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I have no idea why this got downvoted. This is literally what happened there.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
rbanffy 11y ago
One should never attribute to anything else what can be blamed on any left-leaning government. At least not on Hacker News.
- catnaroek 11y ago
  Don't get me wrong, I'm no Chávez sympathizer by any stretch of the term. But people don't vote for populist outsiders just because they're stupid (although lack of education certainly plays a role here). They do so when they lose faith in established political parties.
  - rbanffy 11y ago
    The demise of Venezuela cannot be attributed to a single cause. Incompetent management of the economy, oil prices and relentless sabotage by internal economic interests (supported by external ones) all contributed to the current situation. And probably a hundred more causes could be found in less than an afternoon.
    - narag 11y ago
      Venezuela is highly polarized so it's very difficult to get a fair and balanced outlook of what's happening there. But it's impossible to deny the evidence of stubbornly incompetent and corrupt management of public finances. Printing unlimited money, supporting cuban dictatorship with oil billions, digging deeper in social division and looting public treasure... you can believe in whatever society model you want, but persistence in error to the point of leading the country to misery is irresponsible.
  - vasilipupkin 11y ago
    My guess is also they could not fathom how incompetent the government they voted for would turn out to be
    - rbanffy 11y ago
      You should never ignore the other options. Between someone who's incompetent but has good intentions (assuming you buy into the populist discourse) and someone who's very competent and will work very efficiently against your interests, I'd take the incompetent. For a lot of people, Chávez was a measurable improvement over his predecessors.
  - toyg 11y ago
    Let's be honest -- South American countries are not short of corrupt politicians at the best of times. Look at what's happening in Brazil, where a compromised leadership is being replaced by an even-more-corrupt bunch. At that point, a slightly-unhinged but fundamentally honest-looking ex-general starts looking like an attractive proposition.
    - woliveirajr 11y ago
      Don't think that the new bunch will be more corrupt. And that doesn't invalidate the replacement.
      - toyg 11y ago
        Oh, they are already: "Cunha was caught last year with millions of dollars in bribes in secret Swiss bank accounts, after having falsely denied to Congress that he had any foreign bank accounts. Cunha also appears in the Panama Papers" - http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/21/dilma-rousseff-enemies-impeached-brazil http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/21/dilma-r... My point is, from the perspective of an average voter, replacing a corrupt bunch with another corrupt bunch is a pointless exercise, so might as well send in the strongman. That's pretty much the standard scenario in which democracy dies (Weimar, fascist Italy, II French Republic, all the way back to Julius Caesar).
        woliveirajr 11y ago
        I stand correct. All those schemes you mention were also used by the ones that are being replaced, and for even nefarious goals, like being able to manipulate the elections and perpetuate in the government. If the new one just don't destroy the economy, or recover from inflation / unemployment, it has done more good than the previous one.
      - coliveira 11y ago
        The new replacement is certainly more corrupt, they're involved in all kinds of known schemes, such as the Panama papers, Car wash operation, laundered money on Swiss banks, connections with drug dealers... Just do a quick search.
- tobltobs 11y ago
  Hm, I think neoliberals and commies are uniformly distributed on HN. I think the downvoting comes from that everybody who blames Chavez or the capitalists without mentioning stupidity just uses the Venezuela case for pushing his right or left agenda. Where on the world did price control ever work?
  - rbanffy 11y ago
    > Where on the world did price control ever work? Was it ever applied isolated from other factors?
    - ktRolster 11y ago
