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

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

#71

Post by CamonZ »

eudox wrote: post #61
CamonZ wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

@eudox. Rigged elections.

Firstly, that's not how replies work. Secondly, no, they were not rigged elections. A couple of links: https://www.cartercenter.org/documents/297.pdf http://eeas.europa.eu/eueom/missions/2006/venezuela/index_en... Of course democracy is not incompatible with Communism. How could it be when the people are enthusiastic supporters of Communism?

There have been countless statistical anomalies on all elections since 2004; like voting centers with 0 abstention and 100% votes pro-government on extremely remote locations without oversight from the opposition.

But please, continue lecturing me on my country's electoral and voting system.

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

#72

Post by adventured »

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.

> countries that are fairly socialist

Please describe the ways in which some countries are "fairly" socialist but aren't actually socialist. I'm not aware of a single example of a socialist nation succeeding in any regard towards creating prosperity for its people. Nor am I aware of a successful national experiment in socialism in the last two centuries of various attempts. Every historical attempt has ended extraordinarily badly, universally failing to accomplish high living standards.

None of the Scandinavian nations are even remotely close to being socialist. They all rely on the market economy, they all embrace Capitalism to significant degrees, they all have property rights enshrined into the core of their economies, they all allow for the vast accumulation of wealth without forced redistribution, they all allow for the private ownership of production, they all allow for the accumulation of and investment of capital privately, they all utilize equity and bond markets that can be bought and traded freely (another critical point to Capitalism), and on it goes. They're all substantially closer to Capitalism than Socialism, which is course why they're able to pay for their large welfare states and other actual Socialist nations universally fail at that. Sweden for example famously had drifted too far toward being an over-burdened welfare state - circa the 1970s and 1980s - and had to de-regulate and de-tax their economy, which then resulted in boom courtesy of increased Capitalism. The nations you refer to, are actually welfare states, not Socialist - there is a very big difference.

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

#73

Post by pastProlog »

seibelj wrote: post #42
pastProlog wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The China during the Cultural Revolution was not a success. Millions were murdered, people starved, and a terrible stain marks that period of China's long history. It was the pro-capitalist reforms that turned China into the success it is today, and as China starts to falter with it's unmanageable debt and unproductive, government-directed parts of the economy, the reforms will inevitably be capitalist, pro-market so…

> solutions all point to markets

It's amazing how this merry-go-round of meaningless and misleading language gets echoed in an echo chamber unquestioned.

The USSR had markets just like the US did. You go to the store, you see radishes and milk, you buy radishes with your rubles at this market, you go to another store, you buy the blue shirt instead of the tan one with your rubles. The markets are the same. What do I have to twist my thought process around to think they are not the same.

Not to go off on another tangent, but that store could be privately or state owned in Russia. Just like liquor stores and post offices can be state owned in the US. The transistor and Internet was created in the US by government spending and government granting of monopolies (read the MCI lawsuit papers) The ARPAnet and NSFnet were not allowed commercial traffic until the 1990s. Then there is the Federal Reserve, NSF, DARPA, bank bailouts - the US economy has been government-directed since WWII, as Warren Buffett's father pointed out in Congress back when that all started.

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

#74

Post by elcct »

huherto wrote: post #52
JPKab wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sust…

> central planning misallocation Having somebody in charge of the economy that does not understand that he doesn't understand how the economy works.

Socialists don't understand economy so there you go

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

#75

Post by mrow84 »

clarkmoody wrote: post #36
wangchow wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Socialism just advocates for collective ownership, without specifying the scale or scope of that collective. It does not have to be the state government, and could, for example, be a group of football fans.

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

#76

Post by rangibaby »

guard-of-terra wrote: post #38
pastProlog wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> I think I'd skip an industrialization like that.

Then you could enjoy Holodomor every day thanks to the unfortunate fact that you happened to occupy some prime Lebensraum.

Stalin was a mass murderer, but he ultimately made or allowed the correct strategy to put the USSR in a position to defeat Germany, which was a pretty good trick (to put it lightly).

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

#77

Post by awt »

tptacek wrote: post #66
awt wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you agree that the term collectivist encompasses both communism and socialism?

This distinction has nothing to do with the point I'm making.

This is not a distinction, but a generalization, or abstraction that better describes the phenomenon and your assertion that a state controlled economy may be contemplated without respect to the ideology to which it conforms is dubious.

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

#78

Post by hugozap »

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.

Colombian here. You can't even compare the situation to what's happening in Venezuela. There's a lot of corruption in south america but Venezuela is total disaster right now because of the totalitarian goverment.

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

#79

Post by honkhonkpants »

clarkmoody wrote: post #36
wangchow wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How about the interstate highway system then? As far as I can tell, it is pure socialism.

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

#80

Post by randiantech »

CamonZ wrote: post #49
randiantech wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

@eudox. Rigged elections.

"Of course democracy is not incompatible with Communism. How could it be when the people are enthusiastic supporters of Communism?"

There were/are enthusiastic supporters for some of the worst causes.[1]

Also, historically, comunism did not support occidental democracy systems.[2]

[1]http://heavy.com/news/2016/07/new-isis-islamic-state-daesh-a...

[2] https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1918/xx/principles....

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