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

#101

Post by vkou » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 5:34 PM UTC

JPKab wrote: post #37

vkou wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sust…

I'll give you middle class, but what does the lower class (Which is far larger then the middle class) in Colombia and Brazil end up dealing with?

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

#102

Post by awt » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 5:34 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #96

awt wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is probably an interesting semantic debate to have, but I have to apologize for being completely disinterested in it.

Which is why collectivism pops up murderously over and over with different names.

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

#103

Post by ktRolster » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 5:34 PM UTC

vixen99 wrote: post #85

angersock wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And short.

All of which goes to show that a novel can be highly influential and immensely successful albeit that it's badly written, incoherent, very long and subject to scathing critiques as in: "There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year-old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotion…

That's not a scathing critique, it's a joke. It resonates well with people who already dislike Atlas Shrugged (including myself), but it doesn't convince anyone. Those who like Atlas Shrugged will read it, maybe laugh, then correctly point out that it's not a well-reasoned argument, it's a joke.

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

#104

Post by johansch » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 5:35 PM UTC

daxorid wrote: post #95

Looking at this disaster, I have to wonder why most people regard "preppers" as crazy.

It takes a long time to wreck a country this badly - particularly when it has desirable natural resources.

Venezuela didn't wake up last year and decided it wanted a particularly messed up form of socialism. This started much longer ago..

(I'll hijack my own comment: socialism != social democracy, as practiced by a few northern European countries.)

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

#105

Post by CamonZ » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 5:35 PM UTC

eudox wrote: post #82

CamonZ wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>since 2004 That's after two Chavez elections. Then the people were voting for Communism well before the elections were rigged in an observable way

>The people were voting for Communism

Clearly, the world has always been filled with idiots full of resentment towards people that made better decisions and became more successful.

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

#106

Post by tptacek » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 5:36 PM UTC

pastProlog wrote: post #73

seibelj wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Once again, debates over definitions completely derail any sensible discussion of socialism. The word "markets" as used by people criticizing command economies for not having them does not simply mean "places where radishes are kept with numbers attached to them".

It is perfectly reasonable to use the term "market" that way. After all, what else would you call a place where radishes are stored with price tags? But that's not what the person arguing with you is saying, and trying to rebut them based on an alternate definition is unproductive.

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

#107

Post by kiba » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 5:36 PM UTC

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.

Public school systems construct stadiums and fund football teams.

Private universities also construct stadiums and fund football(and other sport) team.

Why should a sport team has anything to do with an educational facility? How does a football team...say...further the education of its college students?

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

#108

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 5:37 PM UTC

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.

[deleted]

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

#109

Post by stale2002 » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 5:37 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.

Just because a country has high taxes and a social safety net doesn't mean its socialist.

Socialism is collective ownership of the means of production. Which always has significant societal drawbacks.

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

#110

Post by adventured » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 5:37 PM UTC

mortenjorck wrote: post #81

danielweber wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those successful European countries let the economy operate and tax it. Venezuela runs the economy, including setting prices of basic necessities, which then become unavailable because it turns out the government cannot set those the way it thinks it can.

Indeed, this is the difference between socialism in a free market and socialism in a command economy. While the former may try to influence the market (through social programs, state investment, money supply), it still must bend with the winds of market forces. The latter is an imposition of structure irrespective of the market: It might be seen more as a rigid body that can stand in certain conditions but begins to…

There's no such thing as Socialism in a free market, that's a contradiction in terms. Socialism means non-free market, and uses extreme violence to accomplish its ends of nationalizing wealth and production (which are inherently linked). And indeed, very liberal applications of force is the sole means to accomplish such a thing, which is why all attempts at Socialism throughout history always involved the equivalent end result of a dictatorship and extremely violent suppression of the population.

Socialism requires at a minimum the nationalization of the means of production. If what you're talking about doesn't involve that, then what you're talking about isn't Socialism.