8 ms·

If their economy wasn’t centrally planned and controlled by the government, it would be more resilient

by 0x27081990 9y ago

ue_ 9y ago
That's true, I think that Socialists should abandon older and rigid methods of central planning; research has been active within the Socialist community for finding new methods of planning, such as the work of Paul W. Cockshott. That said, Venezuela is far from a centrally planned economy.
danharaj 9y ago
This same thing happened under a more liberal capitalist government before. That's literally how Chavez got into power. The biggest difference between then and now is the severity of the oil price drop. An exacerbating factor is that the same forces that tried to coup Chavez in 2002 are of course still politically active and, rationally given their interests, using their economic connections to exacerbate the economic collapse through various means. The United States recently freezed some Venezuelan government finances which is obviously intended to further destabilize the government. Venezuela is a shitshow, to put it bluntly. But the shallow analyses which focus purely on ideology instead of the physical reality on the ground is asinine, bordering on propaganda (Vox tends to swing randomly between center-left progressivism and center-right neoliberalism). Is the government of Venezuela incompetent? Probably as incompetent as most. Are they dealing with an unprecedented economic collapse caused by structural factors? Yes. On the other hand, most people don't actually know how the Venezuelan economy is structured. They just know "socialism bad" and "capitalism good". It's tiresome because the same structural deficiencies at play in their economy today was there decades ago, when they weren't "socialist". It should be noted what happens to countries whose economies collapse because their place in the world economy no longer exists and then seek to renormalize via the accepted capitalist channels (like the IMF and the like). The entire country gets sold off to foreign interests and they spend the rest of their decades financing a debt they can never pay off. As for the repressiveness of the Venezuelan state, it's not surprising. The violence of a state is directly proportional to how threatened it feels. When a state is failing, it is going to be violent. Cf. Spain and Catalonia at the moment.
- sremani 9y ago
  A quick refresher for my liberal friends, Oil Prices in 2012: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=9530 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=9530 Food Shortages in Venezuela in 2012 Source from NYT: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/21/world/americas/venezuela-faces-shortages-in-grocery-staples.html?mcubz=3 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/21/world/americas/venezuela-f...
  - danharaj 9y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Venezuelan_oil_industry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Venezuelan_oil_... #First_Dutch_Disease #Second_Dutch_Disease #Third_Dutch_Disease But what about free markets? Why don't they just have free markets? This alternative is just pure rhetoric hardly explicated in its material form: Sell the country off to international corporations, saddle your country with unmanageable debt, and beg the international financial system to keep you alive so long as you have resources worth extracting. Honestly, it would be fine if people were just forthright in proposing those policies. It's always dressed up in the language of freedom and liberty in the most dishonest way. Venezuela is failing now, I can point to several other nations that did exactly what they were supposed to according to the interests of Capital, and they aren't looking so hot either.
  - 0x27081990 9y ago
    They closed import/export for the private sector. Only federal government handles it. Which led to export just oil (inefficiently if I may add), so when priced collapsed they had to decide if pay debt and face hunger, or fight hunger and face a financial default. Guess which one they decided?
- lend000 9y ago
  > This same thing happened under a more liberal capitalist government before. That's literally how Chavez got into power. That's not true at all. The previous government was socializing the economy, starting with nationalizing oil in 1976. From Wikipedia: "The election of Carlos Andrés Pérez in 1973 coincided with the 1973 oil crisis, in which Venezuela's income exploded as oil prices soared; oil industries were nationalized in 1976. This led to massive increases in public spending, but also increases in external debts, which continued into the 1980s when the collapse of oil prices during the 1980s crippled the Venezuelan economy. As the government started to devalue the currency in February 1983 to face its financial obligations, Venezuelans' real standards of living fell dramatically. A number of failed economic policies and increasing corruption in government led to rising poverty and crime, worsening social indicators, and increased political instability."
Iv 9y ago
It would also be more vulnerable to the influence of the US behemoth, the oil-hungry giant that considers south-America its sphere of influence. I don't want to appear pro-Chavez, many of his actions were despicable. But understand that "free-market" in their case means an economy controlled by USA. Chavez came into power precisely because the free-market economy before him failed to raise wages even as the GDP increased. It also failed to diversify. Economically, Venezuela has two problems: over-reliance on oil and corruption. In 2017, we can consider it proven that neither central planning, nor free-market have succeeded alone in solving these problems. They are mostly orthogonal to the organization of the economy. Politically, it has one problem: they don't like USA. Look at Saudi Arabia. They are centrally planned and they are extremely dependent on oil. But things go well economically. You just have to let US companies install themselves there and don't call yourself a socialist. Why can't a free market diversify Venezuela's economy? Well when you have the world's biggest proven oil reserves (yes, more than Saudi Arabia since a few years) and an underdeveloped oil sector, where do you expect investments to flow? You can redirect some of these investment by giving the government an amount of control over what the oil industry does, by putting quotas in place, this kind of things. But then, you are opposed by "the free world".

