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In Venezuela, life has gone from bad to worse. And the world has quit noticing

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71–80 of 148 posts

Re: In Venezuela, life has gone from bad to worse. And the world has quit noticing

#71
post #63

The baffling thing about this is the vast oil wealth the country controls. Its oil reserves are the largest in the word, yet its economy lies in shambles. That takes some serious mismanagement.

the oil is poor quality and requires constant reinvestment in extraction and refinement infrastructure to remain competitive with other exporters. for various reasons this investment has been neglected for the last decade or two, but it’s not quite a turnkey fix to just decide to sell more oil.

Re: In Venezuela, life has gone from bad to worse. And the world has quit noticing

#72

The world still notices. I've recently seen a number of articles about the protests and the opposition leader Juan Guaido. In fact the New York Times published an op-ed piece by him fairly recently.

Yes, there's been an enormous propaganda push to legitimize a future U.S. intervention - either a direct invasion, or igniting a full-blown civil war by arming right-wing paramilitaries, as was the standard operating procedure throughout the 80's.

Re: In Venezuela, life has gone from bad to worse. And the world has quit noticing

#74

The world still notices. I've recently seen a number of articles about the protests and the opposition leader Juan Guaido. In fact the New York Times published an op-ed piece by him fairly recently.

citing the new york times :/ didnt they push for WMD in iraq? edit: ah yes, unquestioned reporting pushing the administration's policy of war. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2004/may/26/pressandpublis...

isnt this what happened with collusion as well? oh yeah https://taibbi.substack.com/

Re: In Venezuela, life has gone from bad to worse. And the world has quit noticing

#75

[flagged]

Getting a lot of downvotes for this comment, but could someone please explain where I'm going wrong? A lot of people think the way I do, so it would be helpful to explain. A country with a bright future just a couple decades ago experienced a truly remarkable decline after a socialist was elected. I'm sure there are other factors, but surely this is going to be seen as yet another failure of socialism. Whether this i…

I think you're being downvoted because specific questions about specific countries, like yours, end up being used as broad-sweeping scare tactics to avoid or shut down discussion of universal health care. In the U.S. even just socializing medicine is seen by some as total conversation to socialism, and in some of the more ignorant cases communism.

I think your questions are triggering that emotional response.

Re: In Venezuela, life has gone from bad to worse. And the world has quit noticing

#76
post #63

The baffling thing about this is the vast oil wealth the country controls. Its oil reserves are the largest in the word, yet its economy lies in shambles. That takes some serious mismanagement.

The oil reserves are in shambles too, due to as you said mismanagement. They are a special type of oil that requires extra investment to produce, and the government has failed to make those investments.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2019/01/29/charting-the...

Re: In Venezuela, life has gone from bad to worse. And the world has quit noticing

#77
post #14

When they have power, Bitcoin has been a solution for wealth preservation and capital movement given their pariah status with western banks and the never ending destruction of their currency. When the dust clears and capitalism is restored, there will be a fascinating case study on this development.

Hopefully when Bitcoin-Core transaction fees reach $30 again like they did in December 2017, the common Venezuelan people will be able to afford the $60 overhead ($30 opening fee and $30 reserve needed to close the channel in case of counterparty fraud) to open a Lightning Network channel, or simply switch to a more scalable cryptocurrency.

i’ve read accounts that say litecoin is nearly as popular as btc there

Re: In Venezuela, life has gone from bad to worse. And the world has quit noticing

#78
post #12

Unfortunately, the population accepted a gun ban back in 2012.

After socialism took over Venezuela in 2007 through Chavez the "eternal president" of Venezuela I wouldnt consider any votes as valid. I still remember back then knowing that things were wrong and bad in Venezuela. He was president till he died. The elections were a joke.

Re: In Venezuela, life has gone from bad to worse. And the world has quit noticing

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have the support of the military forces. So rioting doesn't work. It just gets you killed on the street with no repercussions for the government. Also, the word "leader" implies that this is a legitimate democracy, which is not. Venezuela has an authoritarian corrupt government at best, a dictatorship at worst.

A wise leader once said: All things grow out of the barrel of a gun. According to the Marxist theory of the state, the army is the chief component of state power. Whoever wants to seize and retain state power must have a strong army.

I think the quote is actually, "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun," per Google and Wikipedia. Is this part of Marxist theory, or Maoist? I genuinely don't know. I had always thought that Marx viewed the revolution as at least potentially peaceful, but I confess I have never read him.
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