Venezuela's president admits economy has failed

[DrZoidberg]

What happened in Venezuela happened after Chavez was dead.

Nothing he did was the cause of it.

The people that he picked to carry on his work instead reverted to pure theft and corruption.

Nothing but run-of-the-mill corruption.

Like you see in capitalist Mexico and capitalist Haiti and capitalist Guatemala.

WTF?!? Ehe... no. Chavez is the problem here. He created an economy completey based around high oil prices. He put all his eggs in one basket. Then the world economy dropped the basket and broke his eggs. That's the problem. It's all Chavez's fault.

A strength with the economic liberal model is that it's very robust, quick to change and needs nobody smart to direct it. When the oil price tanked they were fucked. Completely locked in a system that could not deal with the problem.

 

[untermensche]

What happened in Venezuela happened after Chavez was dead.

Nothing he did was the cause of it.

The people that he picked to carry on his work instead reverted to pure theft and corruption.

Nothing but run-of-the-mill corruption.

Like you see in capitalist Mexico and capitalist Haiti and capitalist Guatemala.

WTF?!? Ehe... no. Chavez is the problem here. He created an economy completey based around high oil prices.....

Do you know what Venezuela was before Chavez took over?

It was a capitalist apartheid state, like South Africa.

Chavez had to fight against the US and against Venezuelan capitalists that wanted to maintain that system of oppression.

 

[dismal]

Don't nationalize various industry sectors, don't appropriate hundreds of businesses, don't send troops into the street to control prices, don't fix prices on various goods, and don't impose a monopoly on foreign exchange.

Also, stop printing so much money.

These are the dramatic events that trashed their economy. Stop doing them.

A decline in oil prices is not the problem. Oil prices are 3.5X what they were when Chavez took over. The reasonable question would be why the increase in oil prices since then hasn't resulted in burgeoning national wealth. The answer is they destroyed the economy's productive capacity.

Think of it like this: If you're beating yourself on the head with a hammer, the solution is stop beating yourself on the head with a hammer.

Continuing your analogy, now you have a gaping head wound. Will simply stopping the beating heal the wound? No. For that you need a specific course of treatment. Don asked (basically), "so Dr. dismal, what do you think should be done to treat this massive head trauma?"

Your answer is "stop having head trauma!"

If they stop doing those things many of their problems will instantly go away. 1 million percent inflation, for example. Stop printing money, poof, it's gone. Stop fixing prices, poof fixed prices are gone. Stop fixing exchange rates, poof, fixed exchange rates are gone. These things will all help immediately. The challenge of restoring the nation's productive capacity is a tougher one.

Once you have destroyed the nation's incentive to produce through nationalizations and confiscations, it's hard to restore the people's faith that if they build something or do something they will benefit from it while the nationalizers and confiscators are still in power. But, hey, poof, Maduro swinging from a lamp post would help accelerate even that.

 

[DrZoidberg]

What happened in Venezuela happened after Chavez was dead.

Nothing he did was the cause of it.

The people that he picked to carry on his work instead reverted to pure theft and corruption.

Nothing but run-of-the-mill corruption.

Like you see in capitalist Mexico and capitalist Haiti and capitalist Guatemala.

WTF?!? Ehe... no. Chavez is the problem here. He created an economy completey based around high oil prices.....

Do you know what Venezuela was before Chavez took over?

It was a capitalist apartheid state, like South Africa.

Chavez had to fight against the US and against Venezuelan capitalists that wanted to maintain that system of oppression.

That's like saving somebody who is drowning by shooting them, and then saying "at least they didn't die by drowning".

I'd say Chavez solution to that problem was no solution at all. I agree that the fascist (in practice) government before Chavez had to go. But replacing it with just more tyranny isn't helping anyone.

The fascist government in Chile was toppled, and that turned out just fine. So it's clearly doable.

 

[dismal]

Do you know what Venezuela was before Chavez took over?

It was a capitalist apartheid state, like South Africa.

Chavez had to fight against the US and against Venezuelan capitalists that wanted to maintain that system of oppression.