      There's a lot of empirical evidence that price controls cause shortages, and the theory behind it is well understood. Wikipedia has a few examples, dating back to the Roman period: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_controls#Criticisms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_controls#Criticisms There are a lot of things economists don't know, but price controls -> shortages is one of the things that is well established (the exception is when the price limit is higher than the price of the object, and thus has no effect).
      - burfog 11y ago
        I think another exception would be when price controls are used only to stop monopoly rent. (or part of the same exception, depending on what you mean by "price of the object")
        youngButEager 11y ago
        No. Rent control does lead to shortages. I have about $6 million to invest in rental properties. San Francisco is not being considered. I'm actually liquidating all my California assets, as the INCENTIVE to operate rentals has been destroyed. Have a read of this: "Due to Rent Control, S.F. Has 31,000 Vacant Housing Units As Frustrated Landlords Give Up" The Bay Citizen -- "In San Francisco, one of the toughest places in the country to find a place to live, more than 31,000 housing units — one of every 12 — now sit vacant, according to recently released census data. That’s the highest vacancy rate in the region, and a 70 percent increase from a decade ago." The reason? The city's pro-tenant, outdated rent control laws that make it difficult to raise rents or evict a tenant. "Increasingly, small-time landlords are just giving up, like one who has left two large apartments on the second and third floors of her building vacant for more than a decade, after a series of tenant difficulties. It’s just not worth the bother, or the risk, of being legally tied to a tenant for decades. “Vacancy rates are going up because owners have decided to take their units off the market,” said Ross Mirkarimi, a progressive member of the Board of Supervisors. He attributes that response to “peaking frustrations in dealing with the range of laws that protect tenants in San Francisco that make it difficult for small property owners to thrive.” Perversely, that is hurting the city’s renters as well, as a large percentage of the city’s housing stock is allowed to just sit vacant, driving up rents that newcomers pay for market-rate housing." MP: As we know from basic economic theory, rent control laws are doomed to fail with many predictable unintended consequences in the long run: fewer new rental units are built or made available, many apartments are removed from the market, a decline in the quality of housing, lower rental rates for long-term tenants but much higher rents for new tenants, inefficient use of housing space, etc. In other words, rent control laws guarantee that there will be less affordable housing in the long run, not more. PRICE CONTROLS CAUSE SHORTAGES. When there is no incentive to produce a good or a service, 2 things happen: 1) the SUPPLY of the good or service will drop (no incentive to produce) 2) if the DEMAND stays the same or goes HIGHER (San Francisco demand for rental units) -- the price will go up for the reduced SUPPLY of the good or service. That's why SF has high rents. Huge demand. No investment in affordable rentals. ZERO. Thus, SUPER HIGH rents. Same in NYC. - See more at: http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2011/05/because-of-rent-control-sf-has-31000.html#sthash.tva6Hdad.dpuf http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2011/05/because-of-rent-control-...
ctdonath 11y ago
It's been in the process of national suicide for a long time. Abnormally high oil prices are likely the only thing that let the country survive this long.
CamperBob2 11y ago
It's easy to hit the downvote button by mistake, especially on mobile. I've done it myself several times. The upvote/downvote buttons are obviously some kind of in-joke at YC, because otherwise this problem would have been fixed a long time ago.
narag 11y ago
I have no idea why this got downvoted. This is literally what happened there. I upvoted because it's a legit point of view that doesn't deserve to be silenced. BUT... Suggesting the debacle main cause is low oil prices and justifying evil with previous evil... is not quite right. My tocayo is printing money as if there is no tomorrow. Actually, at this pace, there will be no tomorrow, almost there is no today.
gniv 11y ago
Yeah, I don't get it either. This is pretty much what happened to the Soviet Union -- weak economy pushed to the brink by collapsing oil prices.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

