Despite this meltdown and the widely ridiculed reelection of Maduro, the military remains loyal to Maduro and it has been reinforced by Cuban intelligence and military advisers. In exchange, Maduro’s government has been buying oil from foreign sources to give to Cuba — an absurd position for not only one of the world’s leading oil nations but a nation that is starving its own people.
“Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy.”
Winston Churchill
Hugo Chavez was smart. He allowed the military leaders to acquire control over a large amount of the business activity so they would stay behind him.
Oh by the way, how are things going in Nicaragua?
I gather bettykath, billmcwilliams, and Chris P. Bacon, and isaaccannuckmotormouth can tell us without any reportage or study.
IB
The 30 million dollars spent by our government to try and overthrow the government of Nicaragua was a failure.
There is no $30 million outside of your imagination. The current Nicaraguan government is the issue of massive vote fraud and the current President can count his brother among the opposition.
I am neither an economist nor a theologian, but isn’t it true that what we see today in South America is a result of the Liberation Theology of the 1960’s, based on the false premise that Christ preached a political agenda?
Not really. Latin America has lagged economically for some time. That’s not attributable to a theological discourse which appeared 50 years ago and was never modal in the Church
Species of Christian Democracy have never had much public appeal, much less Marxisant Catholic social teaching of the sort JP II was attempting to quell 30 years ago. The Chilean Christian Democratic Party was taken over by a crew of Marxisants for a brief period around 1970, but otherwise, vigorous organizations which claim the mantle of Christian Democracy tend to be center-to-right parties.
in Latin America.
Thank you.
Praise the Lard and pass the ammunition. Praise the Lard on Sunday and on Monday eat Crisco.
No. It isn’t true. This problem predates liberation theology by 60 years.
This dates back to the Banana wars that started in 1895 because the U. S. decided backing United Fruit Compamy was more important than national security. The most decorated veteran in that war, Smedley Butler, denounced his role in the war and his country’s involvement in his book “War is a Racket.”
You don’t know what you’re talking about. At all.
Pick up a history book. Sandino and the Sandinistas predate liberation theology.
I don’t give a rip about liberation theology. Central America’s problems are not an artifact of the United Fruit Company (which was not yet incorporated in 1895 and which constructed useful public works for Guatemala) or of American diplomatic initiatives ca. 1916, or of the American expeditionary force in Nicaragua ca. 1927. Central America’s problems are their own doing, which is something many among their domestic chatterati would prefer to not acknowledge. Our lumpenintelligentsia in this country peddles this cr!p in fora like this because they have emotional commitments but know nothing.
Those poor people. Why do any countries still experiment with Socialism? It always ends in death. It’s an unfair system. How in the world could openly Socialist politicians win any elections, at the smallest municipal level, in the United States? How could any academic promote such a system?
I am so sorry for what these people suffer. So many children have needlessly died. I can’t stand it. Can’t we please air drop them some food and medicine? These Socialist monsters in power are content to let their people die.
“Why do any countries still experiment with Socialism? It always ends in death.”
The leaders use socialism as a hook to gain power. After all, in socialism someone has to divide the spoils and why not the dictator and those that help keep him in power. Add to that spoiled politically naive people like Ocasio-Cortez who help convince people by offering free income, free tuition, free healthcare etc. In the end, the ones that pay for it are the people themselves while the leadership always pockets large sums of money. Eventually, all systems start to fail and we end up with a Venezuela where the dictator and the army rule.
But the Socialist leaders wouldn’t starve and die. That’s why I go nuts watching that child in NY thinking she has found Socialism and whoopee our prayers are answered! Saw her recently claiming $700B given to military they didn’t ask for. President Trump promised increases in military and has delivered. We have many planes and helicopters flying with faulty wiring. They shouldn’t have to ask.
It’s ironic that Democratic Socialists claim that the rich got their wealth and success by somehow taking it from the poor. They got better by making someone worse. Socialism does exactly that. It takes property from the citizens, making everyone equally poor. It takes farms away and everyone has to stand in line for stale bread. The only people doing well are those with government connections. They literally do get rich by taking wealth away from other people.
