
Venezuelans Ransack Stores as Hunger Grips the Nation - randomname2
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/20/world/americas/venezuelans-ransack-stores-as-hunger-stalks-crumbling-nation.html
======
mc32
What an utter and complete disaster. More socialist government control is not
the answer to this unmitigated managerial disaster. They need to recognize
that they will have to let go of command and control of the economy and
private property and let the people who know how to run businesses run their
businesses. Further nationalization and confiscation will not improve things.

It's a country with enviable natural resources. It's not like they don't have
arable land or suffer from prolonged droughts and they did not suffer a civil
war recently but they do suffer from government hubris and an economic death
spiral. Complete national economic mismanagement.

One can only hope the country does not fundamentally collapse and people try
to escape at any cost. It's not like Brazil is economically up to absorbing
the exodus.

Of course, this will be blamed on the imperialist gringos and the failure of
their "socialist" policies will not be recognized.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Socialism is orthogonal to command and control economics, private property
rights, and corruption. There are just as many countries that do it right as
do it wrong (same with capitalism). Let's be honest with the root cause:
populism, corruption, resource curse, nepotism, military appeasement all play
a role in this much much more than socialism.

~~~
King-Aaron
There are many socialist aspects to our government here in Australia - public
healthcare, public schooling, etc. People who bang the 'socialism bad hur dur'
drum generally don't observe the working socialist policies already doing well
in society. As you said, corruption is the issue at play.

~~~
mc32
I think a few people misunderstand socialism in LatAm. In LatAm socialism
pretty much means businesses are American puppets, Americans are bad, being a
puppet is bad so let's redistribute business and industry to the people and
let the people run it. The professional class are bad (with the exception for
physicians who are expected to live like other poor people) and farmworkers
and laborers are the ultimate ideal (there is a terrible feudal-agrarian
mindset which permeates)

------
tuna-piano
Such a sad situation there. While traveling around latin America, especially
Panama and Mexico, I met many Venezuelans who had left to find new lives. The
stories they told of their families back in Venezuela were heartbreaking. It
seems many of those with means to leave have already left. This also helps
create a brain drain which further increases the problems there.

All of us in the developed world need to study and educate others on what the
policies in Venezuela have done (no, it wasn't the weather, the evil
corporations, oil prices or whatever other excuse of the week they claim). We
need to ensure other countries do not go down this route.

Especially concerning to me is the popular support of Chavez/Maduro and these
policies:

Jeremy Corbyn, Britain's Labour party leader tweeted: "Thanks Hugo Chavez for
showing that the poor matter and wealth can be shared. He made massive
contributions to Venezuela & a very wide world"(1)

In Spain, a political party gaining major support helped create the
disastorous policies in Venezuela (2)

Please, those of you who support these types of policies - educate yourself on
their effects. And take a look at the reverse, how well the average Chinese
person has done as their economy has gone from control to free enterprise (3).

People vote with their feet. How many Panamanians and Mexicans are emigrating
to Venezuela? How many people moved away from the special economic zones in
China? How many of the desperate poor in Florida take rafts to go to the
communist paradise of Cuba?

(1):
[https://twitter.com/jeremycorbyn/status/309065744954580992?l...](https://twitter.com/jeremycorbyn/status/309065744954580992?lang=en)

(2): [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/20/world/europe/venezuela-
cas...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/20/world/europe/venezuela-casts-a-long-
shadow-on-elections-in-spain.html?_r=0)

(3):
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_GDP_of_China](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_GDP_of_China)

~~~
droopyEyelids
Your post comes off as a ridiculous attempt to shape opinions. Just knowing
the CIA has spent decades trying to destablize the Venezualian government
_instantly_ makes me suspend my judegements of who can be blamed for their
current situation.

Yeah, it's _possible_ that chavez's attempts at socialist policy created this.
But having the intelligence agency of the most powerful nation in the world
spend decades trying to fuck up your government might _possibly_ have an
impact, too.

~~~
bpodgursky
Or maybe, the US doesn't want a new Zimbabwe in the backyard?

------
seibelj
You mean socialism didn't turn out to be a grand utopia where no one is poor
and the government efficiently distributes resources? I'm totally shocked!
Maybe they should nationalize a few more industries and throw more capitalists
in prison

~~~
xenadu02
Graft, corruption, and mismanagement will ruin any system: capitalism,
socialism, or communism (assuming we can even agree on the definitions of
those systems).

