9 ms·
The Norwegian success is the single biggest piece of evidence as to why the Venezuelan catastrophe was largely avoidable, and the fault of irresponsible leaders
by lr4444lr 7y ago
The Norwegian success is the single biggest piece of evidence as to why the Venezuelan catastrophe was largely avoidable, and the fault of irresponsible leadership.
- lelima 7y agoNot Leadership but corruption
- dev_dull 7y agoIt’s not so much the amount that will prove them successful, but the length. Over time will it revert to the mean?
- atemerev 7y agoOf course it was avoidable. Just should have kept capitalism.
- sp332 7y agoHow does capitalism decide who gets extraction rights for natural resources?
- atemerev 7y agoThe discoverer? And then whoever wants to buy the extraction rights from her at the market price? What’s even the problem?
- hutzlibu 7y agoBecause buying extraction rights from corrupt politicians who happen to be in the declared backyard of the empire number one, famous for covert operations .. might have not much to do with "fair capitalism" and investment..
- sp332 7y agoSo whoever discovers something automatically owns it? What if I discover an oil field that continues under someone else's land - is it mine because I discovered it? Do I get to take all the oil as long as the extraction equipment is only on my land? If my extraction activities lower the value of their land, do I owe them damages? My point is not to actually get into these details but to point out that capitalism does not give the answers. Capitalism can only start after you have nailed down the rules about how public and private property work.
- atemerev 7y agoI agree. Land rights are more complicated than that, indeed.
- coliveira 7y agoBut what to say about Americans, who squandered natural resources to help the rich, and now the funding to their own social security is en route to insolvency?
- maxerickson 7y agoIt would be easy to make social security solvent far into the future. There's no shortage of resources to do it, just lack of political will. One step would be to move it away from an insurance model and raise the cap on contributions. Another would be to modestly increase the contribution rates.
- Majromax 7y ago> One step would be to move it away from an insurance model and raise the cap on contributions. Another would be to modestly increase the contribution rates. This is essentially what happened in the mid-90s with the Canada Pension Plan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_Pension_Plan#1996_reforms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_Pension_Plan#1996_refor...): an increase of contribution rates to move beyond PAYGO solvency to a partial advance-funding model. As a result, the CPP now has a few hundred billion dollars in assets (invested largely in equities) providing income to support long-term solvency.
- eloff 7y agoThe downside of that is the Canadian pension doesn't provide a livable amount. One ex tech worker in Calgary who's collecting pension now told me it pays his electric bill.
- jdavis703 7y agoIf they do raise the cap on contributions people should have the option of either paying more in to social security or paying more into an uncapped IRA or 401(k).
- pkaye 7y ago
- pytester 7y agoExcept every other oil dominated country - e.g. Iraq, Libya, half of Africa is more like Venezuela (worse even), than Norway. The oil curse is very real and, for Venezuela, largely unavoidable.
- lr4444lr 7y agoCorrect me if I'm mistaken, but most of those other countries have not nationalized their oil (or at least the profits) like Venezuela and Norway have.
- AlexTWithBeard 7y agoBut I'm sure they're taxing natural resources exploration at a pretty high rate.
- buboard 7y agoThat doesnt explain why all those other countries make so much from oil, even though some of them are at war.
- calvinmorrison 7y agoNorway is about 20% of it's GDP from Oil/Gas, Iraq is above 90%. I think that is also an explaination
- vixen99 7y agoits GDP
- thepangolino 7y agoThat’s hardly surprising for anyone having been there.
- mruts 7y agoThat’s not true, the Saudis do very well for themselves. The entire citizen population is given massive handouts, and it seems to be working out okay. Corruption isn’t very bad, at least compared to other oil states. Also Kuwait is doing good as well, and they have a retarded amount of oil. But, in general, I agree that it often hurts instead of helps. But select countries like the US, Norway, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia have become very prosperous from natural resources and nothing terrible has happened because of it.
- Ididntdothis 7y agoIs anybody claiming otherwise? It seems pretty obvious that someone there messed up majorly for a long time.