Even though this seems what the UN is for, any money sent to coordinate aid for Venezuela wouldn’t get there. An American would say load a plane (much like President Trump did after hurricanes tragedies). All countries could fill a one planne each. When the rulers of a country are killing their own through starvation the rest of the world cannot stand by and do nothing.
Venezuela has refused to accept aid. That is probably lucky, since it is so corrupt it would not end up in the hands of the people who need it. It would be even worse than Puerto Rico.
I think we should fly over and air drop it ourselves, plastered with stickers that says, “brought to you courtesy of Free, Capitalist US of America.” If we sneak food in, we can feed them now, but if they continue to vote this way, their troubles will only continue. I believe they are past the point where they are really allowed to vote, however, without fraud keeping the dictator in place. Throughout history, people really have clamored for their own demise.
I can’t stop worrying about that gaunt boy who was giving his food to his little brother. He could not have survived long. He is an example of what a good person should do, take care of the weak, and he might be gone because no one helped him. Even if we don’t get involved militarily, I don’t think we should stand by and watch millions of people die. It’s mass murder via Socialism. Again.
Are you referring to countries in Europe and Scandinavia?
The ratio of government spending to GDP has been declining for 25 years in Scandinavia – quite consistently in Sweden and more fitfully in the other states.
https://fee.org/articles/the-myth-of-scandinavian-socialism/
There is also no minimum wage in Scandinavia. They practice school choice, in which the government provides parents with a voucher to take to schools, which are private, many of them for-profit.
“Sanders has convinced a great deal of people that socialism is something it is not, and he has used the Scandinavian countries to prove its efficacy while ignoring the many ways they deviate, sometimes dramatically, from what Sanders himself advocates.”
The World Bank publishes an Ease-of-Doing-Business-Index, a measure of regulatory red tape and other impediments. The Scandinavian countries rank 3d, 8th, 10th, 13th, and 23d out of 190 countries ranked. The United States and Britain rank 6th and 7th. Okupiers don’t realize that Scandinavian ‘socialism’ consists of collective purchasing and income transfers, and that the share of domestic product allocated this way has been on a downward trajectory for nearly a generation. (In fairness, Irving Howe and his confederates understood what the particulars of the Scandinavian system were when they were promoting it a generation ago).
What is always telling on this blog is how quickly some jump on the ‘socialist as the root of all evil’ routine. Every country is a combination of socialism and free enterprise, local and central government, subsidization and pay at the pump, and of course corruption and accountability. The determining factors for success are not understood by pointing to one aspect, typically the polar opposite of one’s beliefs.
Venezuela is plagued by a number of issues; socialism is not one of the core problems. Just as an oligarchy like the United States can function well, regardless of how representative its government, a democracy like Venezuela can function not that well. The US has a healthy and diverse economy that includes adequate financing, competition as well as government controls, and 350+/-million consumers and producers. The structure of the government of the US could be as oppressive as that of Venezuela given harsher circumstances.
Venezuela’s is a centralized authoritarian government with little diversity in the economy which leads to imbalance. Socialism has little to do with it. Venezuela could easily be an outright dictatorship and be doing worse, better, or the same. In the end it is the disconnect between the will of the people and the government, socialist, dictatorship, oligarchy, or whatever.
Isaac:
“Every country is a combination of socialism and free enterprise”. Such arguments are used to promote industrialized Socialism, which truly is one of the worst abuser of human rights. You are equating the tinkering around with nanny state social welfare programs and true government Socialism.
What do you mean Socialism has little to do with it? Socialism is what ruined the economy. In democratic Capitalism, you have an idea for a good or service, and you sell it. If the price is right and there is a demand, people buy it. No one is taken advantage of. Individual rights protect against abuse. In Socialism, you are given, as a gift, the same money whether you work or not. You cannot get ahead. Nothing you do will garner you more food or a better life for your family. It is a nihilistic experience.
