
It’s official: Venezuela is a dictatorship - bithavoc
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2016/10/21/its-official-venezuela-is-a-dictatorship/?utm_term=.fdf079a69190
======
JumpCrisscross
Venezuela'a foreign exchange reserves stand at less than $12 billion [1]. They
pay over 15% of that _this month_ to bond holders [2].

This makes no sense until one considers that the bond holders might be regime
insiders. Venezuela is a state structured to maximise the transfer of wealth
from the many to the few.

Shockingly, as recently as 2004 Venezuela boasted fair elections [3]. The
degree to which Venezuelans are to blame for their predicament (and the
related probability that they will recreate it in spite of aid) is a difficult
moral question.

[1] [https://www.stratfor.com/analysis/venezuela-new-roadblock-
re...](https://www.stratfor.com/analysis/venezuela-new-roadblock-recall-
referendum-emerges)

[2] [http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-wp-blm-
venezuela-602c...](http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-wp-blm-
venezuela-602c9bb4-8989-11e6-8cdc-4fbb1973b506-20161003-story.html)

[3]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuelan_recall_referendum...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuelan_recall_referendum,_2004)

~~~
robk
When a democracy transitions to a dictatorship in a decade how do you not hood
the electorate responsible? They made the choices continually to allow this.

~~~
tptacek
What does it even mean to "hold an electorate responsible"?

~~~
davidw
Probably the difference between something like Brexit, which no one doubts was
a free and fair election, and, say, Assad, who is not really the 'fault' of
the Syrian people.

~~~
tptacek
I get that. I just don't understand how that informs our response to the
situation. Both Brexit and Syria are terrible situations.

~~~
jknoepfler
Brexit is inconvenient; Syria is a humanitarian catastrophe. There are several
orders of magnitude of difference.

~~~
atmosx
Plus Brexit was achieved by the most democratic of processes, Syria's
government was overthrown from a foreign country, because someone else had all
good contracts - how are the two comparable eludes me.

~~~
tnzn
Are you actually refering to referundum as the "most democratic process" when
they are (mostly) always accompanied by massive propaganda ? The Brexit one
being no exception (on both sides).

------
joncrane
I lived in Venezuela as the son of a diplomat in the late 80s. It was a
wonderful country. As a middle schooler (grades 6-8) I rode my BMX bike all
over Caracas with my buddy with no fear in the world.

The funny thing is, at that time, Venezuela was known to have suffered quite a
decline from it's heights in the late 70s and early 80s when it was on the
cusp of being a 1st world country thanks to the oil boom and (relatively)
smart investment in infrastructure.

Even back then they had price controls, where the prices of things were
printed on the packaging of all products.

It's always a shame when a country suffers, and it's particularly sad to me
because I know the country well, and there are a lot of great things to
celebrate about the country.

~~~
tomjakubowski
Were you living there in 1989 for the Caracazo?

~~~
joncrane
Nope, I was in another country by then.

------
jackcosgrove
Unrestrained equality leads to dictatorship. Unrestrained liberty leads to
dictatorship. Democracy requires a balance between equality and liberty, and
the political pluralism that is inherent in the vying for power.

Partisan fanatics who breathlessly wait for the total victory of their side
would do well to remember this.

~~~
Kenji
I strongly doubt that liberty & equality (before law) lead to dictatorship.
Unless you mean liberty that goes as far as harming others. But that would
infringe on other people's liberty.

~~~
SomeStupidPoint
The thought, so far as it goes:

In many "classless", free-market capitalistic societies (and a bunch of
similar ones), society ends up approximating social class by the logarithm of
the wealth of the person. In these cases "liberty and equality" really mean
"lack of government interference in use of wealth", which ultimately
translates to government restraint on social status to influence society for
your own benefit.

In cases where there's no special laws targeting the wealthy, you essentially
have a feudalistic society without any formalized duty of or decorum from the
higher classes to the lower classes, which ultimately leads to an exploitative
and abusive relationship.

As with many cases in politics, the lack of an explicit structure merely means
a more abusive invisible structure.

The further argument is that this is why we should have laws which target the
wealthy to provide civic funding/service, eg, higher taxes above say,
$250k/yr. That allowing the dynamic class assignment of free-market economies,
but formalizing the duty of the higher classes to provide for those under
them, provides for the strongest and most resilient societies. Which is
generally speaking what the data shows.

Similar arguments can be made about why you should have laws which provide
damages if you buy a newspaper and lie about your business rivals molesting
kids.

