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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

#261

Post by rat87 »

astrodust wrote: post #222
pastProlog wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there was a "deliberate campaign of genocide by starvation" happening, I'm sure I could look in the New York Times archives of the period and read about that. If I consult the archives, the reporters going through the Ukraine said reports of that were false. Also, all of Europe had a bad crop that year, I guess the Soviets were controlling the weather?

There's a lot of hyperbole on both sides here. The Soviets at the time claimed Americans were starving by the millions, and of course Americans claimed the Soviets were starving by the millions. Of course this is a point too subtle to work on Hacker News. The data on both sides is wobbly to the point of being undependable. Until modern social security systems kicked in the number of people living in the US was largel…

Except there is a consensus that millions of people of people died in the USSR during that famine, Ukranians were hit hardest.

I haven't seen much talk of large scale deaths(>10,000)due to the dust bowl. In fact I can't really find much on dust bowl deaths (other then an uptick in the suicide rate) except in places that seem to be excusing the Holodomor.

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

#262

Post by xchip »

tptacek wrote: post #17
seibelj wrote: post #4

I highly recommend reading Life and Death in Shanghai by Nien Cheng [0]. It's a factual, first-hand account of the China's Cultural Revolution and what living in a communist / socialist society is really like from an educated person's perspective. My inlaws escaped Saigon when it fell and say the picture is very accurate. The socialist downfall of countries are all unique, but follow similar paths. I encourage people…

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.

If you pay 40% taxes then you are 40% socialist.

In Belgium we pay: - 50% income taxes - 21% VAT (a kind of sales tax) - 14% Social security

50+21+14 = %85 Socialist.

Any taxes you pay above 50% brings you into the communist area [myself et al] so we are 35% communist.

(this was just for laughs)

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

#263

Post by astrodust »

internaut wrote: post #235
astrodust wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Argentina is a good example of the extended misery you'll experience when your whole economy implodes and having a bunker you can huddle in isn't going to help at all. You'll have to go out and trade, eventually, for supplies.

Rwanda is another example of what happens when The Shit Hits The Fan where unless your bunker is invisible or utterly impregnable you're not going to survive for long. When word gets out about a huge stash of weapons and food guess who's first on the hit-list of an angry mob?

Does being a prepper save you from an ISIS-like take-over of your town? What about when the Russians role in and assume control like they've done in Georgia and Ukraine and you're now living in a whole different environment?

Anyone who hoards food and bullets is thinking that when society collapses it will be a little bit of chaos and then they can go back outdoors and carry on.

I'd challenge anyone to show when such a thing has happened in history.

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

#264

Post by astrodust »

randiantech wrote: post #240
astrodust wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're confusing "socialism" with "communist". Socialist societies do not, as a rule, limit ownership of private property. Any that do are usually socialist and something else, like totalitarian or communist.

Likewise a socialist state does not necessarily limit individual freedoms. Communist regimes have, but they're also totalitarian, so which philosophy is to blame is sometimes hard to pin down.

Modern communist societies have also relaxed these restrictions significantly, though there were times when everything was forced communal.

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

#265

Post by andrewjl »

adventured wrote: post #170
andrewjl wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

I never argued that Sweden was more economically free than the US (although frankly they may be at this point, US federal regulations have increased drastically in the last 40 years, the regulatory burden is far larger than it used to be). I said that Sweden was in a two decade long economic slump, and only climbed out of it courtesy of de-regulation and de-taxation of their economy. I'd be happy to link to several a…

> - Do they allow private ownership of property, including the means of production? Yes, Sweden's economy is almost entirely driven by private businesses.

Government spending as % of GDP is an excellent metric re size of the government relative to the private economy. This assumes that as a nation is more socialist, the size of the government will increase.

Sweden slightly over 50% (http://www.tradingeconomics.com/sweden/government-spending-t...) U.S. 20% (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYONGDA188S)

I don't doubt that private property ownership is permissible in Sweden, but the government dominates GDP as compared to any single private sector.

> - Do they force the redistribution of wealth, so as to attempt to prevent the existence of rich and poor classes? No.

Sweden has higher personal tax rates than the U.S. I dispute your "No." here.

> - May the government arbitrarily nationalize your wealth, investments, or business? No, that would be a rare event in Sweden.