Socialism cannot exist without a dictatorship of the government. Otherwise, how else could you punish and prevent people from their natural inclination towards Capitalism? If you have a flock of hens, you naturally want to sell the extra eggs to your neighbors. Evil capitalism. A mother might take in neighbor children to make some extra babysitting money. Capitalism. Mow yards for pocket money? Capitalism. A government requires the power to preside over the most menial of its citizens’ activities. And since this is ultimately unfair, it also has to restrict speech. You cannot have citizens complaining, or the system would collapse.
We have done this experiment enough. How many people have to die before everyone will learn?
You can GOOGLE “How Socialism Destroyed Venezuela” and find 339,000 hits. Locate a source you are comfortable with.
In the meantime:
https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/how-socialism-has-destroyed-venezuela
“The productive sector has been decimated after hundreds of nationalisations and expropriations” (This is literally a requirement of Socialism. Would you see our entire nation lose their businesses by force of government? Have every shop close?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCIdm3cM6zQ
In addition, read how Scandinavia backed away from Socialism.
Compare Mexico to the United States. Both countries are bounded by 2 oceans. Both countries have large amounts of natural resources including oil. Both areas were populated in approximately the same time period under similar conditions.
Why does Mexico do so poorly compared to the United States?
As time went on, Mexican crooks realized they could send dope here. And they make more money than their government.
The economic historians at the Maddison Project have some revised figures in their latest release. Their current assessment has it that the ratio of Mexican per capita product to American per capita product has been as follows:
1650: 0.985
1720: 0.835
1775: 0.576
1800: 0.497
1811: 0.364
1820: 0.365
1850: 0.281
1860: 0.203
1870: 0.211
1890: 0.228
1895: 0.238
1910: 0.222
1920: 0.235
1929: 0.173
1933: 0.215
1941: 0.160
1947: 0.169
1970: 0.259
1991: 0.273
2009: 0.278
2016: 0.298
If the Maddison Project is right, the relative position of Mexico went downhill with scat respite for 200 years and has now slowly crept upward for 70-odd years.
You got the numbers, but the important thing is why?
Could British colonies have done better than Spanish colonies?
Could the idea behind the rule of law been different enough to make a difference?
Geography has helped America which is one factor in its favor but that only could account for part of the difference.
Some differences would be the course of institutional development, features of the agrarian system, and features of the social system which inhibited the spread of literacy and (by extension) technological improvements. Retrospectively, you can see that by 1940 you had developed a settled political order which had developmentalist goals, so at least you had certain efforts at social mobilization that had been on a smaller scale and more haphazardly pursued and you also had less in the way of regime uncertainty and the inhibiting effects it has on private investment.
The question is what created the social system and additionally the political system? Do those things represent the significant differences outside of geography?
The social system is not an artifacts. Elements of the political order can be. I’m not seeing the point of the question.
“I’m not seeing the point of the question.”
We have two nations in a similar geographic area. Though the geography of America is a lot better what made it advance at such a higher level? One could say the social and political system is a defining difference which I think in great part is true. Mexico was a colony of Spain. America was a colony of Britain and perhaps that is part of the defining difference. Many of our ideas regarding the rule of law and our political economy originate from Britain.
The Constitution.
That’s the difference. A system of government set up to protect individual liberty and another that…was not. Similar colonial beginnings. Similar resources. Good climate for farming.
Karen, they could have copied our constitution word-for-word in 1821 and it would have made scant difference. Social relations between political actors and between the political class and the broad public did not make for a political order like that in colonial Massachusetts or colonial South Carolina.
https://www.libertarianism.org/publications/essays/myths-nanny-state
“In a recent paper published in the journal Public Choice, “Afraid to be Free: Dependency as Desideratum,” Nobel Prize–winning economist James Buchanan composes a new taxonomy of socialist threats to liberty. Buchanan argues that the conventional threats to freedom from managerial socialism (central planning) and distributionist socialism (the welfare state) are today joined by paternalistic socialism and “parental socialism,” which Buchanan describes as the willingness among many to allow the government to take control of their lives.
The emerging threat to American liberty today, then, is a combination of these latter two forms of socialism—the desire among some in government to interfere in nearly every aspect of our lives, and the lack of concern on the part of many Americans that this is happening.”
