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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

#131

Post by AnimalMuppet »

tptacek wrote: post #15
jondubois wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should just lease out licenses to allow foreign companies to draw the oil themselves and use the proceeds to fix their own oil infrastructure. They have so many options to chose from to fix their economy. It seems like they don't have the will to fix anything. I wouldn't be surprised if there is some sort of corruption going on. The leaders of the country seem to be intentionally draining the money out of the co…

Venezuela's oil industry is nationalized.

I think jondubois's proposal was to de-nationalize it.

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

#132

Post by tptacek »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #131
tptacek wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Venezuela's oil industry is nationalized.

I think jondubois's proposal was to de-nationalize it.

Can Venezuela's current leadership do that without altering the country's political identity? It's been clear for awhile that the Chavism experiment with oil sector management has been a failure. Is there any indication that they're going to change now?

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

#133

Post by astine »

mikeash wrote: post #127
SilasX wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the economic policies were tremendously popular and would likely have persisted in a carefully designed democracy that did not specifically prohibit them. I don't see the authoritarian nature of the government as being a root cause. Democracy doesn't automatically make price controls (including currency controls) less disastrous.

That just seems to lend weight to the idea that there was a lot more going on and blaming it all on social programs doesn't make sense. Unless you're lumping price and currency controls into the "social programs" category?

I don't think anyone in this thread is blaming it all on social programs. Even the opening post mentioned that corruption was largely to blame.

If you want to get into discussions on socialism, one might ask the question whether nationalization of industries presents an opportunity for corruption or if socialist ideology can present a cover for kleptocracy. It looks a lot like that's what happened in Venezuela.

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

#134

Post by AnimalMuppet »

hansjorg wrote: post #69
wildmusings wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no way you can pin this on anyone or anything but Chavez, his allies, and their policies. They've ruled Venezuela for 20 years and steered it from flawed prosperity to total ruin.

Why did Chavez come to power? Who was prosperous?

Valid points (at least, they would be if you actually stated them). But:

> > an owner-class hell bent on sabotaging and completely backed by the US

reeks of conspiracy-theory paranoia, at least in the absence of actual evidence.

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

#135

Post by dragonwriter »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #131
tptacek wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Venezuela's oil industry is nationalized.

I think jondubois's proposal was to de-nationalize it.

Which, really, does nothing. The problem is that the country's economy is dependent on a single extracted resources for export, making it do well when prices for that resource are high and badly when they are low.

Whether its privately extracted by firms paying taxes on income and leases for extraction rights or publicly extracted by the government, the same fundamental problem remains (and the same broad economic results have been seen in economies dependent on a single extracted resource all over the world, independent of the public or private nature of the extraction.)

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

#136

Post by dogma1138 »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #66
tptacek wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone sees their own ideological nemeses in the HN user base, which is both a sign that things are working well, and a reason for us all to avoid ideologically-charged political discussions as much as we can. I promise, the "anti-US left" sees HN as stuffed to the gills full of US apologists as well.

My comment is tagged with 'flagged' and set to the lowest score. Obviously these forums lean young and college students which subscribe generally to College identity politics which is very far left. Meanwhile, extremely low effort posts of "Shut up, Socialism works, there's nothing to see here," are voted up uncritically. Tell me again how these forums aren't biased?

While there are some issues, it's also often not what you say but how you say it.

I do dislike the fact that there is no way to "vouch" for flagged comments, and that -10 auto flag kills it.

While I can't comment much on the bias there is some sort of a group mentality to downvote comments that already have been downvoted once or twice, maybe people think they are helping to "clean up" the discussion.

I often wondered how things would work if HN would implement an "score hidden" policy for new comments (say first 6 hours) with the score not affecting the position or the font of the comment if that would reduce the amount of flagged comments on the board or not.

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

#137

Post by dragonwriter »

justincormack wrote: post #75
ufo wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A big factor is that oil prices tanked in 2014.

no, it was in a very bad way before that.

You're both right: lots of things were bad in Venezuela before 2014, but oil prices tanking in 2014 are a big factor in how bad they are now.

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

#138

Post by mikeash »

astine wrote: post #133
mikeash wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That just seems to lend weight to the idea that there was a lot more going on and blaming it all on social programs doesn't make sense. Unless you're lumping price and currency controls into the "social programs" category?

I don't think anyone in this thread is blaming it all on social programs. Even the opening post mentioned that corruption was largely to blame. If you want to get into discussions on socialism, one might ask the question whether nationalization of industries presents an opportunity for corruption or if socialist ideology can present a cover for kleptocracy. It looks a lot like that's what happened in Venezuela.

You're right, it's not all. Still, I don't get why it's even brought up. Seems like authoritarian government, nationalization of industries, and general screwing about with market forces would be far more important.

Or are people just equating nationalizing the oil industry and making it illegal to get money out of the country with "social programs"?

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

#139

Post by astine »

currysoup_t wrote: post #129
stale2002 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It's a bit of a straw man to present failed socialist-in-name-only states when critiquing socialism. If someone were to bring up the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea as an attempt to critique democracy you'd rightly scoff. I'll freely admit there have been numerous failed socialist states. Very few self-proclaimed socialist states have even attempted to implement socialism. Many who claimed to be socialist were d…

"It's a bit of a straw man to present failed socialist-in-name-only states when critiquing socialism. If someone were to bring up the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea as an attempt to critique democracy you'd rightly scoff."

It's a bit of a straw man to present failed attempts at cold fusion when critiquing cold fusion itself.

Communist revolutionaries genuinely did attempt to implement socialism. The fact that so many failed should make one question the wisdom of attempting their approach. Perhaps the fatal flaw in socialism is only in it's revolutionary nature and a more conservative approach in it's implementation is warranted? Interesting hypothesis, but I'd like to see more data.

"Imagine you tried to have a capitalist revolution in feudal Europe. Can you imagine that would go very well? "

I dunno, I believe that's usually called the Industrial Revolution.

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

#140

Post by detaro »

dogma1138 wrote: post #136
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My comment is tagged with 'flagged' and set to the lowest score. Obviously these forums lean young and college students which subscribe generally to College identity politics which is very far left. Meanwhile, extremely low effort posts of "Shut up, Socialism works, there's nothing to see here," are voted up uncritically. Tell me again how these forums aren't biased?

While there are some issues, it's also often not what you say but how you say it. I do dislike the fact that there is no way to "vouch" for flagged comments, and that -10 auto flag kills it. While I can't comment much on the bias there is some sort of a group mentality to downvote comments that already have been downvoted once or twice, maybe people think they are helping to "clean up" the discussion. I often wondere…

> I do dislike the fact that there is no way to "vouch" for flagged comments,

huh? There is a link on the page of a flagged comment, called "vouch".

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