Venezuela: Cheap Television Sets For All! 702
solareagle writes "Venezuelan President Maduro has declared war on 'bourgeois parasites' by taking over Daka, an electronics retailer similar to Best Buy. USA Today reports, 'National guardsmen, some of whom had assault rifles, were positioned around outlets of [Daka] ... Maduro has ordered to lower prices or face prosecution. Thousands of people lined up at the Daka stores hoping for a bargain after the government forced the companies to charge "fair" prices. "I want a Sony plasma television for the house," said Amanda Lisboa, 34, a business administrator who waited seven hours outside a Caracas store ... "It's going to be so cheap!" "This is for the good of the nation," Maduro said, referring to the military's occupation of Daka. "Leave nothing on the shelves, nothing in the warehouses Let nothing remain in stock!" Maduro said his seizures are the 'tip of the iceberg' and that other stores would be next if they did not comply with his orders.'"
And people called Atlas Shrugged Fiction.... (Score:4, Insightful)
People said that the characters in Atlas Shrugged were two-dimensional cardboard cutouts and that real life is totally not like that... I guess they never went to Venezuela.
They also said that Ayn Rand would leave us in some sort of post-apocalyptic world with no police, firemen, schools, or anything basic services. Who knew that the entire city government of Detroit for the last 40 years were all a bunch of secret Ayn Rand worshipers who have finally put her dreams into action!?!?!?!??
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"Maduro showed astonishment at a fridge on sale in Daka for 196,000 bolivars ($31,111 at the official rate), and said an air-conditioning unit that goes for 7,000 bolivars ($1,111) in state stores was marked up 36,000 bolivars ($5,714) by Daka.."
Seems something is dratically wrong there, though. I don't know is this sort of approach will yield any results, but it'll be interesting to see the fallout.
Re:And people called Atlas Shrugged Fiction.... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:And people called Atlas Shrugged Fiction.... (Score:5, Interesting)
The objection was because state run shops were selling the same models for 1/5th the price or less. Since those shops would have taken payment in the local currency and had to buy in the sets with USD or Yen it is hard to see how such a high profit margin could be justified.
Sure enough when you look into it you see that this shop was basically fleecing people, only making sales because they couldn't get to the state run shops. People don't like getting ripped off because they have no choice, and their government acted on their behalf to put an end to it.
The same thing happens in the UK from time to time, only less dramatically. Some company starts screwing people a bit too much and the OFT steps in to put an end to it. Most recently there have been crackdowns on short term loan companies, for example.
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Re:And people called Atlas Shrugged Fiction.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course the workers are getting screwed. That's the false promise of communism, that the workers benefit at the expense of the wealthy.
Re:And people called Atlas Shrugged Fiction.... (Score:5, Funny)
Under capitalism, man exploits man. But under communism, it's the other way around.
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Capitalism is "you're free to choose who to slave for".
That's capitalism in a working condition.
With the current job situation it's more like "You have to be glad if you find someone to slave for at all"....
Re:And people called Atlas Shrugged Fiction.... (Score:5, Insightful)
People said that the characters in Atlas Shrugged were two-dimensional cardboard cutouts and that real life is totally not like that... I guess they never went to Venezuela.
To be fair, I'm pretty sure Venezuela is a parody of real life.
I also don't think Ayn Rand was talking about Venezuela, or that most of her detractors would support a government take over of Best Buy, but you know, shades of grey and all that.
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You haven't read Atlas Shrugged, have you?
Re:And people called Atlas Shrugged Fiction.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Reading crap like Atlas Shrugged is like repeatedly having unprotected sex with somebody with AIDS and a dozen other STDs.
If your mind is so weak reading ANY book is the mental equivalent of getting AIDS, then perhaps you should be retiring yourself from all political discourse as your only function is to ape what others do or say (as was evidenced fully by the rest of your post).
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And people called Atlas Shrugged Fiction.... (Score:5, Informative)
I also don't think Ayn Rand was talking about Venezuela, or that most of her detractors would support a government take over of Best Buy, but you know, shades of grey and all that.
Have you even read Atlas Shrugged? Venezuela might not have been mentioned, but Mexico was nationalizing everything in the story, later followed by America passing the "Fair Share Directive" leading to "Directive 10-289" which locks the entire workforce into their current jobs and at their current pay, and demands that they consume exactly as much as they did the previous year. Thats a government takeover of everything.
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Re:And people called Atlas Shrugged Fiction.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The World Social Forum [venezuelanalysis.com] — yes, it is just what it sounds like, plenty of Ayn Rand detractors, to put it mildly — once declared Hugo Chavez a "guest of honor". Yeah, they would support just such a government. Of course, when the take-overs (a.k.a. confiscations) begin in earnest, the weaker among them will try to forget it and lament, how this particular attempt at Communism "was not done right either" and how the next one — the one they'll undertake — will finally show the whole glory of the new order.
