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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

#151

Post by pastProlog »

seibelj wrote: post #87
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…

It always amazes me when people vehemently defend the USSR and similar, especially in a place like HN. The USSR was nothing like the United States. You did not start a "radish and milk" store in the USSR without approval from the government. To argue that the USSR was anything remotely close to a free market is absurd and a dangerous reinterpretation of established history. I'm afraid you have very skewed, incorrect…

I know people who have opened stores in the US, and all of them have needed permits and various bits of government approval, sometimes zoning board hearings and whatnot. The larger the enterprise, the more approval needed, just like the USSR. You seem to lack knowledge of how tbe economy in the USSR functioned.

You keep using this word market. A market in the US was the same as a USSR market. Yes, other things varied, but markets were the same.

Also you are attributing and inferring some statements to me that I did not say.

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

#152

Post by andrewjl »

adventured wrote: post #72
beloch wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 extraord…

Is this why IKEA, which is one of the largest non-state owned Swedish companies is set up as Netherlands-based entity (INGKA Holding), ostensibly for tax evasion purposes?

Sweden does have a lower corporate tax rate than the U.S., though the U.S. tax code offsets this by providing a multitude of different deductions for business expenses. Among other things, government imposed fines are tax deductible as per the U.S. Tax Code. When it comes to personal tax rates, Sweden's rate is much higher than the rate in the U.S. (http://taxfoundation.org/blog/how-scandinavian-countries-pay...)

Not debating the validity of your larger point here, but your assertion re Sweden being economically free as compared to the U.S. isn't that accurate. It is a very much a socialist nation that is also very prosperous.

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

#153

Post by tptacek »

awt wrote: post #145
tptacek wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do I understand you accurately to be saying "if you want participate in a debate with me on my terms you're i part responsible for all the evils of state-run economies"?

Aha now that is an interesting question and I'm glad you asked. I know that I personally would feel responsible if I saw collectivism murdering yet another society and did not call it out for what it is. If I for example saw that people were dying of lead poisoning but instead blamed evil spirits then clearly I would be responsible for mass poisoning.

"Agree with me or you're among history's greatest villains" is neither a novel nor persuasive rhetorical strategy. You should try a different approach.

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

#154

Post by tptacek »

pastProlog wrote: post #144
tptacek wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

Alternate definition? A market is a place where you exchange currency for commodities. That is a definition of what a market is, not an "alternative definition". There is no being coy at all, I can't even twist my head around how these similar places in the US and Russia are not the same. What is his "alternate definition" where such a place in Russia is stripped of the word market?

As I said, that is indeed one definition of a market. But the parent commenter is referring to markets in the free market sense, in which the markets perform price discovery.

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

#155

Post by htaunay »

I'm reading a lot of comments exclusively blaming communism, but when I lived in Caracas during the first years of the Chavez presidency, I witnessed an overwhelming public support in his favor.

Elections were won with ~70% of the votes, and I also recall various referendum-like votes which Chavez won easily as well. Another fact that surprised me was that every Sunday he would give these 4h long speeches, and a crowd would invariably go to the streets/TV to watch him speak.

Later on I am aware that this scenario changed drastically, but in my layman's eyes the first years of Chavismo seemed very democratic, and of course also very populist (e.g. housing for the poor), which only made the governments approval rates soar.

I'm not saying I'm pro-communism, but before pointing a finger at communism, maybe the democratically elected Venezuelan government's incompetence, especially regarding spending all the revenue from it's single main natural resource on unsustainable populist programs with little ROI, should be blamed.

[Edit] Typo

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

#156

Post by huherto »

doozy wrote: post #116

As someone who lives next door to Venezuela, it seems to me the situation over there has really hit the proverbial fan. Venezuela has been in a disastrous economic situation for years, but nowhere as bad what we are seeing these days. Just yesterday their government opened the border with Colombia for 12 hours (they have kept it closed for a year) and about 125 thousand people crossed into Colombia to buy basic groce…

Are people in Venezuela allowed to leave. Can you explain ?

> 30% did not cross back.

Not surprisingly. It can easily become a humanitarian problem for Colombia. What is the political sentiment in Colombia about this ?

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

#157

Post by Aloha »

clock_tower wrote: post #35
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.

An Island like Cuba is just small enough to make actual communism possibly work - it has just slightly less people that the Los Angeles Metro area does - it also has a very homogeneous cultural background. Cuba however isn't quite rich enough in natural resources to actually reach autarky however, if it was, Cuba might be a very different story.

I'm not a proponent of anything Authoritarian, but communism on a small scale does fascinate me.

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

#158

Post by refurb »

astrodust wrote: post #120
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.

In the 1930s the US was also busy having famines that claimed millions of lives: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl

The Dust Bowl claimed millions of lives? You're link doesn't support that in the least. It doesn't even mention any famine.

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

#159

Post by mattmcknight »

TillE wrote: post #64
seibelj wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I say socialism and communism, I mean that the government regulates the economy or large pieces of it. Successful "socialist" western democracies are free-market economies that have higher taxes to provide a social safety net. I wish we could call that "empathetic capitalism".

> I wish we could call that "empathetic capitalism". OK, but the universally accepted term is democratic socialism, which is quite accurate. "Capitalism" implies a lot more than just free markets.

Wrong- the generally accepted term is "welfare state".
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