Socialism, whether paternal or industrialized, does not treat individuals as autonomous. Rather, they all must be cared for. Decisions must be made for them. They don’t have the same property rights. They are not allowed to become successful. Eventually, will these imbeciles even be trusted to vote? They cannot, after all, be trusted to make any other decisions for themselves…
The Venezuelan government (currently presided over by a labor meathead previously employed as a bus driver) makes every policy error in the book over a period of nearly 20 years (and scads of policy errors over the 25 years preceding) and four partisan Democrats who don’t know economics or business from tiddlywinks chime in here to assure us this is all a nefarious plot by the military-industrial complex in Washington. Every time a street-level Democrat opens his mouth in this forum, he provides evidence that street-level Democrats shouldn’t be left in charge of anything more consequential than a Chia pet.
That;s what happens to a country that defies the US of A.
BK
You are exactly right. I guarantee that if Venezuela were to hand over their oil supply to U.S. companies, every citizen there would get a steak dinner! Courtesy of DJT and JT too!
That’s what Palin did in Alaska. All oil dollars to the State are passed on to the citizens. It’s their State, the Oil belongs to them.
That was in place long before Palin. It goes back to 1976. The amount each resident gets is about $2000 */-
Can you explain why the red haze governments in Ecuador and Bolivia aren’t suffering these sorts of embarrassments?
Maybe they’re smarter and use oil money for the good of the State and it’s citizens.
The President of Ecuador was an economist. The President of Bolivia was in agribusiness. Both men were rude characters, but they had the economic and professional background which inhibited them from doing grossly destructive things. Chavez and Maduro did not. One wag described the difference between Chavez and Maduro as follows: the former had a better situation with oil markets and more savvy, so he could do the long con; Maduro was reduced to the ‘winner, winner, chicken dinner’ short con.” “Ere he was reduced to brute force, that is.
Why don’t you give your Medicare and Social Security back to the people of Venezuela?
Bettykath:
Please explain how Venezuela could nationalize so much of the production of the country, destroy individual rights and liberty, take farms away from the families running them, make every policy mistake possible, and plow its economy into the ground, and it’s the US’s fault.
Would you see every shop in the United States close? Every family farm be taken by the government? All those boutique organic or biodynamic farms appropriated and replaced with Monsanto GMO government-run factory farms? The level of dictatorship that it would take to outlaw Capitalism is grim.
I have a friend from Moldova. She said her father ran a small black market Capitalist business or order for his family to have more to eat and warmer clothes in winter. They were terrified their neighbors would find out and report them. Imagine that world, bettykath, where you might live in real fear that your neighbor might find out you were running a small business so your family could eat.
When will people learn? Will our own country fall to Socialism like so many have before, to their sorrow? How many have to die before we figure this out? The human rights abuses, pollution, death, starvation… Enough already.
The United States is unique. We have the most robust free speech, and indeed individual liberty in the world. There are plenty of other paradigms out there. Why make the US like everywhere else, which funnels massive migration routes here of people escaping? Once the unique freedoms of the United States is destroyed, you can’t get it back. Our wealth pays the freight on global environmental, aid, and peacekeeping missions. Without us, it all collapses.
There are plenty of Socialist or Communist utopias where you could immigrate if you truly dislike Capitalism. If voters destroy American freedoms, then who will once again step up to the rescue when Socialism turns into Fascism, Nazism, or some other outward expanding murderous regime? There are plenty of other types of dictatorships that also seek world domination. Destroy this country and you break the shield. The rest of the West is already slowly falling on its sword.
The United States is not unique except in the sense any country is.
You cannot find the same level of free speech protections anywhere else in the world, including the West.
Tough to say, because the ‘human rights lobby’ are a claque of frauds who support ‘hate speech’ laws and the like. No one else is producing widely disseminated indices.
No, it’s what happens when the effects of a badly-managed economy can no longer be masked.
$100+ price per bbl. of oil will cover a “multitude of sins” in mismanaging an economy.
