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Venezuela to Shut Down for a Week to Cope With Electricity Crisis

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Re: Venezuela to Shut Down for a Week to Cope With Electricity Crisis

#101

Post by [deleted] »

MichaelGG wrote: post #98
hellcow wrote: post #8

Related anecdote: a friend of mine is an engineer that builds and operates glass factories all around the world, mostly producing bottles for beer, wine, and liquor. One of his company's factories was in Venezuela, and while he was there working, Chavez et co decided to nationalize that industry because they were "forcing unfair labor conditions." The company rushed to get every American out of the country before the…

A similar thing happened in Zimbabwe. Using a race-based system, they changed control of farms from one set of people to another (with rather strong rhetoric about how certain people would never be welcome again). Turns out a bit of experience was required, so they had to back down on that position: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/zimbabwe-seized-... The article indicates that Zimbabwe went from being an…

[deleted]

Re: Venezuela to Shut Down for a Week to Cope With Electricity Crisis

#102

Post by kafkaesq »

13thLetter wrote: post #90
kafkaesq wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's another: https://www.vice.com/read/atlas-mugged-922-v21n10 The eagerness of a different (but overlapping) libertarian cabal to court favor with the notoriously corrupt (and murderous) regime in Honduras to build their own version of paradise on the northern coast of that country (at the expense of the local Garífuna community) is also quite telling. Her legacy would seem to cut both ways, we might say.

Except for the small detail that these guys' project swiftly disintegrated due to personality conflicts, zoning issues, and possible fraud before it ever started, and the most damage it did was that a couple of contractors didn't get paid. Meanwhile, Chavismo has immiserated millions of people and imposed a corrupt authoritarian government on a whole nation. So the parallels aren't really very close at all.

If you want a larger-scale example, the wholesale transformation of life in the U.S., Britain and much of the rest of the world since the early 1980s -- not strictly Randian, but definitely Rand-inspired -- hasn't exactly gone swimmingly well, either:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism

Of course radical libertarianism and authoritarian socialism, while both pipe dreams, are basically apples and oranges to one another, and can't be compared side by side.

But the point about the smaller-scale fiascos in Chile and Honduras is that it shows how farcical (and corrupt) that ideology can be whenever people do try to incarnate it in its purest form, out there in the real, actual world. This coming from people who claim to know vastly better about reinventing the world from the ground up.

"Glass houses, throwing stones", and all that.

Re: Venezuela to Shut Down for a Week to Cope With Electricity Crisis

#103

Post by 13thLetter »

kafkaesq wrote: post #102
13thLetter wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except for the small detail that these guys' project swiftly disintegrated due to personality conflicts, zoning issues, and possible fraud before it ever started, and the most damage it did was that a couple of contractors didn't get paid. Meanwhile, Chavismo has immiserated millions of people and imposed a corrupt authoritarian government on a whole nation. So the parallels aren't really very close at all.

If you want a larger-scale example, the wholesale transformation of life in the U.S., Britain and much of the rest of the world since the early 1980s -- not strictly Randian, but definitely Rand-inspired -- hasn't exactly gone swimmingly well, either: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism Of course radical libertarianism and authoritarian socialism, while both pipe dreams, are basically apples and oranges to on…

If you really want to count up the number of corpses created by "radical libertarianism" and authoritarian socialism, we can just go right ahead and do that. I don't think you'll like the result, though.

Re: Venezuela to Shut Down for a Week to Cope With Electricity Crisis

#104

Post by amorphid »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #96
davidw wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's slated for the third 2 hour movie.

I doubt they'll make another one since the first was universally panned and made almost no money. How's that for irony?

They have already made parts 2 and 3.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1985017/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2800038/

Re: Venezuela to Shut Down for a Week to Cope With Electricity Crisis

#105

Post by Frondo »

BurningFrog wrote: post #65

> there is only one word. Corruption The word I would use is Socialism. They are of course related.

As are corruption and capitalism, corruption and monarchy, corruption and communism, corruption and just about every large-scale human endeavor (as well as a lot of the small-scale ones!).

If you only associate corruption with socialism, that seems like an uninformed view of the world.

Re: Venezuela to Shut Down for a Week to Cope With Electricity Crisis

#108

Post by noir_lord »

stickfigure wrote: post #77
adventured wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Venezuela is not a very rich nation. It would be like claiming that Afghanistan is very rich because they have massive deposits of metals. In just three years, their inflation (the bolivar has lost 97% of its value) and economic contraction has taken their GDP per capita from ~$14,000 to ~$4,000. They've lost at least 70% of their economy, and it's not over yet. Saudi Arabia's economic output is nearly five times gre…

I don't think you and the parent contradict each other. Venezuela has natural resources, favorable geography, a reasonably well-educated population, and (until recently) reasonably modern infrastructure. Many countries have fared far better with far less. The problem is management.

> The problem is management.

When isn't that true sadly.

> No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time

Churchill quoting one of his predecessors in his autobiography "Churchill by Himself".

Re: Venezuela to Shut Down for a Week to Cope With Electricity Crisis

#109

Post by caf »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #99
malbs wrote: post #40

Here in Tasmania we're not at the shut down stage yet, but it's something no one wants to talk about. They're not asking residents to shutdown yet, but if things continue the way they are, who knows. The major companies/power users are currently being rationed (Aluminium smelters, paper mills etc) The state relies on hydro-electric power, and last year sold off a lot of its "excess" power to Victoria via the Basslink…

Is anyone installing solar panels on a small or large scale?

The latitude means that Tasmania isn't great for solar, but jutting out into the Southern Ocean as it does means it has good wind resources.

Re: Venezuela to Shut Down for a Week to Cope With Electricity Crisis

#110

Post by noir_lord »

Frondo wrote: post #105
BurningFrog wrote: post #65

> there is only one word. Corruption The word I would use is Socialism. They are of course related.

As are corruption and capitalism, corruption and monarchy, corruption and communism, corruption and just about every large-scale human endeavor (as well as a lot of the small-scale ones!). If you only associate corruption with socialism, that seems like an uninformed view of the world.

Doesn't seem like an uninformed worldview, it is an uninformed world view.

https://assets.weforum.org/editor/cYHll0JXGc8zJzpkmvOPzcTTjI...

Top 10, at least 5 are socialist (I make it 8, Singapore and Switzerland aren't).

Of course this is a perception study but I'd argue broadly accurate based on other metrics.

This "socialism bad, laissez fair capitalism good" thing gets old and largely seems to be a misunderstanding that Socialism != Communism.

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