Guys, Venezuel ais as much socialist as China is 100% communist. To say it has some local characteristics would be an understantement.
Venezuela was in crisis before. It was the standard “corrupt oligarchy perpetual basket case” held by militarty force by a few families. Think tropical Saudi Arabia. Great inequality, no investment. leaders would rotate nor per ideology but family. That split when Chaves came up with no pedigree. The horror! Most capital fled such anathema. But the worts was the drop in oil prices. If China has taught us something, is that you do not need democracy, freedom, etc. to hold a country in place. You need money. In the 21st century, with rural conditions still a la Dona Barbara, the government placatred the people wthrowing lands and home sat them. But teh damage of so many years not investing in education, health, savings, etc. just throwing teh money away during the CAPITALIST good years came fibnally to present the bill. Ignorant people who cannot fend for their lives. Lands remain unused as when they belongs to great landowners. Since it was cheaper to buy food abroad there is no food now with no oil money to pay for it. In syummary, it is a great lesson in what POPULISM, rather than socialism, and lack of investment in a society can do. But investing in global health and education is socialist, heaven forbid, right? And hence, people were not inoculated to follow pied pipers. Chaves just came at teh right time, he could have been pushing Mormonism or Moom ideology and people would have bought it, swallowed teh whole bait and line. It just had to happen under the hellish conditions they were. It is just that nwo it si widespread. And worse: most people in Venezuela do not see it, nor teh people abroad. They still think things will go back to “normal”.
As discussed earlier, there was a string of nationalizations – enough that I would have been alarmed if I had been doing business in the country – but this line about “state ownership of natural resources and means of production” conjures images of Soviet or Maoist communes, and I have to ask, where’s the beef?
SOE’s and even state monopolies also exist in “capitalist” countries, and yet private enterprise still exists, as it also does in Venezuela. Is the argument then that Venezuela has too many / too big SOE’s? That on a certain date (when?) they reached a certain threshold (what?), and that was the end of their capitalist utopia? Yet with private property and private enterprise still in existence, that would at most make it a hybrid system, like what exists in most countries today.
It sounds like basic income, which already exists in various countries/regions but in almost all cases is designed not to be enough for people to live on. (I think it’s a topic worth discussing, but we already have at least one thread about it.)
Check out the thousands of people flooding in to enjoy the benefits of socialist Venezuela! Oh, wait. Sorry, looks like they’re headed in the other direction.
In recent months, there has also been rumbling about war. Trump has made oblique suggestions of a “military option” in Caracas, and even relatively moderate voices have begun to fantasize about cavalry. In January, the Harvard scholar Ricardo Hausmann, who served as Venezuela’s minister of planning from 1992 to 1993, published a proposal suggesting that the Legislature invite a multilateral invasion force to help support a new government, making a comparison to the liberation of Europe. I spoke with several opposition leaders who welcome this idea, but this might say more about the country’s desperation than the wisdom of the proposal. It’s difficult to imagine Russia and China, after years of propping up the Venezuelan economy in exchange for oil, allowing a foreign invasion to threaten their investment. An even greater concern is internal: Maduro is polling at about 30 percent approval in a devastated economy, but nothing would rally former chavistas to his side like an occupying army. Venezuela is a heavily armed society and increasingly violent. To invite a military intervention is to welcome civil war.
More reason to invade. Imagine the market.
A few months ago, it was possible to imagine an electoral path to change, but today nearly all the opposition parties have been disqualified from running. On the evening of Feb. 15, Maduro took this a step further, interrupting television and radio broadcasts to announce that the party López founded in 2009 is not a political organization but a “violent fascist group” operating “outside the law.” When I spoke with López the next morning, he said that 87 party leaders were already in prison. Those who remained were preparing to convert the party into a “clandestine organization.” Soon, he said, they could be reduced to secret meetings and tossing pamphlets on street corners from unmarked vans.
Even if they fix it tomorrow, the mess will take decades to clean up. Hope they do not dismiss it as another NK and just give it up to China.
When the unthinkable becomes thinkable, it’s probably already too late.
Here’s a ship that hasn’t yet sailed: let the government collapse in civil war, and the neighboring nation states can invade and grab pieces. Same principle as bankruptcy. Because bankruptcy is more than just a metaphor here.
Concerned that a dangerous regime will rise from the ashes in Venezuela? There won’t be enough left. The difference between this shithole and Weimar Germany is Germany had once produced a Bismark. Oh, and lots of cool technology. And, uh, Wagner.
If the US invades, it’s bad optics. If the rest of South America invades, the usual suspects will still try to blame Uncle Sam, but it won’t stick.
Yes, they’ve got lots of oil. So has the US. So has Mexico, for that matter - and Mexico is closer.
Mkes sense: lots of shithole countries to sell weapons to, more excuses for having guns to protect us from people who want what we have, more hunger and pain in the world paving the way of the Second Coming…
All threads become one. The unified theory of politics and blood.
One more reason to count the lucky stars that we in the US have our Second Amendment. Like Venezuela (and every other nation on Earth), we recognize that guns have a place in a law-abiding, orderly society. At least in the US we removed the state’s monopoly power to bear them, and then we grew up that way as a nation. It’s an enormous advantage. Venezuela will have to find its own way, and I wish them much luck.
Which is why the benevolent Bolivarian state has so lavishly provided guns for its not so economically affluent citizens, so that they may be at the same parity with all teh others who can afford a house, a car, and a gun. because what everyone needs is guns to defned themselves from people who wnat to take over their stuff, so you give guns who people who will redistribute the riches. Clever, ain’t it? Th eoterh s have guns and walls and bodyguards, just like teh liberal elite does, and everyone else lives in suburbia enclosed by walls and guards and owns a gun. because that is teh right way to live…
We will reach 11 billion, more or less, before it “stabilizes”. Whether we have enough resources or whetehr we will destroy one another, that is not just a number’s game.
