This made me so unbelievably sad. A country that was prosperous, educated, full of natural resources, gets destroyed by a corrupt and despicable political system. There is no reason this should happen.
Already happening, thousands of Venezuelans are migrating to Brazil. Some towns near the borders are already having trouble to manage accommodating so many families.
I used to think that economic collapse after the fall of Soviet communism was the worst outcome possible. Now it is apparent that crash with communism intact is much worse.
Quoting someone else:
"NY Times major piece on starvation in Venezuela.
Carefully avoids mentioning socialism. All the problems are passive voice ("as the economy collapsed," "as hyperinflation appeared") or exogenous ("oil prices collapsed").
> The Venezuelan government has used food to keep the Socialists in power, critics say. Before recent elections, people living in government housing projects said they were visited by representatives of their local Socialist community councils — the government-aligned groups that organize the delivery of boxes of cheap food — and threatened with being cut off if they did not vote for the government.
It does, however, directly badmouth the Socialists.
Mismanaging/squandering/embezzling your country’s oil revenues and a steep decline in said oil revenues without a sovereign wealth cushion was what caused this, not nationalizing food distribution or production.
Certainly the nationalizing seems to be part of it. Attacking the people producing said food for "hoarding" just to appease your socialist backers [1] [2], I must say, also seems less than helpful to my admittedly uninitiated brain. They've been at it for a decade.
That may be true, but all 3 countries are tiny with a large natural resource sector (so is Russia, incidentally, except on the "tiny" front). None depend on manufacturing or resources, despite all their European neighbors doing just that. Of course, sure, only 1 has a real oil sector. Like the middle eastern countries, though, Norway is somewhat guilty of sabotaging their own agricultural sector to appease political interests (ie. the greens), and compensating large amounts of importing from their immediate neighbors.
Socialism ends this way every. Single. Time. “If only socialism was implemented correctly for a change!” The snowflakes chant. Ignoring history. Implementing more and more socialist programs at home. Sigh.
Since we've asked you several times to stop posting ideological boilerplate and political battle to HN, and instead you do this, we've banned this account.
I suppose I should add that no, that's not because we're $ideological_flavor.
It's obviously an ideological rant of the sort that has been repeated countless times before and is just the kind of thing we don't want here! That's not because we're socialists or some other ideology, but because experience has taught us what kinds of discussions degenerate.
Even if it were "facts", which it isn't ("The snowflakes chant"?), factness is only one concern. Others include how relevant the "facts" are, how often they've been repeated, and what sort of discussion forms around them. There are infinitely many facts people might discuss, and very different intentions go into picking them. The intention we have here is for thoughtful discussion.
Since socialism is so successful, maybe they should nationalize food production and distribution too? It's gotta be better than using a capitalistic market economy for that, right?
Except these countries are capitalist with a pinch of socialism here and there. And it is not all perfect over there. Besides their companies are often involved in corruption scandals wherever they operate. I call them hypocritical social democrats :-)
You've named the problem though I don't think you can see it yourself.
No matter where you are on a continuum of socialist and capitalist policies, a fascist dictator will always lead to abuses of power. Strong democratic principles do their best to mitigate and limit that, with varying degrees of success.
Venezuela did not have a strong democratic system. Military force was used to coerce elections, the democratic process to remove Maduro was initiated, completed successfully, and ignored entirely.
The lesson here is that this can happen to any country when our democratic systems are weakened. I'd argue that the United States has been on a glacial path to this for quite some time.
No I said what I was trying to say. Many countries not in NATO rely on the US for their security and defense. NATO has nothing to do with my statement.
Of course not. No one cares about Yemen because atrocities are being carried out by a US ally. It's plain to see when and where the media generates outrage.