It depends. The Swedish government is a highly functional one and will not act capriciously. I believe they will step in and nationalize wealth/real property if doing so was important to the wellbeing of the nation, whereas the U.S. even during the bailouts of 2008 went through great pains to avoid direct government ownership / control, even to the point of handing private equity firms free risk-adjusted money.

> - Does the State determine all investment priorities for all businesses? No, quite the opposite, businesses are free to set their own priorities, build new products at will, choose how they allocate capital.

Given the GDP % stated above, this is debatable.

> - Does the State dictate most allocations of capital? No, the opposite.

Same as the previous point.

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

#266

Post by internaut »

astrodust wrote: post #263
internaut wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Argentina is a good example of the extended misery you'll experience when your whole economy implodes and having a bunker you can huddle in isn't going to help at all. You'll have to go out and trade, eventually, for supplies. Rwanda is another example of what happens when The Shit Hits The Fan where unless your bunker is invisible or utterly impregnable you're not going to survive for long. When word gets out about…

I don't disagree! Maybe you were talking to a super-prepper.

However to play Devil's Advocate I expect you could survive Argentina/Rwanda/Georgia/Ukraine with sufficient preparation e.g. growing food underground.

It just takes an ungodly amount of money to make it work.

> I'd challenge anyone to show when such a thing has happened in history.

That's the interesting problem because I'd say (let's call it) 'cannibal holocaust' does happen with some frequency on a historical scale. It happened in my country and Russia more recently. It's rare but it does happen.

The key element I think isn't so much resources as secrecy of preparations. With sufficient resources and thought you should be able to hole up for the rest of your life.

Whether you'd want to is another issue!

You have to remember that the people who do go fully off the grid aren't all that likely to advertise themselves. I'm thinking they will mostly be dissidents or the military (for deadman's switches, secret bioweapon programs and the like). So your appeal for challengers might come up empty for reasons other than non-existence. People who do this are always going to be pretty extreme.

Here's one example: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/for-40-years-this-russ...

I wouldn't say they were prepared with bullets and MREs per se but they certainly got off the grid. Also it is an interesting story.

Finally I offer you an example of (intellectual) survival from ancient times in my own country.

The majority of Greek texts you've heard of used to be stored in a small island off the Irish coast, protected against invaders by monks and most likely extreme isolation. If the Carolingian empire hadn't copied them from the monks you'd know next to nothing about the most major figures and events in world history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_of_the_Greek_Clas...

When the Roman empire fell, knowledge of it and its predecessors was really in danger of being lost, despite what modern day hipster hun-apologists will tell you. From literacy to ... not-literacy. Without that backup beyond the furthest corner of the Empire, we'd know nothing about major figures like Seneca and Cicero.

Kenneth Clark did an excellent documentary on the subject if you're interested.

The episode is: Civilisation (1969) Episode 1 "The Skin of Our Teeth", from 13:35.

I don't know if you're familiar with Neal Stephenson's Anathem but I imagine he got a lot of inspiration from this.

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

#267

Post by nitrogen »

klodolph wrote: post #134
ktRolster wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Maybe give people a survey to assign a word2vec-like coordinate to their beliefs about each term, and then tell them which term is actually closest to their belief vector?

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

#268

Post by nikdaheratik »

ensiferum wrote: post #232

Why is it that all the ex Spanish colonies are pretty much 3rd world shit holes and all the ex British colonies are doing pretty well. Any causality??

Since both countries "owned" a good part of the world real estate at some point in their history, it seems pretty easy to cherry-pick and find something to support whatever point you're trying to make.

The only real insight I've found is that colonialism is a bad idea and you shouldn't do it anymore.

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

#269

Post by nikdaheratik »

madengr wrote: post #13

Wow, reads like Atlas Shrugged. Could easily happen in this country. I feel bad for the 45% that didn't support the socialists.

I think socialism is the "excuse" rather than the root cause: which is poor government that ran on cronyism and petro-dollars and is completely stuffed after decades of mismanagement. The main difference between this and a number of other governments is that it's happening in the Western hemisphere and not some corner of Africa or the Middle East.

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

#270

Post by nikdaheratik »

zeveb wrote: post #21
lightlyused wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lack of a functional democracy is the problem, not socialism.

> Lack of a functional democracy is the problem, not socialism. It's entirely possible to democratically decide to steal the means of production from the capitalists — and thus experience exactly these consequences.

It's entirely possible to have the same result via crony capitalism instead. The problem is too much power in the hands of too few people. It doesn't matter what label their government claims to fall under at this point.
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