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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

#131

Post by spriggan3 »

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.

No Venezuela's problem is corruption,populism and incompetence. How comes Norway is freaking rich from the little oil they have and Venezuela can't even achieve the same thing with way more natural resources ?

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

#132

Post by guard-of-terra »

rangibaby wrote: post #76
guard-of-terra wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

As we know today, Germans never had any manpower to make use of much lebensraum. They were at Peak German at that time, after which their birth rate declined dramatically. They won't have the men to settle any of those lands they were supposed to colonize.

Anyway, USSR lost the most lives fighting Germany and gained least benefits out of that. Just check:

https://www.ifitweremyhome.com/compare/RU/DE

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

#133

Post by joesmo »

Sounds like communist Romania in the 80's. The main difference there was that the state had a near monopoly on violence, which they used constantly. Even people who were starving were mostly too scared of the government to contemplate violence.

Sounds like it's time for new elections or executions of the assholes in power.

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

#134

Post by klodolph »

ktRolster wrote: post #67
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.

I think we need to be more careful with our terminology than using the terms "communist" and "socialist" interchangeably. You might be surprised to learn that not even the Soviet Union considered itself communist (they considered themselves socialist transitioning to communist). The reality is that "socialist" is a word without a clear definition, and it's better to avoid using it altogether if you want people to und…

I think "capitalism" and "free trade" are similarly without clear definitions, given the amount of time people spend arguing about them.

This seems to be a consistent truth. Perhaps we should develop tools to be able to converse with people who don't use the same definitions that we do?

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

#135

Post by astrodust »

botfly wrote: post #118
pastProlog wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Honduras is in a far worse state right now than Venezuela after Obama and Hillary supported the military coup against the majority indigenous/mestizo backed president, and the handful of white landowners of 90% of the land had the US trained/armed/funded army take over. Berta Caceres is just the latest murder, scores of political candidates, organizers etc. have been murdered, the murder rate is higher than Vene…

Additionally, the Venezuelan crude is generally viewed as a low quality product. It's not as suitable for many applications. So when prices drop it's one of the first products to get pushed out of the market But why talk about that when we can have silly ideological arguments over the merits of communism and capitalism instead

It's heavy crude, not light crude, but it's oil nonetheless.

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

#136

Post by adventured »

tptacek wrote: post #100
adventured wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 extraord…

You can stick your fingers in your ears and scream so that you won't hear reasonable people using the word "socialist" to mean things you don't mean when you say it, but that doesn't change the fact that reasonable people disagree with you about whether "socialism" implies "command economy".

That's entirely unnecessary and silly. Instead I'm going by the word of the very people that were instrumental in creating and spreading Socialism and its intellectual foundations to begin with: Marx, Engels, Hitler, Mussolini, Lenin, Trotsky, etc. No need to rely on arbitrary speculation.

To argue that Socialism means something other than a command economy, you have to disagree with all the major players that were actually responsible for defining Socialism to begin with. I choose not to do that and I accept their elaborate, very well documented descriptions of what it is. And I'm not referring to associationism or the cooperative movements, I'm talking about Socialism.

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

#137

Post by eudox »

huherto wrote: post #130
eudox wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

He was elected democratically, but then he behaved like a dictator. He was not aware of his ignorance in economics, and he had to support of the people. The results were disastrous.

>He was elected democratically, but then he behaved like a dictator.

He was elected democratically to behave like a dictator. Most dictatorships advertise quite clearly what they intend to do.

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

#138

Post by Aloha »

chiph wrote: post #115
pastProlog wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

If you can find a copy, read Steeltown USSR https://www.amazon.com/Steeltown-USSR-Soviet-Society-Gorbach... The factory was producing substandard steel. Often they'd ship it to customers and it would arrive in an unusable condition because it had been stored outside and was more rust than steel. But they'd try and use it anyway, because if they complained the bureaucrats in Moscow would brand them troublemakers and r…

About Yeltsin:

"During a visit to the United States in 1989 he became more convinced than ever that Russia had been ruinously damaged by its centralized, state-run economic system, where people stood in long lines to buy the most basic needs of life and more often than not found the shelves bare. He was overwhelmed by what he saw at a Houston supermarket, by the kaleidoscopic variety of meats and vegetables available to ordinary Americans.

Leon Aron, quoting a Yeltsin associate, wrote in his biography, “Yeltsin, A Revolutionary Life” (St. Martin’s Press, 2000): “For a long time, on the plane to Miami, he sat motionless, his head in his hands. ‘What have they done to our poor people?’ he said after a long silence.” He added, “On his return to Moscow, Yeltsin would confess the pain he had felt after the Houston excursion: the ‘pain for all of us, for our country so rich, so talented and so exhausted by incessant experiments.’ ”"(1)

Capitalism has many evils - most notably the tendency to eat its own young - but it does do most things very very well.

(1)- http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/23/world/europe/23cnd-yeltsin...

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

#139

Post by nice2some1nice »

asdfologist wrote: post #11
goombastic wrote: post #5

Sometimes I wonder if all of the online computers, internet, apps and other stuff makes any sense. We have complicated our lives unnecessarily and multiplied beyond the capacity of our plant to hold us meaningfully or have a life with any semblance of contemplation.

Without those things, we wouldn't even be having this discussion.

Maybe this discussion wouldn't have come to pass in the first place.

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

#140

Post by jtlienwis »

Suffering from the disease of central government. We need a telethon to stamp this disease out. Look how many were killed in the 20th century because of it. Ideology infects a people then gets turned to government implementation, and when things go badly wrong, it can't be fixed until it collapses and the people finally start to learn their lesson.
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