~~~
seibelj
Socialism requires that the government has more resources and thus more power.
Therefore socialist governments are more likely to become corrupted and
mismanaged.

~~~
pm90
How is this any different from capitalist oligarchies? In that case, the power
and resources are not aggregated in a single government, but split over many
private individuals.

~~~
cageface
It's a matter of degrees. At least in most capitalist countries the press, no
matter how emasculated, still functions as a check on corruption to some
degree.

Communist/socialist countries tend to control the press, and hush up exposés
of corruption, which makes it much worse.

~~~
lhopki01
Capitalism has nothing to do with freedom of the press.

~~~
ap3
Freedom of the press, along with trial by jury, is a quality of free (as in
speech) societies.

Free Market Capitalism would be another one.

------
johnnyg
This upsets me because it is such an unnecessary and predictable result. The
mentality and fiscal politics of a nation matter.

“The Chinese won’t sell to us,” said a taxi driver who watched the crowd haul
away all that was inside. “So we burn their stores instead.”

You'll eat tonight, but at the cost of the rest of the output of that store -
if you even got the food out before you burned it. While I suppose the time to
be philosophical is before the starving crowd gathers in front of the grain
store, this is still madness.

Further, the mentality and fiscal politics and a connected world matter.

In the US and all developed nations, our quantitative easing programs are an
abstracted, less violent but fiscally equivalent analog to burning a store or
selling the future for the present. The consequences of these choices will
also come to our door in time.

If they gave me the stick, I'd set interest rates at 3% and hold the line
through a recession or depression. Far better that then coming to the end of
the line, having no options and no way out.

~~~
wrong_variable
_In the US and all developed nations, our quantitative easing programs are an
abstracted, less violent but fiscally equivalent analog to burning a store or
selling the future for the present. The consequences of these choices will
also come to our door in time._

How come ?

------
iofj
This actually started over 2 months ago, and has been pretty common since:

(Apr 26) [http://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-
venezuela...](http://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-venezuela-
crisis-20160427-story.html)

(May 11) [https://panampost.com/sabrina-martin/2016/05/11/venezuela-
lo...](https://panampost.com/sabrina-martin/2016/05/11/venezuela-looting-
wounded-5000-supermarket/)

Now it is about essentially anything. Specific product shortages started long,
long ago:

(Nov 2015) [http://www.businessinsider.com.au/why-venezuela-is-
running-o...](http://www.businessinsider.com.au/why-venezuela-is-running-out-
of-toilet-paper-2015-11?r=UK&IR=T)

And for electronics it has been years. The cause is widely reported to be
price regulation.

~~~
WalterBright
The result of price regulation is invariably shortages and gluts.

------
z92
Price control kills the market. As happened in Venezuela. Not draught or low
oil price. But the article hasn't covered this point enough.

At high inflation rate and frozen price of commodities and food, traders are
forced to sell bellow cost. Which leads to business closure, leading to
shortage.

------
intrasight
A simple label like "socialism" is inadequate to explain what is going on in
Venezuela or in any other country. Is much better to drill into the details of
"poor leadership" and "failed government institutions". All states have these
issues to various degrees. In Venezuela they are problems broad and deep.

~~~
Kalium
A command economy, a denial of economic fundamentals, and years of completely
failing to take advantage of a commodity boom while it lasted. And populist
ideology that led to those.

------
dimitar
And yet Venezuela keeps buying weapons from Russia:
[http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/venezuela-buying-
su30s-h...](http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/venezuela-buying-
su30s-helicopters-et-al-from-russia-02472/)

------
dmh2000
This was predicted in Atlas Shrugged, it just turned out to be Venezuela
instead of the US. well, minus the sci-fi part.

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discardorama
Does the US have some sort of sanctions against Venezuela? I'm not sure if we
do or not, but I'm wondering if we do.

~~~
DugFin
There are sanctions in place against individual Venezuelan officials for their
part in human rights abuses, and a general embargo on arms, but other than
that, no. The US is still Venezuela's largest trade partner.

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mudil
Venezuela is berning.

~~~
jbmorgado
Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland are all Berning and doing great.

~~~
DefaultUserHN
Yep, those countries are doing great, but only because the United States
exists. If the United States doesn't exist, China and Russia would have taken
over those countries. Their sacrifice-military-defense-for-socialist-programs
strategy would have failed spectacularly.

In other word, the United States is basically defending them (and many other
countries in Europe). Because the United States defended them, they don't have
to spend much on their military, so they have extra money left to spend on
their socialist programs.

So again, "Socialism only works until you run out of someone else's money."

