Never go full socialist
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You can have any system you want. But if you donât have peaceful transfer of power, it ends up with government goons wreaking havoc, disappearances, and people fleeing the country. At least in Latin America. Kingdoms seem to work better in other places.
https://x.com/knowyourmeme/status/1817655871016726678
I have a half dozen of these songs on my iPod.
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Not really
Venezuelaâs main problem is over-reliance on oil, and it is sucky that that happened despite the economy being supposedly planned, because thatâs exactly what the market drove them to. Saudi Arabia also has a planned economy - even though no one seems to call them socialists for it - but they are doing better planning and have made huge efforts to diversify.
And the lack of democracy in both SA and Venezuela is partially because, and possible because of:
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Those happen everywhere in Latin America. They happened in France last summer over something like lowering the maximum speed limit. Theyâre easy to avoid as a tourist.
What happened in VZ shut down the border with Colombia for years and led to an 8 million person diaspora.
Because their economy collapsed because of runaway inflation caused by the crash in oil prices around 2015. And their inflation started reigning in after oil prices recovered. Their problem was too much capitalism (along with spending) and they followed the market which led them to over-reliance on oil - what they specialized in. SA has done better planning by diversifying and Norway even better planning by putting so much of their oil money in a sovereign fund.
Was the US imposed brutal sanctions and attempted coups because the oil got nationalized
And Argentinaâs inflation is 270% now. It has gone up under Milei, but seems to have leveled off. If it goes crazy, they will have similar problems there.
Yeah, that too. Saudi Oil is ok, but Venezuelan is sanctioned because of the lack of democracy? No, itâs because they nationalized in 2007. If Norway had ever been owned by Chevron the way Venezuela was, they wouldnât be allowed nationalize either.
Yes US sanctions fucked VZ. But Maduro is a strong man just like the dictators the CIA propped up in Central America during the Cold War, and just like Ortega is now in Nicaragua. And just like those dictators, heâs had to buy off support from a military bourgeoise and connected cronies, leaving everyone else fighting over scraps.
If peaceful transfer of power was allowed, Maduro would have been gone a long time ago, he wouldnât have a codependent stable of military and business elites, and the country would be on a better track.
https://x.com/jeffreypclemens/status/1817911013314052429
This thread gets into it some. I donât agree with the premise that socialism never works, because socialism can mean whatever you want it to mean. IE - Norway works just fine to me. But again, Norway has peaceful transfer of power.
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Thatâs not even to say that capitalism is wrong here. The lower oil prices may well have made the average person on Earth richer (though in this case it is effing up the atmosphere), but thereâs nothing in market economics that says a subset wonât suffer if demand for their product decreases. And if one country specializes in that one product, that country could easily be effed. The free market solution to that, of course, is open borders.
Why Nations Fail addresses it as societyâs ability to change will take care of diversification of the economy regardless of the starting point. of course they have to zoom out to several decades for most examples to see it, and it has a global trade bias, but i tend to agree VZ problems are not mostly from not having a diversified sovereign fund. RF also has something like a sovereign fund, and it tried to diversify in many other ways. still didnât work. in fact many efforts to diversify based on other countriesâ experience failed, because global economies move on faster than an inflexible government can truly react.
Dang krugman still alive and posting huh