And oil prices can move down as well as up.
Despite plenty of historical evidence, the Chavess-Maduro regime seemed unaware of that.
Comment was in response to BettyKath’s statement that “defying the U.S.”is the cause of Venezuela’s economic woes.
Mister Trump: Build Up That Wall! And don’t sell coffee along the border. And send any so called “refugee” right back across the border or out to sea on a barge. And do not listen to those who tell you that sanctuary cities are fine. Fine sanctuary cites.
Maybe the DNC will want to hold their next convention in Caracas.
Hey buddy, can you spare a dime!
Any comments from Sean Penn?
Add:
Directors Michael Moore and Oliver Stone as well as actor Danny Glover who also made it a virtual mission to hold up Chavez and the socialist changes in Venezuela of the so-called Bolivarian Revolution. U.S. writers and lawmakers joined the Chavista parade of admirers. Rep. Gregory Meeks, a New York Democrat, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson.
Oliver Stone’s brilliant insights have included the thesis that the military-industrial complex took down John Kennedy by subcontracting the job to a claque of French Quarter homosexuals. His ‘mind’, such as it is, works the same way as bettykath’s and Bill McWilliams’.
Thanks for the complement. Maybe one day your brain will produce a thought worth the effort.
bill mcwilliams – I am not trying to pick on you, however, the spelling today has gone to hell in a handbasket. 😉
Many years ago Ally Sheedy gave an amiable interview to David Letterman. The subject turned to Sean Penn, with whom she’d co-starred at one time. She smiles and giggles, and says Sean’s a great guy; he just has these odd episodes where he punches people in the face.
There use to be an old saying in Venezuela when times were good “dame dos” — “I’ll take two.”
A measles outbreak in ailing Venezuela is threatening Colombia and Brazil
Oil rich and once exceedingly wealthy, Venezuela used to have a medical system that was the envy of the region. And under late President Hugo Chávez, the country prided itself on providing healthcare to the neediest.
But the nation’s deep economic crisis, combined with a mass desertion by doctors and widespread corruption, have devastated the medical establishment.
Venezuela is not and never was exceedingly wealthy. See Mark Falcoff in 1998 on the Venezuelan political culture. In the suites and in the streets, people were addled by the notion that wealth is a function of natural resource endowments when truly human capital properly deployed is king (and human capital and proper deployment was what they lacked).
I have a suspicion that for countries sitting atop natural resource bonanzas, the risk-averse strategy is to dump the revenues in a diversified sovereign wealth fund. Such a fund will throw off interest and dividends which provide an income stream for the government which can supplement tax revenue from customs, property assessments, sales (when you have a sufficient information base) and incomes (again, when your information base is sufficient).. That aside, build and develop along conventional lines with conventional tools. The resource curse is real, and the history of Venezuela demonstrates that.
“In the suites and in the streets, people were addled by the notion that wealth is a function of natural resource endowments when truly human capital properly deployed is king (and human capital and proper deployment was what they lacked).”
People should take a hard look at Singapore.
Venezuela actually had a great many doctors and medical personnel from Cuba, in return for which they shipped large quantities of oil to Cuba. Without Cuba, their healthcare would not nearly have been what it was.
We economically strangle a country that possesses a single major source of income – oil – by denying it world credit and pressuring others to do the same, and then gloat when that country suffers. Let us hope that the dollar doesn’t meet the fate of the Bolivar one of these days when all the war bills come due.
How many of those who comment on Venezuela have lived and breathed that culture and understand its politics, v. how many are political hacks who align with US corporate propaganda in explaining the economics of an area that has been attacked, oppressed and exploited by Europe and the US for centuries?
Tell us, Chris, how long you have lived in Venezuela? Then we can discuss the culture and the people and why one of the richest countries is down the tubes with starving people. You can lead the discussion and explain where all the money went. Alongside that discussion, you can then tell us how starvation is preferable to obesity.
Allen ‘Teddy’ Calderon immigrated from Venezuela as a teenager to the U.S. & he became the high school class president. Teddy would like to meet you in a dark ally way on cold rainy foggy night to sort out your concerns about Venezuela. By the way Teddy is indigenous, an Indian.