~~~
jackcosgrove
Liberty and equality are at loggerheads. Liberty is the animating principle of
the modern right, and equality is the animating principle of the modern left.

~~~
SomeStupidPoint
I'm not sure I agree.

I'd probably phrase it as the US leftwing and rightwing have different
importances placed on different kinds of libterties a person can have and
different notions of equality.

Gun rights, for the left, are an issue of liberty; while abortion, for the
right, is a matter of equality.

Too often in American politics, we pretend that what are orthogonal axes are
different choices in a dilemma. Here I think we have an instance of that:
liberty and equality are related but mostly orthogonal groupings of several
related concepts, the preference of which can lead to radically different
notions of "equality" or "liberty".

That's what makes politics hard: the other guy wants liberty too, but he
understands that in a fundamentally different way than you.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
You've probably seen this, but for those who haven't George Lakoff give's this
a fairly good treatment in this[1] on 'Moral Politics'.

By 'this' I mean the idea that the Left and the Right have different
experiences of what is moral.

My issue with politics is that I think we need to extricate it from morality.
Like we have separation of Church and State a la Secular Society, we need
amoral politics.

1\.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f9R9MtkpqM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f9R9MtkpqM)

------
0xcde4c3db
As is too often the case, the "it's official" in the headline really means
"it's not actually official, but this makes the headline more provocative".
The article goes on to describe the remaining fig leaf of a supposedly
independent judiciary.

~~~
tptacek
The authors of these pieces almost never get to write their own headlines.

------
CptJamesCook
Just three years ago:
[https://twitter.com/mmflint/status/309124649244057600](https://twitter.com/mmflint/status/309124649244057600)

~~~
tptacek
Dude is wrong on the Internet. More news at 11.

~~~
CptJamesCook
In 2005, Time magazine named Moore one of the world's 100 most influential
people.

So, not exactly just a dude. Michael Moore represents a growing anti-
capitalist ideology in America, and when their socialist experiments fail it
should be noted.

~~~
tptacek
Again not clear on why I'm meant to care what the Ann Coulter of the left
thinks about Venezuela. He has lots of nice things to say about Fidel Castro
era Cuba as well.

~~~
CptJamesCook
One reason is that Bernie Sanders, who was not that far off from winning the
presidency, takes him very seriously.

From Michael Moore's website: "I first endorsed Bernie Sanders for public
office in 1990 when he, as mayor of Burlington, VT, asked me to come up there
and hold a rally for him in his run to become Vermont’s congressman."

~~~
tptacek
I call 100% absolute total bullshit on the idea that Bernie Sanders takes any
of his cues from Michael Moore, and I happily voted against Sanders in the
Illinois primary because I thought he'd make a terrible President.

This is an extremely silly attempt to salvage a hopeless argument that Michael
Moore is a meaningful data point.

------
tptacek
The headline conceals the subtext of the piece, which is that the author feels
the courts did Venezuelans a favor by acknowledging what he says residents
have suspected for over a decade: Venezuela has been a dictatorship for some
time now.

------
RandyRanderson
I wonder which has the higher correlation to instability:

1 formOfGovernmentX - ie democracy, socialism, dictatorship, etc 2 On
america's shit list

?

~~~
Crito
Cuba and North Korea both seem to have more than their fair share of
stability, despite topping the American shit list for decades.

~~~
widforss
And why would an authorian regime in one country justify American
destabilization in their territory?

Jesus, I'm tired of american military acting world police pretty much
everywhere. I do not like dictatorships, but bombing people into democracy
rarely works, as northern Iraq is an excellent example of.

~~~
Crito
Who said anything about justifying anything? Did you respond to the right
comment? Your comment seems to have nothing to do with mine.

~~~
widforss
I may have read too much between the lines. I interpreted your comment that
their position on the shit list made them eligible for intervention.

Something like this one:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12766554](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12766554)

------
madengr
I assume they have already confinscated firearms in Venezuela? That's the
point it becomes a dictatorship.

