Who understands DB best?
- Doc
- yyy
- neither
- n/a because DB is beyond “understanding”
@discobot roll 1d4
4
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Case closed. 
Good way to start making amends. Is that shirt feeling scratchy yet?
Oh, Milko. What is to become of you? 
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Now that’s a low blow, man. But it smells delicious!
Oil prices are up, but…
They had a democracy at one point. The people have no one to blame but themselves.
Or maybe Diebold. But that’s another conspiracy theory.
The democracy there always imperfect, just a mascarade. So when it was killed with “democratic” institutions such as voting and parklament, well, teh people had little to do and no effective power except protests, which were met with guns. They replied in turn…bloodshed led to nothing without teh Army’s support.
So those news are the same thing deja vu all over again… like for the 20th time. Don’t hold your breath on a successful military coup. Last handsome guy who tried to spark one died in a hail of bullets.
Good grief, would you like to argue over the meaning of ‘is?’
It doesn’t really matter how you define a country. My argument would apply to any large group of people living in close proximity. It is valid, for example, in British council estates, where a sizeable majority are more-or-less normal human beings (albeit with a penchant for drama and binge drinking) who have their lives made more miserable than they ought to be by a tiny minority of drug-addled lunatics.
Well, those people are all wrong.
Poverty, in my experience, is a mental state. It has nothing to do with what’s in your wallet or what your house is made of. If you define it thus, then poor people everywhere are the same, whether in Nigeria, Venezuela, or the UK. They have certain modes of behaviour that can have no other outcome except chronic poverty. My point was that those people not only create poverty for themselves, but as a large enough force will bring everyone else down with them.
Sociologists who invent millions of different sorts of poverty - each specific to one culture, at one point in time - have completely missed the point.
Anyway, as regards Venezuela: there are probably a lot more poor people there than in the UK, principally because anybody with any sense has already left. Like I said, it might be 20% or so - bearing in mind that it’s not an either/or thing, but with shades of grey. 20% would be specifically those who make it their business to drag everyone else down to their level: either because they enjoy seeing others suffer, or because they’re oblivious to the wider impact of their life choices. A further 30% might be harming nobody except themselves.
I’ve met a couple of Venezuelan exiles who were fearsomely smart. They’d probably like to go back if it weren’t full of the other sort of Venezuelans.
It’s the other way around. People who are lazy are inevitably poor.
Well, technocrats then. I do realise that bureaucracies tend to evolve to justify their own existence, but I think that could be reined in by putting a specific timescale on results (and defining the results).
If they’ve failed at democracy, then perhaps a better ruling class? Let these smart fellas go back and take over.
Oh, and here’s an update on socialized medicine:
Y’know, Colombia used to be a major shithole, but they’ve improved a lot. Maybe sponsor a Colombian military takeover (of Venezuela) on humanitarian grounds? No guarantees it will work out, but what’s there to lose at this point?
Oh, Rollo. When northern Europe collapses because of its socialized 
medicine, let us know, m’kay?
There you go again.
A: Poor people are asking for free education.
B: Ugh, such scum! Ninety-plus percent of them are incorrigibly wretched and mentally ill! They belong in concentration camps, not schools!
C: That’s bigotry.
B: No it’s not.
C: Yes it is. You’re saying people should be abducted and imprisoned for lacking money.
B: But I’m only talking about people who are incorrigibly wretched. I’m not talking about people who lack money!
A: I am. That’s why I said poor.
B: Well, you’re wrong. All of you are wrong!
The word has a plain and simple meaning, and you know it. You wouldn’t say most blacks are x, but blackness is a state of mind that has nothing to do with skin color, would you?
Anyway, this new Finleyan doctrine of the majority of “poor” people merely being binge drinkers and drama queens is a bit less offensive than the previous one. Maybe it represents progress. 
Would that be an army of Finleys? 
If poverty is simply a lack of money, then just give them money. But if that doesn’t work, then time to consider the possibility that poverty isn’t simply a lack of money.
Because there’s more than one type of poverty. In Venezuela, poverty is caused by socialism. But what causes the socialism?
Sorry, yyy, but that was one of the most illogical posts you’ve produced to date, complemented by a whole army of strawmen. It’s such a silly caricature of my views that I wouldn’t even know how to answer it.
when, for reasons x,y and z, a nation is stuck by poverty, the easiest way for a politician to raise to power is to embrace socialism/communism, tell the poor that it’s not their fault, that they’re being oppressed and that he’ll make everything “right” for everyone by punishing those evil rich pigs.
The kulaks, the jews etc etc, the name of the target changes, but it’s always the same strategy.
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I don’t have all the time in the world, so what’s the basic situation here?
A) I wasn’t paying attention when you were explaining your ideas before.
B) You haven’t explained your ideas in a comprehensible manner.
C) You haven’t thought your ideas through to their logical conclusions.
D) Discobot hijacked my account.
I suspect it’s C. In any case, I wish you a pleasant day. 
Do tell us, Sir Rowland.
“Socialism” is not caused by poverty. It thrives on it. On teh inequality of acces to justice and opportunities. Experiments have been done with dogs and monkeys: they want the same reward for the same job.
When people work and do not receive a fair wage, when they get killed and do not get justice, resentment grows. When people do not have access to education yet the ones controlling the means of production not through skills but volence have all teh power and money, then you seed “socialism”.
It is actually a sirens call. While in developed countries socialism works because it prevents one group overpowering teh otehrs, keeps fairnmess, makes sure there is access to education, food and health services, then there is peace in teh land. No one goes to war, with itself or others, on a full belly.
When you have corporations ruling on behanf of an elite, taking homes and food and making teh population in debt, and have the minorities in an enclosure becaus eof skin colors, that is a problem. When the elites use people to prop them up but rely on their pedigree, not smarts, to keep ownership of means of production, all teh same not investing in teh futrure but wasting resources that are needed lesewhere, then you have a problem.
The elite in venezuela did not invest for a future without oil. It did not diversify or extend production for self sufficiebncy. It isoolated most population from work and education. That is why we are wehere we are now.
It is never just one single thing that brings down a plane. cathastrophic failure is a collection of little thinsg that snowball.
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…except Venezuela used to be much less bad off. Perhaps it’s all perception, thus all relative, in the sense of “relative deprivation” which is what used to be called envy.
Well, now they know the difference between poor and piss poor.
Oil prices are up again. Venezuela is not.