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How Bad Off Is Oil-Rich Venezuela? It’s Buying U.S. Oil

nytimes.com

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Re: How Bad Off Is Oil-Rich Venezuela? It’s Buying U.S. Oil

#91

Post by santiagogo »

marketanarchist wrote: post #52
danharaj wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When people use Venezuela to criticize socialism, they always compare it to the most powerful, developed capitalist countries of the world. Look how poor and dysfunctional the failed state of Venezuela is compared to a capitalist country like the United States! When you compare Venezuela to those of its neighbors who are completely submitted to international capital and empire, capitalism doesn't seem so glamorous ei…

Even in comparison to their neighbors, they are doing poorly no? I think the best indicator would be how people are voting with their feet. Are people fleeing from Venezuela to its neighbors or the other way around?

The frontier was closed off for nearly over a year, but when last reopened nearly 132,000 people crossed on the first day. It's hard to know how many are just crossing over to buy groceries and how many will stay, but I read that the Colombian government estimates that roughly some 500,000 Venezuelans will illegally immigrate to Colombia during the next year, which is a worrisome number. As a Colombian I've personally seen how they've been clearly voting with their feet for the last 10 years, since they have no opportunities and are afraid of protesting against a government that kills and persecutes the opposition.

http://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-america-latina-36817172

Re: How Bad Off Is Oil-Rich Venezuela? It’s Buying U.S. Oil

#92

Post by rjdevereux »

danharaj wrote: post #31
wildmusings wrote: post #11

The wonders of socialism.

When people use Venezuela to criticize socialism, they always compare it to the most powerful, developed capitalist countries of the world. Look how poor and dysfunctional the failed state of Venezuela is compared to a capitalist country like the United States! When you compare Venezuela to those of its neighbors who are completely submitted to international capital and empire, capitalism doesn't seem so glamorous ei…

East vs West Germany, and North vs South Korea are good examples of how different governments result in different standards of living.

Re: How Bad Off Is Oil-Rich Venezuela? It’s Buying U.S. Oil

#93

Post by jimmywanger »

optimuspaul wrote: post #86
jimmywanger wrote: post #83

Currency controls and price controls and government nationalization have destroyed Venezuela. Currency controls: there's a 1:10 exchange rate, dollars to bolivars, for essential imports, like food, medicine, etc. The black market exchange rate is about 1:1010. To get the good rate, you need connections. But hey, it's a pain in the ass to actually contact suppliers and get goods through customs, and you're capped at w…

I'm not sure that's how the black market works. I don't think I can exchange dollars for bolivars. That sounds like a losing proposition for the black market.

I'm pretty sure that's how the black market works. Why do you think otherwise?

If you were on the black market, you'd LOVE to exchange bolivars for dollars.

The inflation rate is over 700% I think this year, and it's only going up. Why wouldn't you want something that's almost guaranteed to be valuable, instead of holding on to a rapidly depreciating asset?

Re: How Bad Off Is Oil-Rich Venezuela? It’s Buying U.S. Oil

#94

Post by matt_wulfeck »

metaphorm wrote: post #82
mikeash wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't get it. This sentiment always pops up on here when Venezuela is discussed. In the Chavez era, the ruling party pushed through rule by decree, suffered a military coup, purged the opposition, tried to set up their leader as dictator for life... and the lesson we should take away from the resulting chaos is that big spending on social programs doesn't produce long-lasting benefits?

Are you sure you don't get it? This stuff pops up because some of the community here are ideologues trying to score "points" off of this, regardless of whether or not it is appropriate of the situation being discussed. Any excuse to push for more tax cuts.

Yes points. And perhaps there's a larger discussion about what the role of the federal government should be is now discussed in our daily lives, not just hacker news, with such topics as student aid debt forgiveness, basic income, mandatory health care, etc.

And also maybe it's an example how power can be purchased with social programs.

Also points. Gotta get those points. I hear someday I'll be able to cash them in for bad karma debt forgiveness.

Re: How Bad Off Is Oil-Rich Venezuela? It’s Buying U.S. Oil

#95

Post by AsyncAwait »

stale2002 wrote: post #61
currysoup_t wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you'll find textbook socialism are very different to what you think socialism and communism are. Do the workers in Venezuela own the means of production?

