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How Venezuela Struck It Poor

• hkai 8y ago
  Great reminder that populists on both sides, not just the right wing ones, are dangerous.
  • vixen99 8y ago
    Some definitions for 'populist' " (Government, Politics & Diplomacy) a political strategy based on a calculated appeal to the interests or prejudices of ordinary people" and " the political doctrine that supports the rights and powers of the common people in their struggle with the privileged elite" Unfortunately use of the emotive and clichéd word 'populist' shuts down any further discussion, a bonus point for most people who use it.
• juliazxu 8y ago
  It seems like Venezuela was hit with a perfect storm of extremely unforgiving factors. The combination of the erosion of rule of law, populist leaders who are ignorant of economic management, and the resource curse keep driving Venezuela into a downward spiral. I have a feeling things will get even worse before they get better.
  • Grue3 8y ago
    Perfect storm makes it sound like there was any randomness involved in Venezuela's downfall. However it was predictable from the start. It's been known for a long time that socialism always leads to extreme poverty. As we say in Russia, don't step on the same garden rake twice and expect a different result.
    • FormFollowsFunc 8y ago
      I think it’s just American propaganda to blame this on socialism. You had a politician with a miltary background who knew nothing about oil destroy an oil company. Norway is fairly socialist - distributing the gains of oil amongst it’s people, and it’s doing quite well. What you had in Russia was statism not socialism - power and wealth were concentrated in the communist party rather than shared with the people.
      • IGI-111 8y ago
        And there is that meme again, people fail to understand what socialism is. Social policies or redistribution don't make a socialist state. Norway is a liberal democracy. The workers don't own the means of production there. And the Soviet Union was indeed a socialist state. Statism and socialism aren't mutually exclusive, and being both is exactly the point of a dictatorship of the proletariat. That it didn't bring what it promised is just one more tired argument. Scotsmen are never true socialists for some reason. All in all, Venezuela's woes aren't all to blame on socialism, but you can't really help but point out that it's a direct application of the principles layed out in The Road to Serfdom. The State grew by violating private property to redistribute it, scared off any outside investment, consolidating into an all-in policy on oil. And that investment had to be controlled, which means loyalty became more important than competence to recruit oil industry officials. And the rest was just one market fluctuation away.
        • ionised 8y ago
          The workers didn't own the means of production in Venezuela either. Businesses there are 90% privately or publicly owned.
          • IGI-111 8y ago
            This is why I wouldn't blame it on socialism per se. It was the stated goal of the socialist government however to get there. And I'd rather argue that this aim partly caused the outcome. In fact I feel this is the main miscommunication that causes the "it wasn't real X" debate. People use the term X to refer both to the goal and the method of implementation.
          • andrenth 8y ago
            While in theory that’s true, Venezuela also has strong government-imposed price controls backed by a violent militia.
            • AstralStorm 8y ago
    • leonk 8y ago
      >> It's been known for a long time that socialism always leads to extreme poverty I don't think this is a well known, or even considered true. Take the biggest socialist countries, Russian and China. Compare them to what the conditions were like in those countries before socialist states took over. You will see massive improvements.
      • ddnb 8y ago
        Exactly. Not to mention the Soviets were able to beat the US in almost all steps of the space race, starting with the first satellite as soon as 1957! I'd say what the soviet style of economic development was very good for was rapid industrialization from the ground up.
        • pasabagi 8y ago
          I'm sympathetic to this position, but I don't know if it's the whole story. Russia, before the revolution, was a country of extremes. On the one hand, there were farmers who were living in a similar manner to 5th century peasants. On the other, there were some of the largest industrial complexes in the world. I think the Soviets did achieve incredible things, but I think that's largely the result of abandoning profit as the sole criterion of whether an activity is worthwhile: capitalist societies tend to spend most of their productive labour on keeping profitable hamster-wheels spinning (like the housing market, for instance).
      • candiodari 8y ago
        I have yet to meet an ex-Soviet citizen who is not of this opinion. It's only far away leftists/communists that are still of this opinion. They still preach that political decision making should be independent of economic and market factors (in other words: they should be elected/conquer power (social democrats/marxist view) and make decisions ignoring economic reality). And of course, please ignore that they were largely singing the praises of Chavez and Maduro when this problem was just getting started. Sentences like "Finally a leader that stands up to big banks" and so on were common. So not only were they singing the praises of these disastrous leaders. They were explicitly calling out the cause of this economic destruction as the best thing ever. And of course, now the consequences become more clear, they must distance themselves from it just like they distance themselves from the fact that the biggest communist state to ever exist voluntarily started a bigger holocaust than Nazi Germany ... Not that I expect this will convince you of the problems with ignoring economics, but I do hope this can at least make you VERY careful in considering such ideas and give at least some time to looking for problems.
• captainbland 8y ago
  It's worth noting that many modern proponents of democratic socialism have learned these lessons already and reject state control as the sole means of 'worker ownership'. Socialism and Co-operation are on a collision course. We are working more towards co-operative ownership, mutualisation and municipal ownership based solutions which take the best of liberal markets, where appropriate, and combine them with fair worker and community ownership models.
  • andrenth 8y ago
    What’s the definition of markets being appropriate, and what’s your course of action when you decide they ceased to be?
    • captainbland 8y ago
      Basically wherever there's not a natural monopoly, otherwise markets are generally appropriate. Examples of natural monopolies generally include things like water, rail and healthcare where competition does not easily take place either because of its reliance on exclusive access to limited natural resources, space or just the vast upfront cost of entering into competition because of infrastructure. Where there is, sometimes the state is the right thing to run it (either directly or maybe as a part of an independent body which receives state funding) - sometimes it's better broken down into municiple level entities and run at the local level.
      • andrenth 8y ago
        Would you be open to exploring the idea that natural monopolies are in fact anything but natural, being instead a result of government intervention?
        • AstralStorm 8y ago
          They are not. Please read up the story on forests and lumber business in the United Kingdom. Also what happened to certain kinds of river transport when cities happened to privatize parts of rivers with tariffs. Or desirable farmland in the United States more recently. (vs bisons) Usually what happened is that the strongest choke point or first mover on a truly limited resource gets to monopolize or.