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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

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
  We can continue a bit with the wikipedia: "After Pérez initiated such liberal economic policies and made Venezuelan markets more free, Venezuela's GDP went from a -8.3% decline in 1989 to growing 4.4% in 1990 and 9.2% in 1991, though wages remained low and unemployment was high among Venezuelans. Some state that "neoliberalism" was the cause of Venezuelan economic difficulties, though overreliance on oil prices and a fractured political system without parties agreeing on policies caused much of the problems." Though after dismissing a lot of Chavists as conspiracy-theorists, I have seen some outrageous mistranslations and downright lies about Venezuela from the anti-Chavist side, taken uncritically by western media as factual, I am now very careful about sources there. There is a very active propaganda on both sides there. In a country with the largest oil reserves in the world and an underdevelopped oil industry, I doubt that free market forces would naturally tend to diversify the economy. On the contrary it would lead to increased investments there. I would like to remind that under Chavez, his centrally planned economy was criticized for hindering the oil sector development. The other ranking where Venezuela is high is corruption. That is the problem you want to solve first. High corruption, under free market or centrally planned economy, is not going to lead to good outcomes. Forget the economic model, it is the justice and democratic model that is important.
CryptoPunk 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. There were plenty of petro-states which didn't see the kind of economic devastation Venezuela did when oil prices plummeted. The key difference was that other petro-states had a robust private sector, which not only meant they had more private savings that halped the economy absorb the shock from low oil prices, but also meant they were more diversified. The drop in oil prices should never have led to mass malnutrition. Venezuela even with low oil prices is a middle income country. It was socialist policies like price controls that led to the long food lines and empty supermarket shelves. >>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. This is what the Venezuelan government is blaming its economic problems on, but there is actually no evidence at all that the intervention of the US government is anywhere near enough to be responsible for any significant portion of the economic decline of Venezuela. There are no significant sanctions on Venezuela and the US imports much of its oil from the country.
- ue_ 9y ago
  In my view it is a sign more of the fact that Venezuela thought it could depend so much on oil that it failed to diversify rather than a failure of its mode of planning, though that's not without criticism, one would have hoped they learned from the disaster of the USSR's Five Year Plan. Price controls aren't really a Socialist policy - the Socialist policy in this case would be the gradual change from the production of commodities to the production only of use-values, lacking their exchange value dimension. If price controls are a Socialist policy, then it doesn't take much for Socialism to come about - but that's clearly not what Socialists are talking about when they talk about Socialist policy. Marx, for one, wasn't in favour of price controls to my knowledge. Nor were the other Socialist economists and theorists. I'm not sure where you're getting the idea from other than the oft-repeated myth that Socialism is merely when the government "does stuff".

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
We can continue a bit with the wikipedia: "After Pérez initiated such liberal economic policies and made Venezuelan markets more free, Venezuela's GDP went from a -8.3% decline in 1989 to growing 4.4% in 1990 and 9.2% in 1991, though wages remained low and unemployment was high among Venezuelans. Some state that "neoliberalism" was the cause of Venezuelan economic difficulties, though overreliance on oil prices and a fractured political system without parties agreeing on policies caused much of the problems." Though after dismissing a lot of Chavists as conspiracy-theorists, I have seen some outrageous mistranslations and downright lies about Venezuela from the anti-Chavist side, taken uncritically by western media as factual, I am now very careful about sources there. There is a very active propaganda on both sides there. In a country with the largest oil reserves in the world and an underdevelopped oil industry, I doubt that free market forces would naturally tend to diversify the economy. On the contrary it would lead to increased investments there. I would like to remind that under Chavez, his centrally planned economy was criticized for hindering the oil sector development. The other ranking where Venezuela is high is corruption. That is the problem you want to solve first. High corruption, under free market or centrally planned economy, is not going to lead to good outcomes. Forget the economic model, it is the justice and democratic model that is important.

CryptoPunk 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. There were plenty of petro-states which didn't see the kind of economic devastation Venezuela did when oil prices plummeted. The key difference was that other petro-states had a robust private sector, which not only meant they had more private savings that halped the economy absorb the shock from low oil prices, but also meant they were more diversified. The drop in oil prices should never have led to mass malnutrition. Venezuela even with low oil prices is a middle income country. It was socialist policies like price controls that led to the long food lines and empty supermarket shelves. >>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. This is what the Venezuelan government is blaming its economic problems on, but there is actually no evidence at all that the intervention of the US government is anywhere near enough to be responsible for any significant portion of the economic decline of Venezuela. There are no significant sanctions on Venezuela and the US imports much of its oil from the country.

ue_ 9y ago
In my view it is a sign more of the fact that Venezuela thought it could depend so much on oil that it failed to diversify rather than a failure of its mode of planning, though that's not without criticism, one would have hoped they learned from the disaster of the USSR's Five Year Plan. Price controls aren't really a Socialist policy - the Socialist policy in this case would be the gradual change from the production of commodities to the production only of use-values, lacking their exchange value dimension. If price controls are a Socialist policy, then it doesn't take much for Socialism to come about - but that's clearly not what Socialists are talking about when they talk about Socialist policy. Marx, for one, wasn't in favour of price controls to my knowledge. Nor were the other Socialist economists and theorists. I'm not sure where you're getting the idea from other than the oft-repeated myth that Socialism is merely when the government "does stuff".