Venezuela’s death spiral is getting worse

[bshole]

Oh absolutely. I mean the results speak for themselves. Although China in its current iteration I still can't decide what the hell it is now.

China is more capitalist than the United States right now..... a whole helluva lot more capitalist. It needs some socialist restraints (environmental, worker safety, etc.....)

 

[agent00f]

No, I'm saying that Norway's success has a lot more to do with its natural oil wealth than the economic system it uses to distribute that wealth. Adopting socialist policies wasn't the cause of its success, it was one of many economic models which could have succeeded given the circumstances. So could have laissez faire capitalism.

Abundance of natural resources hardly guarantees success. For example much of the third world were colonies exploited for that reason.

Norway and Venezuela are actually good examples that factors other than economic system are key to having a successful nation. Sure, Venezuela has oil wealth like Norway (although lesser quality oil and less) but otherwise lots of things working against them. Weak notions of 'rule of law.' Government policies directly intended to hurt one class of people to (ostensibly) benefit another. Tons of corruption and waste in government. A government whose first instinct is to blame and demonize rather than seek solutions which benefit all. A government that tries to buy popularity and support with crippling levels of subsidies and price controls.

Notice what makes norway "good" is that it distributes the benefits of those resources rather equally, ie benefiting certain class of prol at the expense of others. Laissez faire capitalism isn't exactly know for this quality.

But it isnt one country. Lets go down the list of countries that have gone down this road in the past century.

Soviet Union
Eastern Bloc
China before their move to open markets\capitalism
North Korea
Cuba

Why is it so many socialist countries make the same bad decisions?

What I find interesting is how hard it is for people to admit govts based on socialism have produced some of the worst outcomes over the past 100 or so years. Nobody is talking about forcing govt types onto other people. We are talking about another example of the socialist revolution producing horrible outcomes. The people running these countries change, the same basic ideology remains the same.

India has one of the croniest economies in the world btw. Bribes and corruption or good luck getting permits to build anything. You can blame that on capitalism if it makes you feel better. But in all reality it is another example in a long list of out of control govt.

You might've worked at some institution where decisions are dictated from the top down, and found some of those decisions to be poor. So it's worth pondering how that model appears to be the prevailing one in a relatively free market.

On the whole "socialism" issue, that's just a label dummies are told to put on things they don't understand. To illustrate, democracy is basically political communism.

 

[Bart*Simpson]

of course. Success needs rewards. What we should be looking at is the level of socialism in norway. This is almost the perfect blend.

Norway has the world's largest sovereign wealth fund (SWF) with close to US$1 trillion dollars under management. If it were not for unapologetic Wall Street banksterism there's no way that Norway would be able to sustain its welfare state given the decline of oil revenues. If you're proposing that the USA should reduce our debt to zero and then create a sovereign wealth fund to finance things like national health and etc. then sign me up. But absent the offshore capitalism that sustains Norway's SWF they'd be Venezuela.

 

[GagHalfrunt]

Hard to see any Syria type collapse as at least from my limited understanding Venezuela doesn't have the same tribal/religious/ethnic cleavages that Syria does.

I could see some attempt to overthrow the government though. I imagine that would be a much shorter lived conflict however.

The government is going to get overthrown from within. The opposition party has enough seats in congress to toss out the president. That's not going to save the country though. Venezuela is essentially a banana republic, just in their case the bananas are oil. They have exactly one major export and there's an oil glut. They're in hock up to their eyeballs and the one thing they have to sell is not worth enough at the moment to get them out of it. So they borrowed heavily against the oil futures and now are pumping their brains out just to meet those debts, they're not bringing any money in. Until the price goes WAY up they're hosed no matter who is in power. Somebody (read USA or China) would need to step in and prop them up for an entire decade in exchange for billions of barrels of oil in the distant future or in another year or two Venezuela is going to make Soylent Green look like a Utopian wonderland. That country is fucked beyond belief.

 

[Genx87]

Many of those were under world-wide economic sanctions. You leave off the more socialistic countries that are doing well (almost anything in Scandinavia). And finally you give one example of where I think we should be putting our emphasis (China which is socialistic but converting much of the way to capitalism).

Yes, socialism has done very poorly in some cases. It has done fairly well in others. What we should be doing is trying to get the best of capitalism into the socialistic countries and vise-versa.