One of us for sure. Venezuela has no refineries. It’s oil is exported and exchanged for finished product.. Nothing to stop them having refineries but they didn’t Among other customers a foreign flag company brings oil to Puerto Rico which has two refineries on it’s south coast. The same company that is behind the importer of oil then brings the finished products to the USA where it’s marketed by Hess. among others.
One buyer is the US military where product is hauled to Panama to the single US Navy fueling pier on the south or Pacific side, to Guantanamo, to Key West and other Navy or other military ports on the Atlantic coast; The other port of call for loading is Houston. Hess makes JP4 0r grade Four kerosene and it goes to air fields up and down the Atlantic coast on up to Grade eight and nine.
Same shell game goes on in the Med where the Greek refinery just west of Athens loads cargo that goes either to Turkey or even Israel after a stop in Crete.
Another major customer is Cuba whose major export and transit products are sugar and drugs. Venezuela is also a major drug transshipment point.
So all you armchair experts and young Miss I’m not an expert in …. most everything especally economics except State Economics aka Fascist Economics Comrade Ocasio explain how an oil rich nation ,and it’s filthy rich, can get into this situation when they can so easily get out of it by switching to market capitalism. Take some doing all the importers fo the worlds food trade packed up and left. .
National Socialism attempting to be International Socialism and 100% a military socialist dictatorship is what happened. Just like everywhere else it’s been tried and failed The same starting mantra. Free this and free that and free free free with the ruling class of the Communist or otherwise socialist party skimming off the top to accounts in Caymans, Bahamas and Panama.
Their answer. It’s Trump’s Fault. Their solution? Do the same thing in the USA.
Now start up your phony names and pre programmed Collective machinery and pretend to be Democratic in a country that is not a Democracy.
Meanwhile we supporters of OUR Constitutional Republic, of, by and for the citizens, will continue to call for your destruction and ejection. Your ruling class has gotten rich enough off the backs of the working class you rejected.
I think but am not sure Hess is not buying crude from their anymore but gets it from the USA or Mexico. We are also refining for Mexico now and Canada oil which is then exported on to other customers .
So do we really care about mideast oil anymore? Not if we build two or three more refineries. Then we can make enough finished product to sell to Europe. Except for Germany which decided to buy from Russia and them have us pay to protect them from…. Russia.
:Latest unconfirmed rumour in Mexico is ARCO is going to build or rebuild refineries and Mexico of course is looking to export trained, experienced technical workers to take care of our infrastructure rebuild given our shortage of employables.
It’s OK to have a social conscience but it’s pi** poor excuse for an economic system unless you want to end up with a one party ruling class and like Venezuela.
What to do down there. All successful revolutions have an outside supporter. Cuba had Russia for example. Turn the problem over to the Boys From Bragg. Then get out of the way.
It takes less efforts to rock your arm chair.
How did you ever get the idea that you were knowledgeable enough and perspicacious enough to instruct anyone about anything?
“how many are political hacks who align with US corporate propaganda in explaining the economics of an area that has been attacked, oppressed and exploited by Europe and the US for centuries?”
The spastic person for sure.
You’re butt-hurt that people keep pointing out that you fancy yourself knowledgeable when your head is filled with lint hoovered up from kook websites.
You don’t know what you’re talking about.
Here are the current sanctions contra Venezuela.
https://www.state.gov/e/eb/tfs/spi/venezuela/
There were NO sanction of any kind prior to March 2015 and none with any economic dimension prior to August of 2017. The current sanctions prevent American citizens from purchasing certain bond issues.
2.000,000 Bolivars is still about $1 USD.
PC Schulte,…
As you can see from the comnents above,the U.S. is responsible for the hyper-inflation and most of the other
ills in Venezuala.
I hope your tongue was planted firmly in your cheek. Most of that happened during the progressives administration.
Yeah, but if you say it often enough, and loudly enough, it becomes true.
Michael Aarethun – if Tom Nash said it, he is choking on that tongue. 😉