My Venezuela Nightmare: A 30-Day Hunt for Food in a Starving Land • Hacker News Board

Re: My Venezuela Nightmare: A 30-Day Hunt for Food in a Starving Land

#31

Post by clarkmoody » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 4:58 PM UTC

cowardlydragon wrote: post #22

This is of course getting a ton of press in Commie hating USA, but how much worse is this than narcostates or right-wing deathsquad-enforced regimes set up by the US? And of course since the US/CIA loved to plot overthrows and juntas, how could the country trust aid offers? And the wire recordings of Henry Kissinger trying to deliberately collapse the Argentinian economy before their takeover... I get that this is si…

Libertarians oppose all the things you mention in your first two paragraphs. Your beef is with neoconservatives, not libertarians.

At the core of the libertarian philosophy is non-intervention.

Re: My Venezuela Nightmare: A 30-Day Hunt for Food in a Starving Land

#32

Post by vkou » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 4:58 PM UTC

elcct wrote: post #8

Socialism at its finest

Corruption, actually. Their neighboring states aren't any better off.

What's hitting them now is a decade of mismanagement of their petro-business... Combined with a collapse in oil prices. If Colombia's exports dropped in price by 60%, things would not be pretty. Fortunately, unlike Venezuela, its economy is far more diverse.

Re: My Venezuela Nightmare: A 30-Day Hunt for Food in a Starving Land

#33

Post by JPKab » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 4:58 PM UTC

elgabogringo wrote: post #9

And Chavez's daughter is now reported to be the Richest person in Venezuela: http://www.latinpost.com/articles/71424/20150812/maria-gabri...

Sadly, state-controlled economies end up replacing a capital-owning business elite with a connection/power-owning political elite, and in the process, destroying incentives to produce and work.

Re: My Venezuela Nightmare: A 30-Day Hunt for Food in a Starving Land

#34

Post by beloch » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 4:59 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #17

seibelj wrote: post #4

I highly recommend reading Life and Death in Shanghai by Nien Cheng [0]. It's a factual, first-hand account of the China's Cultural Revolution and what living in a communist / socialist society is really like from an educated person's perspective. My inlaws escaped Saigon when it fell and say the picture is very accurate. The socialist downfall of countries are all unique, but follow similar paths. I encourage people…

I think we need to be more careful with our terminology than using the terms "communist" and "socialist" interchangeably. Presumably, the real problem we're talking about is state-controlled economies, regardless of the ideologies that set them up.

Several countries that are fairly socialist have higher living standards than the U.S., where "socialism" is an epithet for some reason. McCarthy lives on I suppose.

Venezuela's problem is totalitarianism. In a socialist country, it is possible for the government to be governed by law and have limits placed on its power. That is not what's been going in in Venezuala.

Re: My Venezuela Nightmare: A 30-Day Hunt for Food in a Starving Land

#35

Post by clock_tower » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 5:01 PM UTC

cowardlydragon wrote: post #22

This is of course getting a ton of press in Commie hating USA, but how much worse is this than narcostates or right-wing deathsquad-enforced regimes set up by the US? And of course since the US/CIA loved to plot overthrows and juntas, how could the country trust aid offers? And the wire recordings of Henry Kissinger trying to deliberately collapse the Argentinian economy before their takeover... I get that this is si…

The people didn't starve under the US-backed dictatorships, so those regimes have that much going for them. But they didn't starve under Castro either, and living conditions were probably better under Castro than in any country in the Warsaw Pact (see Anthony Daniels' _Utopias Elsewhere_); so I'd guess that most of the story is that Chavez was just that dumb.

Re: My Venezuela Nightmare: A 30-Day Hunt for Food in a Starving Land

#36

Post by clarkmoody » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 5:01 PM UTC

wangchow wrote: post #27

tptacek wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we need to be more careful with our terminology than using the terms "communist" and "socialist" interchangeably. Presumably, the real problem we're talking about is state-controlled economies, regardless of the ideologies that set them up.

Amen to this. For example, socialism is what constructs football stadiums in America.

No. Crony capitalism constructs stadiums.

Socialism means the state ("the people") owns the means of production.

As far as I can tell, manufacturing is not owned by the government and construction workers are not employed by the state.

Re: My Venezuela Nightmare: A 30-Day Hunt for Food in a Starving Land

#37

Post by JPKab » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 5:03 PM UTC

vkou wrote: post #32

elcct wrote: post #8

Socialism at its finest

Corruption, actually. Their neighboring states aren't any better off. What's hitting them now is a decade of mismanagement of their petro-business... Combined with a collapse in oil prices. If Colombia's exports dropped in price by 60%, things would not be pretty. Fortunately, unlike Venezuela, its economy is far more diverse.

I'm sorry, but that's not at all accurate. If you think the middle class in Colombia and Brazil are dealing with anything remotely like this, you are nuts.

Corruption is a parasite which adds costs to every resource flow it can find, but this is a wholly different scenario of resources being too scarce due to systemic degradation due to central planning misallocation combined with the drop in oil prices that had sustained it.

Re: My Venezuela Nightmare: A 30-Day Hunt for Food in a Starving Land

#38

Post by guard-of-terra » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 5:04 PM UTC

pastProlog wrote: post #30

seibelj wrote: post #4

I highly recommend reading Life and Death in Shanghai by Nien Cheng [0]. It's a factual, first-hand account of the China's Cultural Revolution and what living in a communist / socialist society is really like from an educated person's perspective. My inlaws escaped Saigon when it fell and say the picture is very accurate. The socialist downfall of countries are all unique, but follow similar paths. I encourage people…

> The socialist downfall of countries are all unique, but follow similar paths The PRC just surpassed US GDP on some measures, whereas in the 1940s it was a western and Japanese occupied backwards basket case. Is that the downfall you mean? Or do you mean Russia, which couldn't win a war with the Japanese in 1905, never mind Germany a decade later? The New York Times columns of 1918 said Mr. Lenin's government would…

> in the 1930s, Russia was surging ahead and industrializing

It (The USSR) was also busy having famines that claimed millions of lives. Because it was too busy selling gold and wheat to buy industry from Americans (that's who built all those plants).

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

I think I'd skip an industrialization like that.

Re: My Venezuela Nightmare: A 30-Day Hunt for Food in a Starving Land

#39

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 5:05 PM UTC

beloch wrote: post #34

tptacek wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we need to be more careful with our terminology than using the terms "communist" and "socialist" interchangeably. Presumably, the real problem we're talking about is state-controlled economies, regardless of the ideologies that set them up.

Several countries that are fairly socialist have higher living standards than the U.S., where "socialism" is an epithet for some reason. McCarthy lives on I suppose. Venezuela's problem is totalitarianism . In a socialist country, it is possible for the government to be governed by law and have limits placed on its power. That is not what's been going in in Venezuala.

[deleted]

Re: My Venezuela Nightmare: A 30-Day Hunt for Food in a Starving Land

#40

Post by eudox » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 5:05 PM UTC

randiantech wrote: post #28

zeveb wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lack of a functional democracy is the problem, not socialism. It's entirely possible to democratically decide to steal the means of production from the capitalists — and thus experience exactly these consequences.

I cant recall a single example of a functional democracy in a socialist government. Seems to be mutually exclusive outputs.

Venezuela elected Chavez in at least three internationally verified and observed elections (1998, 2000, 2006).