If their economy wasn’t centrally planned and controlled by the government, it would be more resilient

ue_ 9y ago

That's true, I think that Socialists should abandon older and rigid methods of central planning; research has been active within the Socialist community for finding new methods of planning, such as the work of Paul W. Cockshott. That said, Venezuela is far from a centrally planned economy.

danharaj 9y ago

This same thing happened under a more liberal capitalist government before. That's literally how Chavez got into power. The biggest difference between then and now is the severity of the oil price drop. An exacerbating factor is that the same forces that tried to coup Chavez in 2002 are of course still politically active and, rationally given their interests, using their economic connections to exacerbate the economic collapse through various means. The United States recently freezed some Venezuelan government finances which is obviously intended to further destabilize the government. Venezuela is a shitshow, to put it bluntly. But the shallow analyses which focus purely on ideology instead of the physical reality on the ground is asinine, bordering on propaganda (Vox tends to swing randomly between center-left progressivism and center-right neoliberalism). Is the government of Venezuela incompetent? Probably as incompetent as most. Are they dealing with an unprecedented economic collapse caused by structural factors? Yes. On the other hand, most people don't actually know how the Venezuelan economy is structured. They just know "socialism bad" and "capitalism good". It's tiresome because the same structural deficiencies at play in their economy today was there decades ago, when they weren't "socialist". It should be noted what happens to countries whose economies collapse because their place in the world economy no longer exists and then seek to renormalize via the accepted capitalist channels (like the IMF and the like). The entire country gets sold off to foreign interests and they spend the rest of their decades financing a debt they can never pay off. As for the repressiveness of the Venezuelan state, it's not surprising. The violence of a state is directly proportional to how threatened it feels. When a state is failing, it is going to be violent. Cf. Spain and Catalonia at the moment.

sremani 9y ago
A quick refresher for my liberal friends, Oil Prices in 2012: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=9530 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=9530 Food Shortages in Venezuela in 2012 Source from NYT: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/21/world/americas/venezuela-faces-shortages-in-grocery-staples.html?mcubz=3 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/21/world/americas/venezuela-f...
- danharaj 9y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Venezuelan_oil_industry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Venezuelan_oil_... #First_Dutch_Disease #Second_Dutch_Disease #Third_Dutch_Disease But what about free markets? Why don't they just have free markets? This alternative is just pure rhetoric hardly explicated in its material form: Sell the country off to international corporations, saddle your country with unmanageable debt, and beg the international financial system to keep you alive so long as you have resources worth extracting. Honestly, it would be fine if people were just forthright in proposing those policies. It's always dressed up in the language of freedom and liberty in the most dishonest way. Venezuela is failing now, I can point to several other nations that did exactly what they were supposed to according to the interests of Capital, and they aren't looking so hot either.
- 0x27081990 9y ago
  They closed import/export for the private sector. Only federal government handles it. Which led to export just oil (inefficiently if I may add), so when priced collapsed they had to decide if pay debt and face hunger, or fight hunger and face a financial default. Guess which one they decided?
lend000 9y ago
> This same thing happened under a more liberal capitalist government before. That's literally how Chavez got into power. That's not true at all. The previous government was socializing the economy, starting with nationalizing oil in 1976. From Wikipedia: "The election of Carlos Andrés Pérez in 1973 coincided with the 1973 oil crisis, in which Venezuela's income exploded as oil prices soared; oil industries were nationalized in 1976. This led to massive increases in public spending, but also increases in external debts, which continued into the 1980s when the collapse of oil prices during the 1980s crippled the Venezuelan economy. As the government started to devalue the currency in February 1983 to face its financial obligations, Venezuelans' real standards of living fell dramatically. A number of failed economic policies and increasing corruption in government led to rising poverty and crime, worsening social indicators, and increased political instability."

Iv 9y ago

It would also be more vulnerable to the influence of the US behemoth, the oil-hungry giant that considers south-America its sphere of influence. I don't want to appear pro-Chavez, many of his actions were despicable. But understand that "free-market" in their case means an economy controlled by USA. Chavez came into power precisely because the free-market economy before him failed to raise wages even as the GDP increased. It also failed to diversify. Economically, Venezuela has two problems: over-reliance on oil and corruption. In 2017, we can consider it proven that neither central planning, nor free-market have succeeded alone in solving these problems. They are mostly orthogonal to the organization of the economy. Politically, it has one problem: they don't like USA. Look at Saudi Arabia. They are centrally planned and they are extremely dependent on oil. But things go well economically. You just have to let US companies install themselves there and don't call yourself a socialist. Why can't a free market diversify Venezuela's economy? Well when you have the world's biggest proven oil reserves (yes, more than Saudi Arabia since a few years) and an underdeveloped oil sector, where do you expect investments to flow? You can redirect some of these investment by giving the government an amount of control over what the oil industry does, by putting quotas in place, this kind of things. But then, you are opposed by "the free world".