OK then, which countries in the world are or have ever been socialist? The point isn't that the "textbook" definition of socialism is bad. The point is that every single real world attempt at getting to socialism has been bad, so why wouldnt future attempts run into the same problems?

> The point is that every single real world attempt at getting to socialism has been bad, so why wouldnt future attempts run into the same problems?

The problem is that "every single real world attempt at getting to socialism" has been inspired by the same ( bad ) implementors, using the same ( bad ) mechanisms, without anyone trying to implement socialism from scratch by going back to the source of the ideology as opposed to looking at other dictators who used the premise of socialism to get into power without actually caring about socialism itself.

Venezuela is a corrupt place with socialism being implemented as a means to launder money as opposed to implement social safety programs, it's the same as the "Democratic" Republic of Korea or Congo.

Capitalism wouldn't really help a corrupt country like Venezuela, but Socialism was making some good progress in another Latin American country... Nicaragua, weren't it for the Contras. The rest is history.

Re: How Bad Off Is Oil-Rich Venezuela? It’s Buying U.S. Oil

#97

Post by Retric »

stale2002 wrote: post #61
currysoup_t wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you'll find textbook socialism are very different to what you think socialism and communism are. Do the workers in Venezuela own the means of production?

OK then, which countries in the world are or have ever been socialist? The point isn't that the "textbook" definition of socialism is bad. The point is that every single real world attempt at getting to socialism has been bad, so why wouldnt future attempts run into the same problems?

I would call Norway socialist. Not because the government owns everything, but because society distributes a large fraction of all earnings. Note, defacto tax rates are what's important. Greece may have a high nominal tax rate, but nobody actually pays it. The US has a 15% tax rate on capital gains irregardless of what the nominal top tax rate is. Further, the US pretends Social Security is not an income tax.

By comparison the USSR, China, and North Korea all pay / paid some lip service to communism, but if you look at the people at the top it was not even close to communism.

PS: The real world is complicated. If you promote revolution you generally don't get whatever the revolutions talking points where.

Re: How Bad Off Is Oil-Rich Venezuela? It’s Buying U.S. Oil

#98

Post by alphydan »

How Bad Off Is Oil-Rich USA? It’s Buying oil from all over the world!

in 2015, the USA imported 9,400,000 barrels every day from 82 countries (Mostly from Canada, Saudi Arabia and ... surprise, surprise from Venezuela).

Now the NYT thinks that Venezuela importing 50,000 barrels of light crude (to dilute their heavy crude) is news? They forgot to mention that last year the US imported 830,000 barrels from Venezuela (the third largest supplier to the US). If you read the actual import/export numbers [0], you will understand that it's just a political submarine article. The reason Venezuelan oil production is declining is a pretty complex phenomenon (driven mostly by Geology and exacerbated by mismanagement, brain drain, corruption, etc).

[0] http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=727&t=6

Re: How Bad Off Is Oil-Rich Venezuela? It’s Buying U.S. Oil

#99

Post by Gusfoo_2 »

nnq wrote: post #38
wildmusings wrote: post #11

The wonders of socialism.

Sincere question: HOW? I mean, even if we assume a socialist economy is terribly inefficient, like operating at 50% of the efficiency a capitalist one, it still should be enough for sustaining a resource-rich country. WTF they are doing so wrong?! Are they under intense internal or external sabotage? Corruption is so bad? I mean, this is not some mid-African country with >50% of the population illiterate, bunch of ho…

> WTF they are doing so wrong?!

The short version is that they fired all the technicians and replaced them with the party faithful. And then went nuts driving the PDVSA around like a combination of a gift horse and a war horse.

Re: How Bad Off Is Oil-Rich Venezuela? It’s Buying U.S. Oil

#100

Post by matt_wulfeck »

cseelus wrote: post #48
joshred wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but what about the other states that spend on social programs and ended up successful? This is like throwing out a carton of eggs because one of them broke.

Sweden, Norway and to some degree Germany could be mentioned as successful examples.

Germany (as one example) has a social expenditure of 25% versus USA at 19%[0]. Switzerland is 19.4%.

[0] https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=SOCX_AGG

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