I Lived Like a Baller for a Month in Venezuela on Just £75 (2015) • Hacker News Board

Re: I Lived Like a Baller for a Month in Venezuela on Just £75 (2015)

#31

Post by narrator » Sat, Aug 06, 2016, 7:39 PM UTC

rwallace wrote: post #18

That was last year when the crisis could still be attributed to incompetence, mismanagement. The situation has changed considerably since then. I'm going to call it now: the Venezuela crisis is not incompetence after all. It's the first steps of a highly competent plan to do what several other communist governments did last century: bring about the death of a large percentage of the country's population. I don't ligh…

I said that they were getting a terror famine ready last year and everyone thought I was a lunatic. The idea, pioneered in the Soviet Union in the 30s, is that the government has to control all distribution of food and goods produced by workers to earn hard currency abroad by exporting the food and goods instead of feeding people domestically so it can use the proceeds to "build socialism". That means they have to confiscate factories and force people onto collective farms who don't want to be there as they're doing now. Sure they could have a normal capitalist economy and just tax them like a normal country, but this is communism and they have to remove the "capitalist running-dog exploiter" class from power and give all economic power to the government.

If you want to read about Soviet forced collectivization and all that messy history for a preview of what's coming up, this is a pretty good source:

http://acienciala.faculty.ku.edu/communistnationssince1917/c...

Ctrl-F for "Collectivization" and start reading from there, or read the whole thing if you want the background.

Remember, the guys running Venezuela are communists. They've read up and talked with the Cubans about how the Soviet Union was set up and run, etc. They like that model and think it was a good idea. They are simply following the cookbook. This includes the propaganda that everything bad happening is due to foreign saboteurs, right-wing reactionaries or unfortunate, but soon to be remedied, mistakes.

They've got the forced collectivization already to go:

https://news.vice.com/article/venezuela-has-a-new-forced-lab...

Re: I Lived Like a Baller for a Month in Venezuela on Just £75 (2015)

#32

Post by passivepinetree » Sat, Aug 06, 2016, 7:50 PM UTC

gk1 wrote: post #30

If you want to experience living "like a baller" for a low amount of money (for the US), there are many great places to go that are much safer than Venezuela.

Do you have any suggestions? I'm living in the US in an expensive city and it'd be cool to take a vacation somewhere much cheaper.

Re: I Lived Like a Baller for a Month in Venezuela on Just £75 (2015)

#33

Post by derekdahmer » Sat, Aug 06, 2016, 7:56 PM UTC

modeless wrote: post #20

brianbreslin wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a few friends who hired programmers remotely, they had to fly down with cash to pay them, no other way to get them money. Eventually the situation got too dangerous despite the incredible wage arbitrage they were getting by paying in US dollars. (too dangerous for the employees who were getting robbed frequently, and the bosses to carry the cash down there)

Did they look into Bitcoin? It seems tailor made for this situation. Immune to hyperinflation, difficult for offline criminals to steal, and difficult for the government to block. There is a Venezuelan Bitcoin exchange SurBitcoin and also LocalBitcoins.com, though I don't know the feasibility of using either right now. But at least the initial payment would be no problem.

Depends on the BTC / VEF exchange rate inside the country.

$100 -> .17BTC -> 102 VEF -> $10.25. So you'd lose 90% of the dollar value even at the generous official VEF/USD exchange rate.

https://surbitcoin.com/#market

Re: I Lived Like a Baller for a Month in Venezuela on Just £75 (2015)

#34

Post by kofejnik » Sat, Aug 06, 2016, 8:03 PM UTC

passivepinetree wrote: post #32

gk1 wrote: post #30

If you want to experience living "like a baller" for a low amount of money (for the US), there are many great places to go that are much safer than Venezuela.

Do you have any suggestions? I'm living in the US in an expensive city and it'd be cool to take a vacation somewhere much cheaper.

come visit Ukraine - Kiev, Lviv, Odessa

Re: I Lived Like a Baller for a Month in Venezuela on Just £75 (2015)

#35

Post by rafaelm » Sat, Aug 06, 2016, 8:10 PM UTC

derekdahmer wrote: post #33

modeless wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did they look into Bitcoin? It seems tailor made for this situation. Immune to hyperinflation, difficult for offline criminals to steal, and difficult for the government to block. There is a Venezuelan Bitcoin exchange SurBitcoin and also LocalBitcoins.com, though I don't know the feasibility of using either right now. But at least the initial payment would be no problem.