That's like saving somebody who is drowning by shooting them, and then saying "at least they didn't die by drowning".

I'd say Chavez solution to that problem was no solution at all. I agree that the fascist (in practice) government before Chavez had to go. But replacing it with just more tyranny isn't helping anyone.

The fascist government in Chile was toppled, and that turned out just fine. So it's clearly doable.

China also provides an excellent example of what happens when a command and control government just gets ta fuck out of the way. GDP per capita from $250 to $9000 in a generation and all the government had to do was back off from trying to control everything.

 

[untermensche]

Do you know what Venezuela was before Chavez took over?

It was a capitalist apartheid state, like South Africa.

Chavez had to fight against the US and against Venezuelan capitalists that wanted to maintain that system of oppression.

That's like saving somebody who is drowning by shooting them, and then saying "at least they didn't die by drowning".

I'd say Chavez solution to that problem was no solution at all. I agree that the fascist (in practice) government before Chavez had to go. But replacing it with just more tyranny isn't helping anyone.

The fascist government in Chile was toppled, and that turned out just fine. So it's clearly doable.

China also provides an excellent example of what happens when a command and control government just gets ta fuck out of the way. GDP per capita from $250 to $9000 in a generation and all the government had to do was back off from trying to control everything.

The Chinese government is not "out of the way".

That is a delusion.

The US economy, in terms of the dynamic growing economy, not the investment economy which is a game, is a command economy.

It is mainly what arises from government spending through the "defense" economy.

The "military industrial complex" as Eisenhower called it.

The US economy rests on it.

- - - Updated - - -

Do you know what Venezuela was before Chavez took over?

It was a capitalist apartheid state, like South Africa.

Chavez had to fight against the US and against Venezuelan capitalists that wanted to maintain that system of oppression.

That's like saving somebody who is drowning by shooting them, and then saying "at least they didn't die by drowning".

I'd say Chavez solution to that problem was no solution at all. I agree that the fascist (in practice) government before Chavez had to go. But replacing it with just more tyranny isn't helping anyone.

The fascist government in Chile was toppled, and that turned out just fine. So it's clearly doable.

The collapse did not occur when Chavez had control.

To say it is his work is insanity.

The people that replaced him were as corrupt as the Venezuelan capitalists that ran an apartheid state for decades.

 

[Jarhyn]

A country having an abundance of oil is like playing Sim City with all the cheat codes on.

But if your economic system is stupid enough, you can still lose.

The problem with playing games with cheat codes like that is that it hides your utter incompetence right up until the cheat codes are disabled and your city falls apart because it was never really put together in the first place. Single resource wealth (as opposed to any kind of production based economy) will always turn a country into a collapsed shithole once that resource becomes obsolete, runs out, or gets devalued. It doesn't matter what economic system the country has.

 

[dismal]

A country having an abundance of oil is like playing Sim City with all the cheat codes on.

But if your economic system is stupid enough, you can still lose.

The problem with playing games with cheat codes like that is that it hides your utter incompetence right up until the cheat codes are disabled and your city falls apart because it was never really put together in the first place. Single resource wealth (as opposed to any kind of production based economy) will always turn a country into a collapsed shithole once that resource becomes obsolete, runs out, or gets devalued. It doesn't matter what economic system the country has.

Venezuela used to have industries like "farming" and "cement" and "beer brewing". Not so much anymore. As the predictable result of deliberate policy changes made by the Chavez/Maduro regime. The things that happened are exactly what the economic texts predict will happen when you fix prices too low, set exchange rates unrealistically, threaten and carry out nationalizations, and print craptons of currency to pay for things you can't produce enough to afford. It's bizarre to me that people cite dependence on oil as the problem when they pretty much destroyed the productive capacity of everything. Including oil.

 

[Horatio Parker]

Seems to me that 1) the Asian tigers have far more govt involvement in the economy than the US.

And 2) the US helped those economies greatly by opening our markets and investing. But then our aim was to save those countries from socialism.