I think it is a mistake to label the Scandinavian countries as socialist. It misleads what socialism does to people. Scandinavian countries are most definitely mixed economies. They have a social safety net backed up\funded by some of the most free and capitalist markets on the planet. That is why I cringe when Sanders points to Denmark as a model for America. I dont believe for a second he is looking to give up govt control. But he fools people into believing Europe is socialist. I think he is looking for our economic model to be more like a nightmare we saw in the eastern bloc. Closed isolationist economies, price controls, and heavy regulation\govt control\ownership.

https://fee.org/articles/the-myth-of-scandinavian-socialism/

And I think it is also important to note that China has seen a rise in standards of living and created a massive middle class once they gave up the socialist model embraced by VZ. And embraced open markets and capitalism.

 

[glenn1]

I think it is a mistake to label the Scandinavian countries as socialist. It misleads what socialism does to people. Scandinavian countries are most definitely mixed economies. They have a social safety net backed up\funded by some of the most free and capitalist markets on the planet. That is why I cringe when Sanders points to Denmark as a model for America. I dont believe for a second he is looking to give up govt control. But he fools people into believing Europe is socialist. I think he is looking for our economic model to be more like a nightmare we saw in the eastern bloc. Closed isolationist economies, price controls, and heavy regulation\govt control\ownership.

https://fee.org/articles/the-myth-of-scandinavian-socialism/

And I think it is also important to note that China has seen a rise in standards of living and created a massive middle class once they gave up the socialist model embraced by VZ. And embraced open markets and capitalism.

Sanders just seems to support what Democrats generally do but in a more distilled form - high taxes on the 'rich' to support transfer payments to the lower class, with the primary beneficiary being the Mandarin class of government employees and "knowledge workers" who make in the 100-250k range. If you're an average middle class person working in the suburbs and making $50k at best he treats you with benign neglect, at worst you're a piggybank to fund his schemes.

 

[Genx87]

Sanders just seems to support what Democrats generally do but in a more distilled form.

To be honest. I think most democrats are for open markets and capitalism. I mean look at all the capitalist billionaires that call themselves Democrats? Hillary was for TPP before she was forced to be against it. But I think once she wins in Nov will be for it again.It shows she understands international trade is a requirement to advance our economy.

Now going forward I have to admit the support Sanders recieved scares me. On the other side Trump has embraced some of Sanders idea bout economic isolation\nationalism. And he is the GOP pick for president. That is fucking scary.

 

[dullard]

On the other side Trump has embraced some of Sanders idea bout economic isolation\nationalism. And he is the GOP pick for president. That is fucking scary.

Trump WAS against free trade and was preaching economic isolation\nationalism. That is until yesterday: http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-trade/2016/08/trump-admits-some-benefits-to-trade-215773

 

[dullard]

I think it is a mistake to label the Scandinavian countries as socialist. It misleads what socialism does to people. Scandinavian countries are most definitely mixed economies. They have a social safety net backed up\funded by some of the most free and capitalist markets on the planet. That is why I cringe when Sanders points to Denmark as a model for America. I dont believe for a second he is looking to give up govt control. But he fools people into believing Europe is socialist. I think he is looking for our economic model to be more like a nightmare we saw in the eastern bloc. Closed isolationist economies, price controls, and heavy regulation\govt control\ownership.

https://fee.org/articles/the-myth-of-scandinavian-socialism/

And I think it is also important to note that China has seen a rise in standards of living and created a massive middle class once they gave up the socialist model embraced by VZ. And embraced open markets and capitalism.

I'm basically stating that the mixed models are working pretty well at the moment. So a blind "socialism is bad, capitalism is good" mindset is misleading at best and very dangerous at worst. The true discussion should be about how to best mix them. In my opinion the best mix is mostly capitalism with some socialism mixed in (when capitalism is dangerous or leads to expensive redundancies and natural monopolies), but pure capitalism is usually not as good as a decent mix.