- Mountain_Skies 7y agoThere are people who for ideological reasons blame all of Venezuela's woes on external factors. Then again, there are some for ideological reasons who claim external factors haven't made things worse than the terrible leadership has made it. Not sure of the ratio of blame that should go to internal leadership versus external factors but it does seem like poor leadership has made it easier for external forces to worsen the situation.
- SuoDuanDao 7y agoThere is also the fact that, with the American playbook for regime change being what it is, there is quite a lot of skepticism about the sudden surge to prominence in the news cycle about the governance woes of a very oil-rich nation, irrespective of how legitimate reports of the mismanagement actually are.
- ramblerman 7y agoThe people who barricaded the Venezuelan embassy when there was an attempted coup against Maduro for one. There is a big ideological drive to show that communism works, and as such all the problems Venezuela faces are just imperialism at work (In their argument).
- hutzlibu 7y agoAnd on the other side there are lots of people trying to show how it all does not work, while ignoring that the super power number one does all they can, except open military actions, to make it not work. In other words, to me the situation in Venezuela does not prove anything, in terms of political ideology.
- crdoconnor 7y agoThere's a bigger ideological drive to show that taking US oil assets in the country and diverting the funds toward social programs was a dire mistake.
- cagenut 7y agoI can't stand this ideological sports-team type of commentary, so just to add some real information and context (after my downvote): Venezuela produces ~70k barrels per person per day. Norway produces a little more than half as much total oil, but with one-sixth the population it works out to ~330k barrels per person per day. An order of magnitude per-capita difference.
- namdnay 7y agoIf Venezuela had a fund of 20k per citizen they would definitely not be in the same state as today...
- throwaway2019V 7y agoThat's not an order of a magnitude. Even then, so, Venezuela produces 1/5th per capita the oil of Norway. Why doesn't there exist a fund with $37k/person in Venezuela?
- kwhitefoot 7y agoYou could ask a similar question of the UK.
- conjectures 7y agoThis is a question I ask. The UK policy was, effectively, 'paaarty!'
- sgt101 7y agoWell - capitalise trade in The City of London; without the oil it's pretty clear London wouldn't have developed the way it did.
- conjectures 7y agoRather than the story of financial degregulation? Sceptical.
- stunt 7y agoNorway is an exception. A mix of corruption and foreign intervention that supports corruption is the root cause for countries like Venezuela.
- plazmatic 7y agoPrecisely, Irresponsible leadership. Not the fault of any one ideology, like some would have you believe.
- gabythenerd 7y agoOne piece of history that I think marks the start of Venezuela's free fall, it's the pardon that the then-president Caldera granted to the leader of a military coup, Chávez. That allowed populism and corruption to reign in the country (he won the next elections).
- orwin 7y agoThe corruption was there before the military coup. I think the only coup that did not involve prior corruption was the one against Mosaddegh (and still, the country was still corrupted from his predecessor). Also this was probably the coup that finished any hope of peace and democracy in the middle east.
- hutzlibu 7y agoNot many people here probably know who Mosaddegh was. So for context, he speaks of the 1953 CIA backed coup against the iranian elected president Mosaddegh, who nationalized the oil from foreign companys. Which the foreign companys and their governments did not like. But, I am not sure if all would have been peace and harmony without that coup. Sudden oil richness in a very, very poor society, is just very hard to do right.
- smcl 7y agoIt’s possible, but since we made it a priority to mess them around for decades, we will never know what would have happened.
- BurningFrog 7y agoOr you could read up on the astonishing crimes and incompetence of the Chavez regime.
- AlexTWithBeard 7y agoNot the single biggest, but the only and quite unique piece of evidence.
- OnuRC 7y agoI agree and here is a different perspective from history,. Venezuela had 4th highest GDP per capita in 1950. It's incredible how bad they managed since then. Source http://money.visualcapitalist.com/richer-poorer-venezuela-economic-tragedy/ http://money.visualcapitalist.com/richer-poorer-venezuela-ec...