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It's not socialism, it's dictatorism. It's graftism. It's simple thievery. It's everyone's worst nightmare that your country is a madhouse that no hospital can

It's not socialism, it's dictatorism. It's graftism. It's simple thievery. It's everyone's worst nightmare that your country is a madhouse that no hospital can cure. You may as well blame mothers for having children who ruined the country. But the country still has oil in the ground but not the will to use it wisely. There is still hope just no idea of how to make it happen.

jazzyk 10y ago
"Socialism" is rarely actual socialism. There are usually good intentions in the beginning, but then "some animals become more equal than others".
- coliveira 10y ago
  Capitalism is also rarely actual capitalism. It is frequently just a system where friends help each other to continue increasing their fortunes. This is true specially in third world countries.
  - slantaclaus 10y ago
    Capitalism + Nepotism = Capitalism
- jeffdavis 10y ago
  That's the problem: it's fundamentally unimplementable. First, on even a moderate scale, you quickly find out that democracy is not well suited to make the zillions of decisions needed to run an economy. Voters will be making too many decisions about things they know too little about. So, they have to delegate the power. Under capitalism, government powers are somewhat limited, so delegating has some checks and balances. But under socialism, you have to delegate power over every aspect of the economy, which is basically everything. In other words, you've just delegated arbitrary power, which has a bad history. Even if that all works out, now you have an information flow problem. Prices no longer reflect supply and demand, so how do you deal with shortages and surpluses? What if you have 10000 people applying to be "beer taster" and zero people applying to be nurses?
eudox 10y ago
If we go to Boston, and we find that the people in the North all have nice clean homes, and the people in the South live in a dump, then that's a valid distinction because the difference existed before we went to Boston. If you look at socialist countries throughout history, and classify them into "nice moderate progressives" and "plain old dictatorships" on the basis of outcomes, then that's not a valid distinction: it's just retroactively repainting the lines on the ideological landscape to fit your views. An ex post facto difference is none at all.
- danharaj 10y ago
  The definition of socialism is democratic, collective worker control over the means of production. It is an extremely simple definition, which is why there are dozens of variations on the basic idea. Put 10 socialists in a room and they'll walk out with 11 ideologies. Venezuela has not had democratic ownership of the means of production. Venezuela is a state capitalist entity with either a centrally administrated or command economy depending on how you want to look at it.
  - eudox 10y ago
    This is too broad and abstract to be actionable, let alone analyzable. What is "democratic" control? If people elect representatives who try to run the economy as if it were a diesel engine, is that democratic control? Or does it mean a plurality of worker's owned corporations? Furthermore, "state capitalist" is about as pitiable a phrase as "late capitalism". Venezuela is populated by Communists and run by Communists who ran their political campaigns on Communist promises, therefore, Venezuela is a Communist country.
    - danharaj 10y ago
      That's ridiculous. Then the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is a democracy, a republic, and for the people. Capitalism is a form of economic organization based on markets, private property, the accumulation of capital, and exploitation in the "neutral" sense of extracting property from investment. Capitalism comes in many different forms just as socialism does. Just because welfare capitalism and laissez-faire capitalism are distinct does not mean capitalism as a concept is devoid of content. Just because "market" and "private property" are abstract terms that need to further instantiated to be analyzed does not mean capitalism isn't a coherent concept. State capitalism is when the state owns all the property and administers or directly controls the means of production through a bureaucracy, exactly like a corporation at the scale of a nation. > This is too broad and abstract to be actionable, let alone analyzable. What is "democratic" control? Well that's why there are so many different flavors of socialism. A lot of socialists would say you cannot simply elect socialism into office. Are they wrong? You're the one who wants to lump all people who call themselves socialists together, even though that sort of reasoning leads to absurdities like considering both North Korea and the United States of America democratic countries. If defining socialism as an empirically verifiable condition of the relationship between people and the means of production is too abstract to be analyzable, lumping everyone together based on intent and self-labeling is even worse.
sib 10y ago
There's a bit of No True Scotsman in these sorts of defenses of socialism in the context of places like Venezuela... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
- sgift 10y ago
  There's always "no true scotsman" in economic discussions. Just try pointing out any problem with free market and wait for the inevitable "yes, but that isn't a real free market". Somehow, economic discussions seem to be the home of every extremist view one can find and with it all the "no true scotsman" arguments.

