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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

#161

Post by nickik »

jzwinck wrote: post #89
RikNieu wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have it in South Africa too. The official, political term for it is "load shedding".

Nepal calls it load shedding too. In practice it's fairly counterproductive there. People buy banks of car batteries and inverters to store power when it's available and use it later. So they use as much power as before, with the added benefit of tons of hazardous waste from all the equipment at each building. Which of course they just throw into piles of broken stuff. Does the same happen in South Africa?

Its very typical and not just for power. It happens with water as well.

The pattern is simular, unstable supply leads to private infrastructure. Demand increases when supply is available, leading to more instablilty. Quality goes down because private infrastructure is usually second rate.

In egypt water quality is way down because of private storage in water tanks.

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

#162

Post by nickik »

diego_moita wrote: post #10
toomuchtodo wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could this be helped by first world countries donating solar and wind generation equipment, and peace corps training programs to train and supervise the installation in country? EDIT: thanks for the replies everyone. sadness.

Disclaimer: I am Brazilian, I know how Latin America & 3rd world "works". No, it wouldn't help. This crisis is not caused by lack of resources. It is caused by corruption, cronyism, patronage and, above anything else, gigantic incompetence. If "first world countries" give some help it will probably only benefit the corrupt officials.

Why incomppetance? People seem to be really competente at using corruption to their benefit. If it would benefit them to be competent, they would improve, but they have no insentive to do so.

So I think its wrong to say "above anything else, gigantic incompetence", its more like "above anything else, bad insentives".

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

#163

Post by nickik »

15charlimit wrote: post #68
saint_fiasco wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The plants would be built and operated by an outside company What are you, a capitalist? That won't work in Venezuela's current political climate.

Political climates tend to shift when people figure out that idealism won't fill their bellies or keep a roof over their heads.

That is false. The people in power have an insentive to keep current policy. Yes, maybe if a totally different government is put into place, things will change, but before that, no western coopration will make huge capital investments.

So for your solution to work the government would have to remove itself, and they want.

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

#164

Post by nickik »

pjkundert wrote: post #59
thebmax wrote: post #13

A real life Ayn Rand story.

Ya, I'm a libertarian, and I find myself flinching a bit while reading Atlas Shrugged. What's even funnier, though, is seeing real life unfold in front of my eyes that matches it, almost so perfectly that you'd think the politicians were following it as a script!

Im a libertarian as well and I dislike Rand quite a bit. I think its horrible that Objectivism is seen as the only philosopical backbone of libertarian society. While in reality I base everythng on Burke, Hume, Smith, Hayek and many others. These are complete different and hole incompadible with Objectivism.

Not to say that she did not have some good observations on some of the things she was against. Her modern followers by and inlarge horrible idiots that I don't want to be associated with.

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

#165

Post by nickik »

noir_lord wrote: post #150
mattchew wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say all 10 are clearly capitalist. All have strong recognition of property rights including private property in the means of production. It is unfortunate that political terminology is muddy enough to allow for this sort of confusion. If I think these 10 countries are capitalist and you think 8 of them are socialist, what is the likelihood of us having a useful conversation discussing capitalism and socialism…

Socialism doesn't preclude capitalism, it just harnesses for a different goal.

You can not change the definition of words to suit your idiological needs. Inform yourself about what words mean before going into a politcal discussion.

Their are some words that have many meanings, when you want to use those, you should provide the appropirate addition to communicat your idea.

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

#166

Post by nickik »

tim333 wrote: post #129
BurningFrog wrote: post #65

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

The thing that is really screwing the Venezuelan economy is the weird exchange rate system which is not exactly corruption or socialism. The ft had "A foreign exchange rate at 10 and 200 versus a 1,000 black market rate is not effective" which I think means you can change at 10 or 200 pesos to the dollar depending on who you know or bribe and the real rate is 1000. Completely Alice in Wonderland mad. I think it's bec…

Control over currency is as solicalist as it gets. Go back to Lenin and he basically advocates taking control of the currency to monopolies all import and export.

So what Venezuela does is straight out of the socialist revolutionary book.

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

#167

Post by nickik »

the_af wrote: post #84
SocksCanClose wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and to emphasize, socialism is in fact quite well defined -- especially national socialism (e.g. the Nazi Party of Germany). Here's a good overview of what socialism is, broadly speaking: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism

The Nazi Party, even though it has "socialism" and "workers" in its title, is not considered to be a form of Socialism (nor, for that matter, to be pro workers). Not that it matters much, but the only mention of Nazism in the Wikipedia article you linked doesn't refer to it as a form of socialism.

I would not call them socialist exactly but the philospical background for both ideas is quite simular.

This is history that is mostly ignored or simply pased out of memory. Their was a version of socialism that was called 'Prussian Socialism' and the thinkers from this area had quite a bit of influence on the later devlopment of facism.

Many facists like mussolini were socialist that were pissed of by the socialist party. Hitler took a party with socialist elements and retracked it so that the socalist parts were neglected.

If you look at the original 23 points of the Nazi party, they look fairly simlular to many moderet socialist parties of the time.

The first chapter of Hayek 'The Road to Freedom' is an exploration of the history of thought. It was originally be intended to be part of a book on the subject (The Use and Abuse of Reason Part 1) but he had to no time and so he released it as a more populist book. Sadly this chapter did not get the attention needed and was removed in the version that became a best seller in the US (Readers Digest Version).

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

#168

Post by nickik »

BurningFrog wrote: post #151
ionised wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Socialism != communism. The Nordic countries are pretty damn socialist.

Depends on what you mean. Sweden and Denmark are probably more free market than the US. They do have high taxes and extensive welfare systems.

It does not depend on what he means, it depends on if he knows what the words he uses mean.

Their are two well known economic freedom rankings.

- http://www.freetheworld.com/ (stupid URL, everybody knows) - http://www.heritage.org/index/

Check out the interactive map: http://www.heritage.org/index/heatmap

The US and Denmark are not for of from each other. The just get subtracted points for different things. Denmark actually had lots of 'neoliberal' reforms, but because it was done by a left government instead of a right one its not commonly mentioned. Sweden has been going in that direction since the 90s as well.

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