Re:And people called Atlas Shrugged Fiction.... (Score:5, Interesting)
What's funny is the ones who say communism is a good idea that just hasn't been done right never really pay attention to the times it has been done exactly according to plan and still failed anyways.
I like to cite the example of the Icarians in Nauvoo, IL. They had a whole town - facilities and all - literally just handed to them free and clear, and even got to cherry pick who would live there in their commune (picking only those who had a known good work ethic) and had a democratic policy making process. Things were going ok at first, but over time their productivity was on a steady decline. It soon got to the point where workers had to be forced to work harder (policies like no talking while on the job were enacted) and the once idealistic leaders became douches hell bent on seeing their commune succeed at any cost. In the end, people just got miserable and went their separate ways. Had it continued longer and that option not been available, an autocracy would have to have taken over to force people to go to work whether they liked it or not. This is what later happened in Russia, Korea, Vietnam, China, and others when communism was tried on a national scale.
In the early days, Russia even had a system in place where they even wanted to get rid of laws and codes and remove lawyers from trials...it failed miserably as without laws, going "against the betterment of the people" was so selectively enforced, so they discovered the hard way why rules are critical.
Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam originally wanted democracy, even having read the US declaration of independence and parts of the constitution in front of his followers as if that were ideal, only with communism for their economy. That too failed, requiring them to resort to indoctrination camps and effective slavery.
Capitalism sort of happens own (even currency does - in the absence of one, people tend to create one on their own - after the fall of the soviet union, Russian denizens replaced the ruble with cigarettes and vodka as their currency until a new official one came about.) Communism, however, requires force to implement. That fact alone should tell you why communism will never work, and this "not exactly communism" that Venezuela is doing is likely to result in the same (indeed, they are sending the owners of these electronics shops to jail.)
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It is not the philosophy but the implementation.
The implementation of communism has never worked.
Working for China right now
There are many places as well where capitalism has failed miserably and resulted in anarchy as well.
Please, give an example or two.
Spectacular failures are Somalia, Hailti and many African countries. Slow failures: Shah era Iran, India and the third world.
The recent success of China would say communism can work though their approach is to use a combination of free market and state ownership not for a political fantasy philosophy but economic metrics.
They don't do communism any more.
If China doesn't do communism anymore, then we don't do capitalism anymore.
Even if the Chinese implement more free market policies and we let our government grow bigger and reach the same portion of government size, we will call ourselves capitalists and China communists.
Rhetoric doesn't match reality. Film at 11. I have this vague suspicion that what you consider "capitalist" societies won't end up being such.
We now call it socialism and remark at how awesome Sweden, Norway, Canada are. Even we don't want to be capitalists. Capitalists will let someone die because they don't have good enough health insurance and capitalism creates 1%ers and 99%ers.
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I also don't think Ayn Rand was talking about Venezuela, or that most of her detractors would support a government take over of Best Buy...
Why take over BestBuy when they're too busy at the moment trying to consume the entire US healthcare (and related insurance) industry?
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We already had a case of that in the US in the 70's when the government put price controls on fuel because the average Joe felt that it was so high that it was oppressive.
The resulting scarcity of fuel was much worse than the high prices. That is what I'm fairly certain is going to happen in Venezuela, and is also what I'm fairly sure going to happen with US health care post ObamaCare.
Re:And people called Atlas Shrugged Fiction.... (Score:5, Insightful)
That is what I'm fairly certain is going to happen in Venezuela, and is also what I'm fairly sure going to happen with US health care post ObamaCare.
Huh? What? We 'make' our own healthcare, it's not like we import hosptials much. If the ACA does what it's intended to do (unlikely), then it will fund the healthcare system somewhat better than before. If it doesn't do that, it's pretty much business as usual (slow downhill course in affordability). In neither situation is the availablity of healthcare going to change. Neither situation is likely to result in wholesale hospital closures or doctors shutting down their practices and heading to Belieze.
Re:And people called Atlas Shrugged Fiction.... (Score:4, Informative)
As for availability...
If they do succeed in adding 20 million new insured in the US, the problem is they aren't adding any new doctors, and some who are doctors are looking at getting out.
It will become harder to find a doctor for two reasons:
1. More people with health insurance = more people wanting to see a doctor, but no more doctors to go around.
2. Some percentage of doctors will simply stop taking insurance and go to cash only, further reducing the number of doctors who can see all these new "insured" people.
Full disclosure: My wife has been a doctor for 10 years, she's disgusted by the whole thing and is considering either leaving or going cash only.
Side note: The number of doctors is not based on "free market" anything, it is tightly controlled by the AMA (American Medical Association). Only current doctors can licence new doctors and only existing medical schools can licence new medical schools, they like it the way it is because it keeps doctor pay high.
LOLWUT (Score:3)
Detroit has been run by Democrats for decades.