One should never attribute to anything else what can be blamed on any left-leaning government. At least not on Hacker News.

catnaroek 11y ago
Don't get me wrong, I'm no Chávez sympathizer by any stretch of the term. But people don't vote for populist outsiders just because they're stupid (although lack of education certainly plays a role here). They do so when they lose faith in established political parties.
- rbanffy 11y ago
  The demise of Venezuela cannot be attributed to a single cause. Incompetent management of the economy, oil prices and relentless sabotage by internal economic interests (supported by external ones) all contributed to the current situation. And probably a hundred more causes could be found in less than an afternoon.
  - narag 11y ago
    Venezuela is highly polarized so it's very difficult to get a fair and balanced outlook of what's happening there. But it's impossible to deny the evidence of stubbornly incompetent and corrupt management of public finances. Printing unlimited money, supporting cuban dictatorship with oil billions, digging deeper in social division and looting public treasure... you can believe in whatever society model you want, but persistence in error to the point of leading the country to misery is irresponsible.
- vasilipupkin 11y ago
  My guess is also they could not fathom how incompetent the government they voted for would turn out to be
  - rbanffy 11y ago
    You should never ignore the other options. Between someone who's incompetent but has good intentions (assuming you buy into the populist discourse) and someone who's very competent and will work very efficiently against your interests, I'd take the incompetent. For a lot of people, Chávez was a measurable improvement over his predecessors.
- toyg 11y ago
  Let's be honest -- South American countries are not short of corrupt politicians at the best of times. Look at what's happening in Brazil, where a compromised leadership is being replaced by an even-more-corrupt bunch. At that point, a slightly-unhinged but fundamentally honest-looking ex-general starts looking like an attractive proposition.
  - woliveirajr 11y ago
    Don't think that the new bunch will be more corrupt. And that doesn't invalidate the replacement.
    - toyg 11y ago
      Oh, they are already: "Cunha was caught last year with millions of dollars in bribes in secret Swiss bank accounts, after having falsely denied to Congress that he had any foreign bank accounts. Cunha also appears in the Panama Papers" - http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/21/dilma-rousseff-enemies-impeached-brazil http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/21/dilma-r... My point is, from the perspective of an average voter, replacing a corrupt bunch with another corrupt bunch is a pointless exercise, so might as well send in the strongman. That's pretty much the standard scenario in which democracy dies (Weimar, fascist Italy, II French Republic, all the way back to Julius Caesar).
      - woliveirajr 11y ago
        I stand correct. All those schemes you mention were also used by the ones that are being replaced, and for even nefarious goals, like being able to manipulate the elections and perpetuate in the government. If the new one just don't destroy the economy, or recover from inflation / unemployment, it has done more good than the previous one.
    - coliveira 11y ago
      The new replacement is certainly more corrupt, they're involved in all kinds of known schemes, such as the Panama papers, Car wash operation, laundered money on Swiss banks, connections with drug dealers... Just do a quick search.
tobltobs 11y ago
Hm, I think neoliberals and commies are uniformly distributed on HN. I think the downvoting comes from that everybody who blames Chavez or the capitalists without mentioning stupidity just uses the Venezuela case for pushing his right or left agenda. Where on the world did price control ever work?
- rbanffy 11y ago
  > Where on the world did price control ever work? Was it ever applied isolated from other factors?
  - ktRolster 11y ago
    There's a lot of empirical evidence that price controls cause shortages, and the theory behind it is well understood. Wikipedia has a few examples, dating back to the Roman period: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_controls#Criticisms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_controls#Criticisms There are a lot of things economists don't know, but price controls -> shortages is one of the things that is well established (the exception is when the price limit is higher than the price of the object, and thus has no effect).
    - burfog 11y ago
      I think another exception would be when price controls are used only to stop monopoly rent. (or part of the same exception, depending on what you mean by "price of the object")
      - youngButEager 11y ago
        No. Rent control does lead to shortages. I have about $6 million to invest in rental properties. San Francisco is not being considered. I'm actually liquidating all my California assets, as the INCENTIVE to operate rentals has been destroyed. Have a read of this: "Due to Rent Control, S.F. Has 31,000 Vacant Housing Units As Frustrated Landlords Give Up" The Bay Citizen -- "In San Francisco, one of the toughest places in the country to find a place to live, more than 31,000 housing units — one of every 12 — now sit vacant, according to recently released census data. That’s the highest vacancy rate in the region, and a 70 percent increase from a decade ago." The reason? The city's pro-tenant, outdated rent control laws that make it difficult to raise rents or evict a tenant. "Increasingly, small-time landlords are just giving up, like one who has left two large apartments on the second and third floors of her building vacant for more than a decade, after a series of tenant difficulties. It’s just not worth the bother, or the risk, of being legally tied to a tenant for decades. “Vacancy rates are going up because owners have decided to take their units off the market,” said Ross Mirkarimi, a progressive member of the Board of Supervisors. He attributes that response to “peaking frustrations in dealing with the range of laws that protect tenants in San Francisco that make it difficult for small property owners to thrive.” Perversely, that is hurting the city’s renters as well, as a large percentage of the city’s housing stock is allowed to just sit vacant, driving up rents that newcomers pay for market-rate housing." MP: As we know from basic economic theory, rent control laws are doomed to fail with many predictable unintended consequences in the long run: fewer new rental units are built or made available, many apartments are removed from the market, a decline in the quality of housing, lower rental rates for long-term tenants but much higher rents for new tenants, inefficient use of housing space, etc. In other words, rent control laws guarantee that there will be less affordable housing in the long run, not more. PRICE CONTROLS CAUSE SHORTAGES. When there is no incentive to produce a good or a service, 2 things happen: 1) the SUPPLY of the good or service will drop (no incentive to produce) 2) if the DEMAND stays the same or goes HIGHER (San Francisco demand for rental units) -- the price will go up for the reduced SUPPLY of the good or service. That's why SF has high rents. Huge demand. No investment in affordable rentals. ZERO. Thus, SUPER HIGH rents. Same in NYC. - See more at: http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2011/05/because-of-rent-control-sf-has-31000.html#sthash.tva6Hdad.dpuf http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2011/05/because-of-rent-control-...

ctdonath 11y ago

It's been in the process of national suicide for a long time. Abnormally high oil prices are likely the only thing that let the country survive this long.

CamperBob2 11y ago

It's easy to hit the downvote button by mistake, especially on mobile. I've done it myself several times. The upvote/downvote buttons are obviously some kind of in-joke at YC, because otherwise this problem would have been fixed a long time ago.

narag 11y ago

I have no idea why this got downvoted. This is literally what happened there. I upvoted because it's a legit point of view that doesn't deserve to be silenced. BUT... Suggesting the debacle main cause is low oil prices and justifying evil with previous evil... is not quite right. My tocayo is printing money as if there is no tomorrow. Actually, at this pace, there will be no tomorrow, almost there is no today.

gniv 11y ago

Yeah, I don't get it either. This is pretty much what happened to the Soviet Union -- weak economy pushed to the brink by collapsing oil prices.