The Venezuela socialism death spiral thread

No passports. Government says they do not have them. Not even in the black market can they be readily found. No paper.

I was 100% serious.

Colombia has an extremely low population density. Nobody wants to live there. The low population density is one reason criminal gangs can operate with impunity. Venezuelans could be screened in, one-by-one, at designated border points much as the US did at Ellis Island.

If you have no criminal record, an education of some sort, an IQ above 95, a skill or trade, and a willingness to support yourself, you get a provisional residence permit, passport or no passport. Entire new cities could be created (by the immigrants themselves), bringing a bit of human presence - and by extension some law-and-order - to corners of Colombia which have never really had any.

Those conditions would probably leave 50% of Venezuelans stuck where they are, but if (say) 80% of the armed forces defected, the Colombian government could then just waltz in and take over. I doubt anybody would care to stop them, and they could hardly make things worse.

Is the bureaucracy still functioning? :idunno:

Fair point. You could probably work around that one with some sort of questionnaire:

Q: Your neighbour has more money than you. Under what circumstances is it OK to break into his house and rob him blind? Keep your answer to less than two sentences.

That would enrage the:“IQ tests are a biased instrument created by the patriarchy to make intelligent people think that they’re stoopid so they’ll underachieve in real life!” segment of the population. Watch out!

Fixed that for ya :slight_smile:

So does anyone see any practical flaws in my plan? I’m sure Bolívar would have approved.

Objections to be raised before my meeting tomorrow with President Santos.

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Fun fact: by the time Venezuela either fixes its political situation and gets rid of Leader Maximo 2.0, or it becomes a semi-desolated region, it may be too late to consider it a great source of oil-generated wealth since most countries are slowly phasing out the use of oil.

That would be hilarious if it weren’t so sad.

Ironically, that would make the Great RepĂșblica Bolivariana dream come true. Or revive la CapitanĂ­a de la Gran Colombia.

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Exactly :slight_smile: glad somebody got the reference.

Would be an interesting political experiment,if nothing else. Might even revive some long-dormant regional pride. Or it might all just turn to crap, of course.

I’m sure the fact that socialism is “cool” will provide some consolation to all those poor, starving Venezuelans.

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Socialism is cool now? Wtf is up with millennials these days?!

Cool to the Che Guevara t shirt crowd.

Free shekels.

More and more people can afford good instruction (University) + Oversaturated work market + many University courses have nearly no employment value + student debt = “Hey you know what? The state should hand out free stuff. Especially to the poor. But also to me”.

The proven oil reserves in Venezuela are recognized as the largest in the world, totaling 297 billion barrels (4.72×1010 m3) as of 1 January 2014.

I still don’t get how socialism managed to fuck things up so badly.

And still no-one has accepted the “Haitian capitalism death spiral” challenge. :idunno:

I repeat my earlier question (either in this thread or one of the other Venezuela threads). When was it a rich country and by what standard? If simply having oil in the ground meant Venezuelans were “rich” 20 years ago, it should mean the same thing today, but obviously it doesn’t.

(I’m not saying Venezuelans weren’t rich in the past – I know almost nothing about the country. But this discussion tends to assume that the starting point was some kind of utopia, without ever revealing details about that utopia.)


Next thing you know, they’ll be asking for free primary and secondary education. Oh, wait! :eek: :runaway:

And btw what’s your obsession with Israeli currency?

Maybe your challenge should more aptly be labeled the “Haitian corrupt oligarchy perpetual basket case” challenge.

A better candidate for a “capitalism death spiral” challenge would be the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti.

The Dominican Republic has the ninth-largest economy in Latin America and is the largest economy in the Caribbean and Central American region. Over the last two decades, the Dominican Republic has had one of the fastest-growing economies in the Americas – with an average real GDP growth rate of 5.4% between 1992 and 2014. GDP growth in 2014 and 2015 reached 7.3 and 7.0%, respectively, the highest in the Western Hemisphere. In the first half of 2016 the Dominican economy grew 7.4% continuing its trend of rapid economic growth. Recent growth has been driven by construction, manufacturing, tourism, and mining. The country is the site of the second largest gold mine in the world, the Pueblo Viejo mine. Private consumption has been strong, as a result of low inflation (under 1% on average.

corrupt oligarchy perpetual basket case

That’s the thing. I tried in an earlier post to find out exactly how Venezuelan “socialist” policy with its “lavish” social spending differs from OECD policy in general (the US being a bit of an outlier), and it turned out the amount of social spending as a percentage of GDP was not at all “lavish” by OECD standards. If imitating the OECD were a death sentence, the whole OECD (minus the US) should have died long ago.

Yet the argument is always that Venezuela suffers because it’s “socialist”, not because it’s a “corrupt oligarchy perpetual basket case”.

Haiti on the other hand is difficult to label “socialist” because it apparently never used the label on itself (and doesn’t have much in the way of social spending?), so it gets off as a mere COPBC (or a mere “shithole”) instead of being used as a cautionary tale of what voting for non-Republicans would do to the US.

I think it’s pretty clear that Venezuela is currently a socialist (state ownership of natural resources and means of production) society and it’s not working for anyone.

I think it’s also clear that capitalism (private ownership of natural resources and means of production) works for most people but still leaves too many people behind and even some out entirely.

I believe in a third way myself. One which I believe corrects capitalism’s flaws and enhances its strengths. That way entails the principle that natural resources exist not to make the few wealthy but to sustain everyone so no one should be able to own more natural resources than they personally need. That change alone would enfranchise most of the currently left out and left behind better than all the socialist welfare schemes ever will.

Which brings me to created wealth. A permanent truce would be called in the class war between means of producers and the left behind. This truce would free up time, energy and initiative to focus on producing wealth using personal resources which will benefit everyone far better than endless class war ever will.