~~~
hcarvalhoalves
Its been illegal for 4 years now.

------
smegel
Was it ever in doubt?

More interesting questions include whether Turkey or Saudi are dictatorships.

~~~
tptacek
The Turkish situation is tragic and complicated, but is there any doubt that
Saudi Arabia is a dictatorship?

~~~
finid
According to Hillary Clinton, Saudi Arabia is a kingdom.

~~~
JabavuAdams
The conventional long-form name of Saudi Arabia is "Kingdom of Saudi Arabia".
This isn't some thing that Clinton made up, and I'm not sure why it's relevant
to mention her. The country is referred to as "The Kingdom" by many. Of
course, that doesn't preclude it being a dictatorship, as the two are not
mutually exclusive.

Did I just miss an attempt at sarcasm, here?

~~~
finid
No, it was not an attempt at sarcasm.

That was her response to a dig about why we're not pushing for democracy in
Saudi Arabia. It was her way of saying they don't need democracy.

~~~
Crito
In light of that, every dictator around the world should declare their kin to
be the next in line. _(Well not really, since that implies ideological
consistency. You 'd actually have to be a fool to expect that.)_

------
JohnLeTigre
That didn't seem very journalistic, especially considering how things are
extremely complicated over there. ah well

------
DominikR
A country with one of the greatest oil reserves in the world, fertile land,
good climate, access to the sea (world trade) and no military conflicts for a
century was turned into a population of homeless people hunting dogs and cats
on the streets in order to not starve to death - only possible with Socialism.

I remember how ten years ago people on my university (in a Western country)
were trying to convince me that Chavez's version of Socialism is the future
for humanity. And when he came to give a speech he was celebrated like a pop
star.

~~~
robotresearcher
> a population of homeless people hunting dogs and cats on the streets in
> order to not starve to death - only possible with Socialism.

Or the United States in the early 20th Century. Grapes of Wrath and all that.

~~~
DominikR
The United States was an extremely wealthy country with exceptional freedom up
until the Great Depression. And this was only a short episode in US history.

~~~
robotresearcher
Sure. The US had been rich since about 1850, and was broke like everyone else
for a short time in the 1930s. But the grandparent said this kind of disaster
is 'only possible with socialism', which the Great Depression proves is not
true by counterexample.

~~~
DominikR
The big difference here is that in Capitalism you have boom and bust cycles
where on average people still get more wealthy over time while in Socialism
you'll always and without exception end up in abject poverty - and what's even
worse than poverty - an authoritarian government that will attempt to control
and regulate every aspect of its citizens lives including persecution of wrong
thoughts.

~~~
coliveira
> an authoritarian government that will attempt to control and regulate every
> aspect of its citizens lives including persecution of wrong thoughts.

I think this is a perfect description of capitalist countries, including the
US. Of course, they try to give people thousands of perceived options, like
what color of car to buy, but in the end everyone needs to abide by rules that
are increasingly more coercive.

------
rayvd
Venezuela's been a dictatorship for a long time. How quickly people forget
Hugo.

------
sjg007
This is amazing and tragic. How did the US let this happen?

~~~
coliveira
Why do you think the US has the right to police states throughout the world?

~~~
utku_karatas2
LOL. I, too, sometimes forget HN is an American majority community and get
enraged by the occasional foolishly bold comment like parent's. But then the
reality sets in... I am on American soil here on HN! What was I expecting?

~~~
atmosx
I think he was trolling (war on terror, advancing democracy through oil
contracts and all that...)

------
cloudjacker
> Francisco Toro is executive editor of the Caracas Chronicles blog reporting
> from Caracas and Montreal.

Well, nice knowing ya

------
MichailP
Totally unrelated rant follows.

I wonder how a world without main stream media would look like... Would it be
a better place? So much negativity, hidden agenda, pay for play, etc. is
present, that one would probably be better off staying uninformed, than
reading articles with God knows what agenda.