Wrt Venezuela, we are very much getting in the way with the hope of making things worse.

 

[untermensche]

Seems to me that 1) the Asian tigers have far more govt involvement in the economy than the US.

And 2) the US helped those economies greatly by opening our markets and investing. But then our aim was to save those countries from socialism.

Wrt Venezuela, we are very much getting in the way with the hope of making things worse.

The US never tried to save anybody from socialism.

They have continual tried, many times with insane violence, like in Vietnam and Cambodia, to incorporate the planet into a system the US dominates.

The US still has the most wealth.

It controls the capitalist system.

 

[Ford]

Don't nationalize various industry sectors, don't appropriate hundreds of businesses, don't send troops into the street to control prices, don't fix prices on various goods, and don't impose a monopoly on foreign exchange.

Also, stop printing so much money.

These are the dramatic events that trashed their economy. Stop doing them.

A decline in oil prices is not the problem. Oil prices are 3.5X what they were when Chavez took over. The reasonable question would be why the increase in oil prices since then hasn't resulted in burgeoning national wealth. The answer is they destroyed the economy's productive capacity.

Think of it like this: If you're beating yourself on the head with a hammer, the solution is stop beating yourself on the head with a hammer.

Continuing your analogy, now you have a gaping head wound. Will simply stopping the beating heal the wound? No. For that you need a specific course of treatment. Don asked (basically), "so Dr. dismal, what do you think should be done to treat this massive head trauma?"

Your answer is "stop having head trauma!"

If they stop doing those things many of their problems will instantly go away.

Instantly? I guess you think that if Trump gets Kim Jong Un to step down, North Korea would instantly be just like South Korea but with more statues?

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Person 1: I keep eating this cyanide and arsenic, and I keep feeling worse.
Person 2: Then stop eating them you dummy!
Person 1: So you say if I stop eating them I'll instantly get better?

 

[Alcoholic Actuary]

A country having an abundance of oil is like playing Sim City with all the cheat codes on.

But if your economic system is stupid enough, you can still lose.

The problem with playing games with cheat codes like that is that it hides your utter incompetence right up until the cheat codes are disabled and your city falls apart because it was never really put together in the first place. Single resource wealth (as opposed to any kind of production based economy) will always turn a country into a collapsed shithole once that resource becomes obsolete, runs out, or gets devalued. It doesn't matter what economic system the country has.

Venezuela used to have industries like "farming" and "cement" and "beer brewing". Not so much anymore. As the predictable result of deliberate policy changes made by the Chavez/Maduro regime. The things that happened are exactly what the economic texts predict will happen when you fix prices too low, set exchange rates unrealistically, threaten and carry out nationalizations, and print craptons of currency to pay for things you can't produce enough to afford. It's bizarre to me that people cite dependence on oil as the problem when they pretty much destroyed the productive capacity of everything. Including oil.

Could you please teach these 'lessons learned' to the current president of the US because he is dangerously close to doing the same thing.

aa

 

[Alcoholic Actuary]

The US still has the most wealth.

It controls the capitalist system.

Not for long, wait for it.

aa

 

[RVonse]

Venezuela's president admits economy has failed

CARACAS (AFP) -
Under-fire Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro admitted his economic model has "failed" in the wake of food and medicine shortages and public service paralysis, such as Tuesday's power failure that affected 80 percent of Caracas.

"The production models we've tried so far have failed and the responsibility is ours, mine and yours," Maduro told his ruling PSUV party congress, as Venezuela looks to tackle chronic inflation the International Monetary Fund predicted would reach one million percent this year.

"Enough with the whining... we need to produce with or without (outside) aggression, with or without blockades, we need to make Venezuela an economic power," he added late Monday, with the country grappling with a four-year long recession.

"No more whining, I want solutions comrades!"

The socialist government has over recent years nationalized various industry sectors such as cement and steel, expropriated hundreds of businesses, including supermarket chains, and lately brought in the army to control street markets to guard against rising prices.

