
Venezuela Is Falling Apart - vinnyglennon
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/05/venezuela-is-falling-apart/481755/?single_page=true
======
robbfitzsimmons
Moises Naim, who wrote this article, is a notable Venezuelan dissident (and
was a finance minister before Hugo Chavez took over).

I'm just about to start his most recent book, "The End of Power," which is
about how hard it is to establish and maintain political control as technology
decentralizes. It's not going to be the kind of book Maduro (the Venezuelan
president) is going to read, but seems pretty sure to be the playbook of how
that regime will end.

[https://www.amazon.com/The-End-Power-Boardrooms-
Battlefields...](https://www.amazon.com/The-End-Power-Boardrooms-
Battlefields/dp/0465031560)

------
jimmywanger
This was written in May. Apparently the situation has gotten exponentially
worse.

It went from "Hey I hear Venezuela is really beautiful and the people are
friendly. Maybe I should go visit, my dollar will go a long way there, and
they'll be happy for foreign currency" to "Holy crap the State Department
can't even guarantee that they'll be able to get me home if thing go really
badly."([https://twitter.com/OSACState/status/809519262150918145?ref_...](https://twitter.com/OSACState/status/809519262150918145?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw))

It's such a shame. At this point the government and military are already all-
in on repression. If they allowed democratic change at all, there will be a
lot of bodies hanging from lampposts. So they just keep on trying to stay in
power any way they can.

~~~
ChuckMcM
At this point the only thing I can see changing the situation is either a full
scale uprising/civil war, or one of Venezula's neighbors will come in and
"help out" with keeping the peace by installing troops and a puppet
government. I don't see any path where the people who currently have power
would relinguish it voluntarily or let the people prosecute them for misdeeds.

~~~
toomuchtodo
What will be the tipping point?

~~~
ChuckMcM
Historically it seems that when the population feels it has less to lose by
throwing out the government than it does by keeping it. Then it just needs
someone with a bit of charisma to emerge to pull it together.

Peron, Fidel, Mao, Langton, Lenin, Adams, Etc. Generally one person who says
"I'm not going to take this crap any more" and unites the people behind him to
make big changes. Sometimes you get the Magna Carta and sometimes you get
Hitler.

------
totoroisalive
Waiting for the paid puppets to deny the truth about how fucking hard is to
live in Venezuela.

------
disposablezero
This article uses the wrong label "socialism" when it's more like the past
century's communism. There's a world of difference between Social Security
from which Ayn Rand benefitted and top-down mismanaged resources / disastrous
policies. Conflating the two only perpetuates libertarian mythologies which
promulgate "rugged individualism" and phobia of providing common services
which benefit communities, like firefighters, highways, radio frequency
allocation and child toy safety standards.

~~~
woodandsteel
You need to explain what you mean by the term "socialism." The classical
definition is when the means of production are owned and controlled by
society, either the state or workers collectives. More recently the term has
been used by some to refer to social democracy, and even New Deal style
liberalism which are considerably different economic systems. So which
definition do you mean? And perhaps you could present some arguments, and at
least one link, in support of the idea that it can work well.

~~~
CamonZix
What he means is that his retarded system collaped again but it's ok and he
wants to try again because it wasn't real "socialism"

[https://pics.onsizzle.com/when-your-retarded-system-
collapse...](https://pics.onsizzle.com/when-your-retarded-system-collapses-
but-its-okay-because-it-6272357.png)