~~~
pavlov
I'm struggling to understand how a world without professional journalists
(because that's what "mainstream media" means) would be better.

Given the choice of getting my reporting from either pseudonymous posters
writing on random blogs, or professional journalists who write under their own
name, abide by an ethics code, and are supported by a publishing organization
that includes editors and fact checkers -- well, I'll rather pay for the
latter in any world.

~~~
jjawssd
I surmise that the OP implies that in his hypothetical, ethics codes hold no
merit

------
andrenth
Where is the worldwide leftist intelligentsia that supported this totalitarian
regime from the beginning with wet dreams of "21st century socialism"?

They are all quiet now and will surely soon claim that things went wrong there
and misrepresent the original intents of the "revolution".

It's time to recognize that, once again, socialism resulted in the same
results that it has always achieved: hunger, death, lost freedom. And this is
not because "things went wrong". It's by design.

~~~
tptacek
Hopefully in the same place as the worldwide right-wing intelligentsia that so
actively supported death squads in central America just a few years prior to
Chavismo.

~~~
jimmywanger
Difference is, right wing governments seem to recover much more easily than
left wing ones.

Chile, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, they all had people who got
"disappeared" but all their citizens are currently fed, which means it's
fairly possible to switch out of that mindset somehow.

The only left wing country I can think of that led its economy to recovery is
China. Other than that, Venezuela, DPRK, Argentina, and Brazil don't seem to
be doing so well.

~~~
tptacek
This is just sophistry. The true problem with the parent comment is not that
it's unaware of the right wing's role in political violence, but that it's
seizing on a word ("socialism") that it doesn't bother to define --- and the
word means different things in practically every place it's used.

~~~
topspin
"and the word means different things in practically every place it's used"

It was once used enthusiastically by the Great and the Good to describe
Venezuela. Venezuelan leaders still use it freely to describe their policy.

Recently though, the intelligentsia has become reluctant to attribute
Venezuela as Socialist, leaving the matter conspicuously ambiguous with much
discussion of oil prices mumble mumble. Thankfully our thought leaders have
come to the rescue and solved this problem by declaring Venezuela a
_Dictatorship_ , so we no longer need to step around the precious S word.

Whew.

~~~
Crito
It's like when a fast food joint gets so _undeniably filthy_ , their franchise
is revoked. Protect the brand by denying association when something goes
wrong.

------
ekvintroj
If Venezuela is a dictatorship, oh lord, what a wonderful dictatorship! They
don't invade any country like usa do.

~~~
tptacek
For the last 60 years or so, few of the world's worst dictatorships have. In
fact, the worst instance of the USA invading another country was sparked by
the rare instance in which a terrible dictatorship did attempt to invade
another country.

Few would praise the Union of Myanmar, for instance, despite its hermetic
demeanor towards the rest of the world.

~~~
iand
Trying to work out which invasion you are thinking of. Neither Iraq nor
Afganistan were triggered by dictators invading other countries. Vietnam was
triggered by a dictatorial invasion but the US were essentially invited in.
There have been lots of minor invasions in between but I'm struggling to place
which one you mean.

~~~
tptacek
Gulf War 2 was a continuation of Gulf War 1, which was prompted by Hussein's
invasion of Kuwait --- in which Iraq annexed the entire country of Kuwait.

I'm choosing my words carefully when I say this was the worst instance of the
USA invading another country. Gulf War 1 was justified, if any war can be
justified --- you don't get a much clearer _casus belli_ than invading and
annexing an ally. Gulf War 2 was a disaster of world-historical proportions.

------
pastProlog
Maduro was elected president. There's no vote upcoming, just yet another
recall referendum, this one which failed to get going in the courts.

Honduras on the other hand had an elected president. Obama bankrolled his
generals, who overthrew him in a coup in 2009, and then he continued
bankrolling them. Where are the US newspaper headlines about the Honduran
dictatorship? The Organization of American States, with the exception of the
US, is who was condemning this.

Insofar as Venezuela's oil business doing badly...what country is the the
energy business doing well in? Fracking and North Dakotan energy businesses
are going bankrupt left and right, which is said to be the fault of Arabian
oil flows, but when Venezuela's economy suffers from the same thing it's said
to be due to mismanagement or whatever nonsense.

Billionaire Jeff Bezos has his newspaper spin things in the interests of
American billionaires, what a shock. The majority of Venezuelans don't give a
damn what the yanquis think, they can just look to what they did to Honduras,
a real dictatorship, seven years ago, and what they're still doing.

Americans loooove to get up and pontificate in some kind of imperial self-
satisfaction. Like how the Osama bin Laden and the mujahideen would overthrow
Afghanistan's secular government in the 1980s with America's arms, money and
blessing. Kind of hit Americans in the ass when they strung Arabia with
military bases, causing a response of a plane flying through the Pentagon from
those guys they bankrolled in the 1980s like bin Laden. Blowback from
America's imperial pretensions.