Depends on the BTC / VEF exchange rate inside the country. $100 -> .17BTC -> 102 VEF -> $10.25. So you'd lose 90% of the dollar value even at the generous official VEF/USD exchange rate. https://surbitcoin.com/#market

I've never really looked in to BTC because here you can sell dollars much easier. Although I can see that as a good way to receive dollars for those that do not have any other way.

Right now, $1 = $1004 VEF I see that 1 BTC = $583.79

From localbitcoin.com I see people selling in Venezuela at around 628000.00 VEF / BTC. So the price is the same.

I think what's going on, is they are calculating the price of the dollar at one of the govt rates of 645 VEF per dollar.

That's not realistic. Anyone with dollars in Venezuela is going to sell them at the black market rate of VEF 1000 per dollar.

Of course, the black market rate is illegal here and the government even went so far as blocking the black market rate information websites here. That's their idea of economic policy.

EDIT: Just realized, surbitcoin rate is around BsF 600k per Bitcoin. We use the dot (.) as the thousands separator.

Re: I Lived Like a Baller for a Month in Venezuela on Just £75 (2015)

#36

Post by CyberDildonics » Sat, Aug 06, 2016, 8:29 PM UTC

Locke1689 wrote: post #22

syedkarim wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often read that gold is superior to fiat currency, but how would any kind of currency or precious commodity make a difference in this case, since demand is outstripping supply of finite tangible goods.

It wouldn't. Don't believe what you read on the internet about money. The goldbugs are a vocal minority, not taken seriously in real economics discussions.

That has nothing to do with anything, Venezuela is in trouble because of capital controls.

Re: I Lived Like a Baller for a Month in Venezuela on Just £75 (2015)

#37

Post by jp_sc » Sat, Aug 06, 2016, 8:33 PM UTC

rafaelm wrote: post #15

v768 wrote: post #7

Things have changed a lot since this was written in December. I live in Caracas, there's massive national food shortages. Now you can't have 3 meals a day for a month with 100€, and would spend quite some time finding it (on the black market). Last time I saw sugar, it was around 3€ per kilo. Edit: If you want a realistic picture of how is life today, read this piece, written by a foreign journalist that actually liv…

Yep, I'm living in Barquisimeto and between me and my wife we are making around $160 per month. We are scraping by. Plus we've got a 3 month old baby, who luckily is exclusively breastfeeding, because baby formula is practically non-existent. We had to pool about $60 to buy a sack of sugar in the black market and divide it among a bunch of family members. Things are starting to look a lot more grim as time passes by…

Do you think things are going to improve in time for you and your family to survive?

Re: I Lived Like a Baller for a Month in Venezuela on Just £75 (2015)

#38

Post by QuarterReptile » Sat, Aug 06, 2016, 8:43 PM UTC

syedkarim wrote: post #17

swe wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can happen anywhere there's fiat currency and long supply lines.

I often read that gold is superior to fiat currency, but how would any kind of currency or precious commodity make a difference in this case, since demand is outstripping supply of finite tangible goods.

Theoretically, gold has more robust ties to reality, so it would have value elsewhere; this is in contrast to the Venezuelan currency, which I expect (though don't know for sure) is inflated like crazy. If that's true, then it could mean that some enterprising Colombians (or someone else nearby) might find it worth their while to smuggle food in for the gold or gold-backed currency, which should be exchangeable at a predictable and stable rate.

Having said that, it's an absurd notion. Maintaining a gold-backed currency in that shitshow, even if someone were so inclined, would be like carefully setting the tables for dinner on a sinking cruise ship: it's cool that you're enthusiastic about doing your job well, but there are some pretty important people screwing up in really important ways, and your efforts aren't going to get you anywhere.

Re: I Lived Like a Baller for a Month in Venezuela on Just £75 (2015)

#39

Post by QuarterReptile » Sat, Aug 06, 2016, 8:45 PM UTC

passivepinetree wrote: post #32

gk1 wrote: post #30

If you want to experience living "like a baller" for a low amount of money (for the US), there are many great places to go that are much safer than Venezuela.

Do you have any suggestions? I'm living in the US in an expensive city and it'd be cool to take a vacation somewhere much cheaper.

Southeast Asia, Central America, and Eastern Europe.

Re: I Lived Like a Baller for a Month in Venezuela on Just £75 (2015)

#40

Post by slv77 » Sat, Aug 06, 2016, 8:48 PM UTC

Curious how people who have family members in Venezula are remitting funds to them? Do they have exchange funds at the official rate or is there ways to send Dollars directly.

This has to be a pretty common occurance.