 

[R0H1T]

Trump WAS against free trade and was preaching economic isolation\nationalism. That is until yesterday: http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-trade/2016/08/trump-admits-some-benefits-to-trade-215773

Sorry to butt in but he's still against free trade, start listening in from 2:17 ~
Watch the entire Donald Trump interview here

 

[glenn1]

I'm basically stating that the mixed models are working pretty well at the moment. So a blind "socialism is bad, capitalism is good" mindset is misleading at best and very dangerous at worst. The true discussion should be about how to best mix them. In my opinion the best mix is mostly capitalism with some socialism mixed in (when capitalism is dangerous or leads to expensive redundancies and natural monopolies), but pure capitalism is usually not as good as a decent mix.

To me 'capitalism vs. socialism' is a red herring. The more pertinent question is whether you think the proper role of government is to benefit all citizens relatively equally (yes, I know truly equal treatment is impossible), or whether it exists to "help the little guy" and rein in the upper class (whether called bourgeoisi, capitalist oppressors, colonialists, etc.) because they "cheat" the lower class.

 

[fskimospy]

I think it is a mistake to label the Scandinavian countries as socialist. It misleads what socialism does to people. Scandinavian countries are most definitely mixed economies. They have a social safety net backed up\funded by some of the most free and capitalist markets on the planet. That is why I cringe when Sanders points to Denmark as a model for America. I dont believe for a second he is looking to give up govt control. But he fools people into believing Europe is socialist. I think he is looking for our economic model to be more like a nightmare we saw in the eastern bloc. Closed isolationist economies, price controls, and heavy regulation\govt control\ownership.

https://fee.org/articles/the-myth-of-scandinavian-socialism/

And I think it is also important to note that China has seen a rise in standards of living and created a massive middle class once they gave up the socialist model embraced by VZ. And embraced open markets and capitalism.

That piece tries to say that Scandanavian countries aren't socialist by taking an extremely, extremely narrow definition of socialism. Basically they are saying that even though government expenditures are nearly 60% of GDP in Denmark this isn't socialism because they don't have a minimum wage and protectionist trade policies. Denmark isn't communist or eastern european socialism and of course socialism is a continuum, but it is absolutely heavily socialist by the common usage of the word. It just seems like a very misleading piece that's going out of its way to avoid praising socialism.

 

[dullard]

To me 'capitalism vs. socialism' is a red herring. The more pertinent question is whether you think the proper role of government is to benefit all citizens relatively equally (yes, I know truly equal treatment is impossible), or whether it exists to "help the little guy" and rein in the upper class (whether called bourgeoisi, capitalist oppressors, colonialists, etc.) because they "cheat" the lower class.

Even that is a bit of a different topic. Equal treatment is a communism topic, not socialism.

 

[agent00f]

Norway has the world's largest sovereign wealth fund (SWF) with close to US$1 trillion dollars under management. If it were not for unapologetic Wall Street banksterism there's no way that Norway would be able to sustain its welfare state given the decline of oil revenues. If you're proposing that the USA should reduce our debt to zero and then create a sovereign wealth fund to finance things like national health and etc. then sign me up. But absent the offshore capitalism that sustains Norway's SWF they'd be Venezuela.

Norway is a significantly wealthier country than Venez, and can afford to invest in citizens in a way that the latter can't. People forget that Chavez (and many of these left-revolutionaries) came to power on the backs of people who had little to lose.

I mean, even glenn1 gets it; maybe he can help explain it in terms you can understand.

I think it is a mistake to label the Scandinavian countries as socialist. It misleads what socialism does to people. Scandinavian countries are most definitely mixed economies. They have a social safety net backed up\funded by some of the most free and capitalist markets on the planet. That is why I cringe when Sanders points to Denmark as a model for America. I dont believe for a second he is looking to give up govt control. But he fools people into believing Europe is socialist. I think he is looking for our economic model to be more like a nightmare we saw in the eastern bloc. Closed isolationist economies, price controls, and heavy regulation\govt control\ownership.

https://fee.org/articles/the-myth-of-scandinavian-socialism/

And I think it is also important to note that China has seen a rise in standards of living and created a massive middle class once they gave up the socialist model embraced by VZ. And embraced open markets and capitalism.

By the classic definition of stakeholder ownership/control of resources, scandinavian countries are much more socialist than "socialist" countries. Unfortunately most folks using the word never bother to look up what it means. Orwell actually wrote a whole book about this, and most people these days think it's a funny story about animals. In practice, most socialist countries are run more like a capitalist corp; the institution owns/controls everything, peons get paid a relatively stable set wage and decisions come down from the top.