~~~
coliveira
The other thing that needs to be understood is that Venezuela has decided to
become a socialist country. When that happens, it is normal that the GDP
decreases as the economy reorganizes itself. But as income is shifted from the
rich to the rest of society, most of the population will benefit, even if
there is no real GDP growth.

~~~
pavlov
Do you actually believe that an orderly transition to socialism is what's
happening in Venezuela, or are you just presenting that as a theoretical
framework for some kind of ideal case?

~~~
coliveira
This is just an observation of what is going on in Venezuela. They have opted
for a socialist economy and this necessarily requires a reordering of the
economic forces. If people like it or not is another issue - most certainly
the rich people in Venezuela hate it.

~~~
pavlov
Anyone who has a medical condition in Venezuela probably dislikes this
"reordering of economic forces" too. There are nearly no pharmaceuticals.
Operating rooms can't function. One in three patients in hospitals end up dead
according to the government's own statistics:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_Venezuela#2010s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_Venezuela#2010s)

This isn't what socialism is supposed to look like.

As for the rich: the old rich certainly are poorer, and the old middle class
seems to be sinking below poverty line by international metrics... But don't
forget that there is a new class of rich people in Venezuela, as the leading
party's inner circle has accumulated wealth. Even North Korea has its rich
people despite its extreme Stalinist interpretation of socialism.

~~~
coliveira
Most people in Venezuela never had access to pharmaceuticals. And, while any
difficulties in health care are deplorable, lack of medical resources is the
norm on third world countries. So it is difficult to assess how much of this
was due to the regime policies or to the bad shape of the economy. The problem
in doing this assessment is that all coverage of Venezuela is ideologically
tainted. Any perceived problem in Venezuela is taken as the direct result of
socialist policies, when in fact the country was poor longer before Chavez
came to power. But for example, few newspapers will talk about the fact that
the GDP of Venezuela has almost tripled since socialists came to power.

~~~
pavlov
Venezuela's closest ideological match Cuba does a much better job of providing
healthcare for its citizens, and Cuba doesn't have any oil wealth. Wouldn't
that indicate that the problem is with Venezuela's regime specifically?

The GDP has tripled, yet the average citizen's health and purchasing power are
worse in the same time period. Where is the money? What kind of socialism are
they building when even poor stagnating Cuba manages to look like a positive
example?

------
pessimizer
Can't wait until an election to declare the end of democracy? A recall
referendum was thrown out by the courts, and the opposition haven't won an
election in nearly 20 years.

It's official: Washington Post declares Venezuela a dictatorship on a monthly
basis for past 17 years, is now openly encouraging a(nother) coup.

At least the editorial isn't written by Donald Rumsfeld, like it was in
2007[1].

"[..]a relatively large, relatively sophisticated major oil producer just
three hours’ flying time from the United States has just become the second
all-out, no-more-elections dictatorship in the Western Hemisphere."

Seems like a bit of a hysterical speculation based on the _judicial rejection
of a recall referendum between elections._

I realize that the opposition placed a lot of their hopes of turning over the
results of the last election on this, but just because their plan failed
doesn't mean democracy has ended. And anyway, they've clearly fallen to plan
B, the same plan for if the referendum was defeated, to get the US to help
with another coup. Clinton has probably indicated that she's into it. She
loves that sort of thing.

[1] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2007/11...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2007/11/30/AR2007113001800.html)

