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Venezuelans Skeptical of Maduro's Latest Measures to Salvage Economy

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Re: Venezuelans Skeptical of Maduro's Latest Measures to Salvage Economy

#51

Post by wonthegame »

rayiner wrote: post #19
prolikewh0a wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What underlying ideology? Socialism? There's nothing that says socialism or some form of it can't work.

There's little-s socialism and big-s socialism. Social democracies like Sweden, etc., have social welfare systems bankrolled by an underlying market economy. A company in Sweden may pay high taxes, but it doesn't have to worry about being nationalized, price controls, or central planning: https://www.economist.com/special-report/2012/10/13/the-new-... . Capital will put up with high taxes. It won't put up with those…

But corporations don’t pay tax. They have tax burdens. Which they make the user pay for.

Re: Venezuelans Skeptical of Maduro's Latest Measures to Salvage Economy

#52

Post by scythe »

wonthegame wrote: post #50
scythe wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The crucial mistake was the firing of tens of thousands of employees of the state oil company, PDVSA. Eviscerating the state oil business in an economy that depends on oil exports is, um, bad. With half of their employees replaced by Chavez yes-men, PDVSA made poor strategic decisions that left them with (almost) no new oil wells when the ones they had been using ran dry. To be specific, money that should have been u…

The firing wasn’t the issue. It was a controversial move but it is not what caused the ongoing collapse. The exchange rates being in their favour is how the govt paid for the social programs. Now that the rate is not in their favour and oil prices have crashed... now it makes it difficult to pay for your debt. The US smelled blood and decided to help speed up the inevitable by adding sanctions. This increased the cos…

>The firing wasn’t the issue. It was a controversial move but it is not what caused the ongoing collapse. The exchange rates being in their favour is how the govt paid for the social programs. Now that the rate is not in their favour and oil prices have crashed... now it makes it difficult to pay for your debt.

The "exchange rates" never could have made the government's pilfering of PDVSA revenues sustainable. Any properly-run business would save money for the possibility of a change in commodity prices. PDVSA under Chavez did not.

Exchange rates did not cause the collapse of Venezuela. Hugo Chavez's decision to ignore economic reality and substitute his own is what caused the collapse of Venezuela. No other oil-based economy got hit as hard as Venezuela by the oil price collapse because they maintained sustainable business practices.

>The US smelled blood and decided to help speed up the inevitable by adding sanctions

This is a joke, right? The US did not even sanction Venezuelan businesses, only the officials involved in looting the oil industry revenues. From Wiki:

>On March 9, 2015, the United States President, Barack Obama, signed and issued a presidential order declaring Venezuela a "threat to its national security" and ordered sanctions against seven Venezuelan officials. Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro denounced the sanctions as an attempt to topple his socialist government. Washington said that the sanctions targeted individuals who were involved in the violation of Venezuelans' human rights, saying that "we are deeply concerned by the Venezuelan government's efforts to escalate intimidation of its political opponents".

The notion that US sanctions played any role in the collapse of Venezuela is an utter fantasy promulgated by the Venezuelan government and perpetuated by credulous Western champagne socialists.

Re: Venezuelans Skeptical of Maduro's Latest Measures to Salvage Economy

#53

Post by antidesitter »

Maybestring wrote: post #28
tartuffe78 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many times do countries have to collapse before we can be sure?

This would be a better argument if a major world power hadn't actively undermined all attempts at socialism.

To be clear, are you saying the United States was responsible for socialism’s failures?

Re: Venezuelans Skeptical of Maduro's Latest Measures to Salvage Economy

#54

Post by antidesitter »

tomjakubowski wrote: post #29
tartuffe78 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many times do countries have to collapse before we can be sure?

Clock's been ticking for a long while now on Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland. When will you give up waiting for these socialist states to collapse?

> Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland

Under what definition are these socialist states?

Re: Venezuelans Skeptical of Maduro's Latest Measures to Salvage Economy

#55

Post by TheCoelacanth »

eschevarria wrote: post #40
Maybestring wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Thus capitalism is freedom. Capitalism is absolutely compatible with slavery. If you eat seafood, you almost certainly have eaten food harvested by a slave. Not to mention the numerous historical examples.

Capitalism is not compatible with forced labor. It may be compatible with slavery if you define slavery in a way that includes consensual labor. Systems that are partly capitalist may be compatible with forced labor, but in this case the part that allows the forced labor is not the capitalist part of the system and the blame should rest on the system not being capitalist enough. For example, Resolution No. 9855 in Ve…

Nonsense. Capitalism coexisted with the literal buying and selling of humans as property.

If you want to redefine those systems as not real capitalism, you should also redefine all of the "communist" systems as not real communism because they were nowhere close to the textbook definition of communism. Textbook communism is stateless, while all of those examples had a state.

Re: Venezuelans Skeptical of Maduro's Latest Measures to Salvage Economy

#56

Post by [deleted] »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #55
eschevarria wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalism is not compatible with forced labor. It may be compatible with slavery if you define slavery in a way that includes consensual labor. Systems that are partly capitalist may be compatible with forced labor, but in this case the part that allows the forced labor is not the capitalist part of the system and the blame should rest on the system not being capitalist enough. For example, Resolution No. 9855 in Ve…

Nonsense. Capitalism coexisted with the literal buying and selling of humans as property. If you want to redefine those systems as not real capitalism, you should also redefine all of the "communist" systems as not real communism because they were nowhere close to the textbook definition of communism. Textbook communism is stateless, while all of those examples had a state.

[deleted]

Re: Venezuelans Skeptical of Maduro's Latest Measures to Salvage Economy

#57

Post by cryptonector »

Maybestring wrote: post #34
cryptonector wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalism isn't a theory. It's an emergent result of letting people own themselves, property, and the fruits of their own labor while also letting them trade their property and labor. Thus capitalism is freedom. To replace capitalism with any theory requires identifying which freedoms you mean to constrain or abandon altogether.

>Thus capitalism is freedom. Capitalism is absolutely compatible with slavery. If you eat seafood, you almost certainly have eaten food harvested by a slave. Not to mention the numerous historical examples.

My definition isn't (see above). But nothing is perfect. It's hard not to trade even with the enemy, whatever their practices might be. What are the alternatives that don't even lead to slavery? Communism certainly does, but capitalism does not (even if we do some trade with nations that use slave labor).

EDIT: And I should add that capitalism, along with Enlightenment values, has been the biggest force for freedom and prosperity yet.

Re: Venezuelans Skeptical of Maduro's Latest Measures to Salvage Economy

#58

Post by Maybestring »

antidesitter wrote: post #53
Maybestring wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would be a better argument if a major world power hadn't actively undermined all attempts at socialism.

To be clear, are you saying the United States was responsible for socialism’s failures?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in...

See the cold war era for a quick rundown of US interference with socialist governments.

I'm saying... when the US instigates and funds a civil war in country X, you can't then say X's government lost power because of their economic policies.

Re: Venezuelans Skeptical of Maduro's Latest Measures to Salvage Economy

#59

Post by antidesitter »

Maybestring wrote: post #58
antidesitter wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, are you saying the United States was responsible for socialism’s failures?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in... See the cold war era for a quick rundown of US interference with socialist governments. I'm saying... when the US instigates and funds a civil war in country X, you can't then say X's government lost power because of their economic policies.

That's dodging the question. Do you deny the connection between socialist policies and their economic consequences?
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