It has also fixed prices on various goods and imposed a monopoly on foreign exchange.

http://www.france24.com/en/20180731-venezuelas-president-admits-economy-has-failed

Well, comrade, I've given it some thought and here's the solution that seems to work for what ails you:

Don't nationalize various industry sectors, don't appropriate hundreds of businesses, don't send troops into the street to control prices, don't fix prices on various goods, and don't impose a monopoly on foreign exchange.

Also, stop printing so much money.

Just get ta fuck out of the way.

The socialist government of Venezuela has been proven to be spectacularly incompetent at managing the economy in a system, socialism, which more than anything else relies on competent management.

So the possible forms of economies that have been tried in Venezuela over the last forty years have failed to find a solution to the problems of an economy that depends entirely on oil, 90% of its exports when the price of oil drops to one half of what it was before. Socialism wasn't able to do it and neither was the IMF and World Bank approved oligarchy whose failures to do the same produced the popular backlash that first elected the socialists.

What economic system do you, dismal, think could adapt to such a dramatic economic event?

Or is "just get ta fuck out of the way" all that you have?

Agreed. It wasn't the form of government so much as the lack of oil market. You have to have revenue in the first place to become prosperous.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Yeah, all those natural resources in Singapore are the rock-solid basis of its wealth.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

What happened in Venezuela happened after Chavez was dead.

Nothing he did was the cause of it.

The people that he picked to carry on his work instead reverted to pure theft and corruption.

Nothing but run-of-the-mill corruption.

Like you see in capitalist Mexico and capitalist Haiti and capitalist Guatemala.

WTF?!? Ehe... no. Chavez is the problem here. He created an economy completey based around high oil prices.....

Do you know what Venezuela was before Chavez took over?

It was a capitalist apartheid state, like South Africa.

Chavez had to fight against the US and against Venezuelan capitalists that wanted to maintain that system of oppression.

But all he did was tear down, not create. He took a far from ideal system and produced rubble.

- - - Updated - - -

China also provides an excellent example of what happens when a command and control government just gets ta fuck out of the way. GDP per capita from $250 to $9000 in a generation and all the government had to do was back off from trying to control everything.

The Chinese government is not "out of the way".

That is a delusion.

It's not completely out of the way but it is far more out of the way than it was before. When people actually got to keep the profits of their efforts said profits exploded.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Do you know what Venezuela was before Chavez took over?

It was a capitalist apartheid state, like South Africa.

Chavez had to fight against the US and against Venezuelan capitalists that wanted to maintain that system of oppression.

That's like saving somebody who is drowning by shooting them, and then saying "at least they didn't die by drowning".

I'd say Chavez solution to that problem was no solution at all. I agree that the fascist (in practice) government before Chavez had to go. But replacing it with just more tyranny isn't helping anyone.

The fascist government in Chile was toppled, and that turned out just fine. So it's clearly doable.

China also provides an excellent example of what happens when a command and control government just gets ta fuck out of the way. GDP per capita from $250 to $9000 in a generation and all the government had to do was back off from trying to control everything.

Yup. China did the same thing Venezuela did. Realized their mistake, and stopped doing all the dumb shit

 

[DrZoidberg]

The collapse did not occur when Chavez had control.

To say it is his work is insanity.

The people that replaced him were as corrupt as the Venezuelan capitalists that ran an apartheid state for decades.

I guess I'm insane then. The collapse occured when the price of oil went through the floor. If the price of oil would have collapsed when Huga Chavez was still alive then the economic failure of Venezuela would have happened then. The people after Chavez just kept doing what Chavez did. Chavez was not a good person. He was corrupt as fuck.

Chavez used oil to prop up his corrupt regime, in the same way Saudi Arabia is. Or Gaddafi in Libya. If you have a bag of free money you can get away with doing dumb shit. When somebody takes away your free money that dumbness is revealed. That's what happened to Venezuela and Chavez

 

[angelo]

Damn it. This wasn't real socialism. Venezuela needs maybe 100,000 more dead and then the unicorn will deliver utopia.

May the gods save the UK should this socialist imbecile prevail come next elections or sooner.