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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

#231

Post by dragonwriter »

adventured wrote: post #136
tptacek wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

> 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.

Its worth noting that your examples include:

(1) two members of the same early subset of socialism (Marx and Engels) and two later people known for involvement in the same descendant of the form of socialism embraced by the earlier two (Lenin and Trotsky), and

(2) two other people that aren't recognized as having an important involvement in anything recognized as a branch of socialism, though one of them was involved in a political party with "socialist" in the name (Hitler and Mussolini).

Its hardly a broad sampling of "the very people that were instrumental in creating and spreading Socialism and its intellectual foundations to begin with".

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

#233

Post by internaut »

daxorid wrote: post #95

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

I agree, keeping 'food insurance' is far from crazy.

You can buy MREs that last five to ten years.

They won't solve all problems but they will certainly give you time to react appropriately e.g. escaping an area or growing food for the following year.

Does anybody remember James Burke's Connections? The very first episode on how to live in a global downturn?

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

#234

Post by _delirium »

internaut wrote: post #233
daxorid wrote: post #95

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

I agree, keeping 'food insurance' is far from crazy. You can buy MREs that last five to ten years. They won't solve all problems but they will certainly give you time to react appropriately e.g. escaping an area or growing food for the following year. Does anybody remember James Burke's Connections? The very first episode on how to live in a global downturn?

I agree, but that doesn't really require being part of the whole "prepper" subculture, which seems to focus more on scenarios where you're surviving a complete breakdown of society for decades in a bunker. In countries where infrastructure has historically been prone to interruptions, it's fairly common for people to store a good amount of preserved food, but they aren't seen as preppers, just people with a storehouse (which is basically an oversized pantry). My Greek grandparents always had a fairly large supply of food, for example.

I do think many Americans are too far to the unprepared extreme, where a two-day interruption of normal services caused by e.g. a tropical storm sends everyone panicking, because they in some cases literally don't even have one day's worth of food in their house.

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

#235

Post by internaut »

astrodust wrote: post #123
daxorid wrote: post #95

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

You can be prepped up the wazoo and if a Venezuela goes down in your backyard what are you going to do? Hide out in your basement and eat tinned tuna? The best "preparation" is looking ahead and living in a place that isn't about to go to shit. Having a plane ticket and a passport is infinitely more valuable than a bucket of bullets and a gun.

The majority of people wait for things to blow over because that normally works. In my country half the population starved to death because they were trapped. You have to understand that most modern famines are political, not economic in origin. That is why having food insurance is sensible in many countries. Humanitarian assistance (assuming it's not a global event) won't reach you if it is intersected by politics.

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

#236

Post by internaut »

_delirium wrote: post #234
internaut wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, keeping 'food insurance' is far from crazy. You can buy MREs that last five to ten years. They won't solve all problems but they will certainly give you time to react appropriately e.g. escaping an area or growing food for the following year. Does anybody remember James Burke's Connections? The very first episode on how to live in a global downturn?

I agree, but that doesn't really require being part of the whole "prepper" subculture, which seems to focus more on scenarios where you're surviving a complete breakdown of society for decades in a bunker. In countries where infrastructure has historically been prone to interruptions, it's fairly common for people to store a good amount of preserved food, but they aren't seen as preppers, just people with a storehous…

Yeah I think that Hollywood has done a number on some people. Surviving isn't that glamorous in real life.

I think for most people having 1 to 3 months of food is ample but if you're in a political troublespot you should triple or quintuple that. It's all about using your wits while not going over the top.

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

#237

Post by internaut »

the_vzlan wrote: post #193

Venezuelan here. Feel Free to ask me anything. I am in a privileged position, though, I understand the situation of 'common people' as I work closely with them as a local business owner. This journal is really close to the reality. To those wondering about 'side markets' and 'farmers marking a killing', let me explain. There is a black market for food and any other good. Shortages are real, especially when it comes t…

This will sound like a stupid question but I'll ask it anyway.

Why can't they just drop the price controls?

I expect it is ideological, but surely being alive trumps ideology (in that you'll starve or else people who have decided to become more flexible will kill you).

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

#238

Post by woodandsteel »

pastProlog wrote: post #202
adventured wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

10000 years ago the entire world was not socialist but communist, and none of what you mentioned happened. It was the formation of class societies of workers and parasites 10000 years ago which led to violence, suppression of the population etc.

The term "socialism" has more than one meaning. Classically, it referred to the means of production being owned and controlled directly by the society, either through the state or workers collectives.

Later the word "socialism" came to also mean a market economy in which the government intervenes to a considerable degree, as in European-style social democracy.

American conservatives have also recently come to label New Deal-style liberalism as "socialism."

I think it would be helpful for productive discussion if people labeled which meaning of the term they are using, and acknowledged that it also has other meanings.

Let me add that the state-ownership version of socialism could be totalitarian or democratic. I am not aware of any countries in the world today that have a state-ownership version of socialism and are democracies. Venezuela, from what I understand, has a partly state-owned economy, and is semi-totalitarian.

update: let me explain some why I think that discussion can be more productive if people acknowledge the term "socialism" has more than one meaning, and are clear about which one they are using.

There are many different economic and governmental systems that are labeled "socialist" including, among others, the totalitarian, total state-control system of the old Soviet Union and the democratic, semi-socialist system of the UK after WWII and up until Margaret Thatcher.

What is needed is to discuss how the various systems work and what are their outcomes, good or bad. This is a complicated and difficult discussion. If people insist on either labeling all of them as "socialist" or only one, then people get into endless, fruitless debates over who is right, and it greatly undermines the more factual discussion about specific different systems and why they go right or wrong. The comments to this link are a good example of what I am talking about. But if everyone agrees there are different definitions, then they can focus on the more important part of discussing the systems themselves.

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

#239

Post by Aloha »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #189
Aloha wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

just small enough to make actual communism possibly work This is an important distinction. Humans evolved in tribes, and many of our instinctual responses to how we think we should work together are optimized for such a setting. But these things just can't scale upwards. There are many things that work well at a community level that fall apart with larger groups. So when we see a problem in the world and feel our hea…

I suspect the threshold is actually about 450 people - but if you scale that up, and have multiple units of 450 people each - then you start to have something workable. The long term problem with planned economies is the inherent inflexibility and immovability in the face of changing realities.

Markets work because they are irrational, and move with people as situations change - like a subconscious reflex - planned economies require conscious effort to reapportion their efforts in the face of change.

The solution to socialism is collectives - lots of little ones from 50-500 people, which then interact with each other using market settlement and price adjustment mechanisms.

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

#240

Post by randiantech »

astrodust wrote: post #129
randiantech wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then probably we are not referring to the same thing when we talk about socialism.

If you're using "socialism" as a bugaboo, probably not. It has a broad meaning, like "democracy", but it's not always a bad thing.

I was referring socialism as a society where state does not allow private property (at least to a major extent), and violates individual human rights in favor of collective ones.
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