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Scary times ahead for Venezuela. It's too bad it will be the average person paying the price for the corrupt few.
by El_Montanero 9y ago
Scary times ahead for Venezuela. It's too bad it will be the average person paying the price for the corrupt few.
- nickpp 9y agoThe "average person" is guilty of voting the communist government. Corruption is just the normal result of communism/socialism.
- marcosdumay 9y agoThat's never a completely true statement. It is much nearer false for Venezuela, where the last free elections filled their Congress with the opposition, and where people are literally fighting their government on the streets.
- guilhas 9y agoThere was local elections a week ago and the government won majority.
- asheinfeld 9y agoYeah, but the givernment controls the institution that runs those elections... it’s a completely frigged system. So you statement is moot.
- marcosdumay 9y agoNotice I said "the last free election". It is prone to a no true Scotchmen fallacy, but when the police start to violently stop people from voting you can be sure an election wasn't free anymore.
- fredsir 9y agoI’m just wondering... in which governing scheme is corruption not the default? I can’t think of any in use today by a country or large organization where it’s not there in one way or another. The only solution, I think, is to have an extremely low tolerance for corruption (and incompetence because that’s often what corruption is disguised as) such that anybody in power would be too scared to do corrupt shit because they know they’ll get put in to jail and get the hole bill put into their name, but such a thing wouldn’t work because none of the types of people that want to be in power would ever let something like that take place because, well, they want to stay in power.
- gravy 9y agoThe answer is not in policing corruption, since everyone is subject to corruption (no population is free of bad apples), but in preventing corruption. If there is not much power to be had by those seeking election, then the people "in power" are not worth influencing. Note: not anarchy and not anti-regulation; just a little slightly anti-lots of government power. EDIT: But this is the right idea.
- nickpp 9y agoA government is a monopoly by definition. And in a monopoly, competence is useless - being replaced by corruption (just a different skill). But the more areas the government is involved, the more corruption it spreads. And in socialism the government does it all: production, jobs, education, health care, etc.
- macintux 9y agoAs two notable countries of significant interest to HN readers recently proved, frustrated voters are easily led astray by populist demagogues with big promises and low tolerances for truth-telling.
- nickpp 9y agoThat doesn’t make the manipulated voters any less guilty.
- macintux 9y agoI'm mainly annoyed by the association of Venezuela's disaster with socialism. What the voters "bought" was a populist system; the political underpinnings are almost entirely irrelevant. Scandinavia is fraught with the socialist devil too, yet manages to get by just fine.
- tytytytytytytyt 9y agoIt's generous to attribute it to "frustration".
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- dogruck 9y agoThe scary times have already arrived for Venezuela, tragically.