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I can, because it was explicitly detailed in the article this thread is based on. Did you read it?


Nothing about that is inherently leftist or populist or leftist/populist


The poster you replied to originally made it quite clear that it was a distinctive branch of populism/leftism, not a part of any mainstream ideology.

Besides, if you twist policies and ideologies enough, you can get anything to justify anything. You can find justifications for guaranteed income from socialist and libertarian perspectives, for example.


Exactly, and that's why I asked for a source about the claim not believing in inflation was in any way a tenet of left-wing populism, or leftist ideologies in general. I shouldn't have mentioned Objectivism unless someone had cited a reason.com/cato/etc article. I'm not sure why you think I misunderstood the poster, because I don't disagree with you.


At this point, whether you see ignorant and destructive government policies being rooted in ideology or mismanagement is a matter of opinion.


Well, I'll give an opinion. Venezuela doesn't really believe that there is no such thing as inflation as a fundamental position. It fundamentally believes that all assets that aren't going to help the poor should be confiscated and used to help the poor, or something like that. When that delivers disaster instead of utopia, the disaster must be the fault of evil people, because the fundamental position can't be wrong. So they wind up at the position that there's predatory pricing rather than inflation, because it must be the fault of greedy people rather than the fault of a bad theoretical foundation.

I'd classify that as "rooted in ideology", but I'll also agree to a large side dish of "mismanagement".


That was probably the best way of framing Venezuela's situation.




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