jazzyk 10y ago

"Socialism" is rarely actual socialism. There are usually good intentions in the beginning, but then "some animals become more equal than others".

coliveira 10y ago
Capitalism is also rarely actual capitalism. It is frequently just a system where friends help each other to continue increasing their fortunes. This is true specially in third world countries.
- slantaclaus 10y ago
  Capitalism + Nepotism = Capitalism
jeffdavis 10y ago
That's the problem: it's fundamentally unimplementable. First, on even a moderate scale, you quickly find out that democracy is not well suited to make the zillions of decisions needed to run an economy. Voters will be making too many decisions about things they know too little about. So, they have to delegate the power. Under capitalism, government powers are somewhat limited, so delegating has some checks and balances. But under socialism, you have to delegate power over every aspect of the economy, which is basically everything. In other words, you've just delegated arbitrary power, which has a bad history. Even if that all works out, now you have an information flow problem. Prices no longer reflect supply and demand, so how do you deal with shortages and surpluses? What if you have 10000 people applying to be "beer taster" and zero people applying to be nurses?

eudox 10y ago

If we go to Boston, and we find that the people in the North all have nice clean homes, and the people in the South live in a dump, then that's a valid distinction because the difference existed before we went to Boston. If you look at socialist countries throughout history, and classify them into "nice moderate progressives" and "plain old dictatorships" on the basis of outcomes, then that's not a valid distinction: it's just retroactively repainting the lines on the ideological landscape to fit your views. An ex post facto difference is none at all.

danharaj 10y ago
The definition of socialism is democratic, collective worker control over the means of production. It is an extremely simple definition, which is why there are dozens of variations on the basic idea. Put 10 socialists in a room and they'll walk out with 11 ideologies. Venezuela has not had democratic ownership of the means of production. Venezuela is a state capitalist entity with either a centrally administrated or command economy depending on how you want to look at it.
- eudox 10y ago
  This is too broad and abstract to be actionable, let alone analyzable. What is "democratic" control? If people elect representatives who try to run the economy as if it were a diesel engine, is that democratic control? Or does it mean a plurality of worker's owned corporations? Furthermore, "state capitalist" is about as pitiable a phrase as "late capitalism". Venezuela is populated by Communists and run by Communists who ran their political campaigns on Communist promises, therefore, Venezuela is a Communist country.
  - danharaj 10y ago
    That's ridiculous. Then the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is a democracy, a republic, and for the people. Capitalism is a form of economic organization based on markets, private property, the accumulation of capital, and exploitation in the "neutral" sense of extracting property from investment. Capitalism comes in many different forms just as socialism does. Just because welfare capitalism and laissez-faire capitalism are distinct does not mean capitalism as a concept is devoid of content. Just because "market" and "private property" are abstract terms that need to further instantiated to be analyzed does not mean capitalism isn't a coherent concept. State capitalism is when the state owns all the property and administers or directly controls the means of production through a bureaucracy, exactly like a corporation at the scale of a nation. > This is too broad and abstract to be actionable, let alone analyzable. What is "democratic" control? Well that's why there are so many different flavors of socialism. A lot of socialists would say you cannot simply elect socialism into office. Are they wrong? You're the one who wants to lump all people who call themselves socialists together, even though that sort of reasoning leads to absurdities like considering both North Korea and the United States of America democratic countries. If defining socialism as an empirically verifiable condition of the relationship between people and the means of production is too abstract to be analyzable, lumping everyone together based on intent and self-labeling is even worse.

sib 10y ago

There's a bit of No True Scotsman in these sorts of defenses of socialism in the context of places like Venezuela... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

sgift 10y ago
There's always "no true scotsman" in economic discussions. Just try pointing out any problem with free market and wait for the inevitable "yes, but that isn't a real free market". Somehow, economic discussions seem to be the home of every extremist view one can find and with it all the "no true scotsman" arguments.