11y ago
        OPEC without SA is irrelevant, it's like NAFTA without the USA. Saudi wage the price war on emergent players (frackling and shale extractors), disregarding the wishes of lesser market players like Venezuela.
        • Riod 11y ago
          It's not a price war if you're reverting to a competitive market after many years of running a cartel. Unless you dislike a competitive market? The Saudis realise that setting a high price allows for artifically high shale investment which would eventually disenfranchise the Saudis. They rather take some pain now than sponsor their own demise.
          • varjag 11y ago
            My point was Saudi are not some victims of cartel policies. They run it (or ruin it) at their own discretion as the largest member by far. Cartel quotes were never binding them in any practical way.