Re:LOLWUT (Score:5, Funny)
Sarcasm: Requesting permission to buzz the tower.
ArchieBunker: Negative Ghostrider, the pattern is full.
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There's a difference between GETTING money and MAKING money.
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I make it, the government gets it.
Re:And people called Atlas Shrugged Fiction.... (Score:5, Interesting)
I mean. Sure. She's a dry writer. Her prose alone should have sent her to a gulag but that doesn't mean that she didn't have some goo...
Sorry. I just can't do it. I know that sucking Ayn Rand's pole is a great way to ride the slashdot karma rocket (and a great way to make eye contact with Rand Paul) but no, she was a terrible hack whose only real skills were shitting out Cold War era odes to capitalism and giving the pretentious or privileged someone to blame their personal (and sometimes sexual) failings.
And really, Detroit? That's like blaming the Gulch because Galt got a better deal on property in Mexico.
Re:And people called Atlas Shrugged Fiction.... (Score:4, Insightful)
A politician who uses military power just to steal some TVs really is the sort of living, two-dimensional cardboard cutout that would fit nicely in an Rand tome.
Get it now (Score:3)
Get it now, because no one in their right might is going to import electronics into Venezuela anytime soon.
Isn't vaguely socialist dictatorship great?
Re:Get it now (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, they will... Take it from a USSR survivor, there will be two groups of importers: official and otherwise.
The officially-imported electronics will be available in the government-run stores — for Sean Penn and other supporters of Socialism to see. No, ordinary people would not be able to buy anything there — you'd either need to have a special pass to enter the store, or have hard-currency (or some sort of government-issued coupons). Though the prices will be denominated in Bolivars, you'll have to exchange your foreign currency right there — at the official rate...
The unofficially imported stuff will be sold on the black market, which the government will fight tooth and nail — thus providing law-enforcement with easy side-income (that is likely to exceed their official salary). The corruption will, well, corrupt the entire population — and the law-enforcement in particular — for generations to come. The actual businessmen bothering with such imports will be denounced as "speculators" — by contrasting their prices with those of the government stores (described above).
A grey area will be represented by people, who purchase their own stuff abroad. They would, probably, be allowed such items — perhaps, after paying some customs fee — and even permitted to sell them (used). As long, as of course, they don't attempt to profit from such sales...
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The government will require you to bring hard-currency into government-run stores, exchange it there for Bolivars (at the official rate) and then spend the Bolivars on the ("low"-priced) electronics.
The black market will take anything you wish to spend — but Bolivar-denominated prices will have nothing to do with the official rate.
Re:Get it now (Score:5, Informative)
By contrast, since companies, importers, what have you, expect to and need to make money on their importation of products, this grab will show that there's no good in above-board importing into that country. If they can seize and sell electronics, they can seize and sell anything . It's not safe to do legitimate business in Venezuela anymore.
What I expect to happen is that grey-market and black-market importers will smuggle products in, sell them for considerably more money than they should even go for legitimately, and attempt to hide their revenue, indeed much like drug smugglers do here.
Re:Get some facts first, or wait til dust settles (Score:4, Insightful)
I read the article, which claimed that this was to set an example. Also, retailers are attempting to price their products based on the hyperinflation that the country is experiencing, and the government is attempting to force them to stop doing this.
Are you prepared to invest your money in a business venture to import consumer goods into Venezuela?
Re:Get some facts first, or wait til dust settles (Score:5, Interesting)
And did Venezuela stop being able to import groceries after they seized El Exito? Was the country ruined?
Actually a lot of Venezuelans would answer "pretty much" to both questions. Major shortages of basic goods, like flour, sugar, cooking oil and toilet paper started around the time and continue to this day. The collapse of the economy and the skyrocketing crime make living in Venezuela very harsh now.
Hunger and poverty have gone down significantly since 1999. Even the anti-Chavez people accept this.
Chavez's only merit was to be lucky enough to rise to power just in time for the biggest boom in oil prices in the History of Venezuela. The governments of the 80s and 90s never had nearly as many resources as Chavez had. The governments of the 70s were close, and they were MUCH better at reducing poverty (without the violence and hate Chavez brought).
Chavez also seized the oil companies, and stopped Venezuela's biggest resource being a cash cow for foreign companies.
Plain false. Oil industry was nationalized in 1976, over 30 years before Chavez. If anything Chavez has led to Venezuela's biggest resource to be a huge cash cow for Cuba and China.
I've never been there. It's probably the country I most want to visit, and one of the main reasons is because it's so hard for a foreigner to know what the country is really like. I just read the Venezuelan newspapers and talk to Venezuelans sometimes here in Europe (mostly rich Venezuelans who don't like Chavez).
Please do. Venezuelan malandros eat naive, easily-deceived first-worldies like you for lunch.
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A Whole New Meaning To The Term (Score:5, Funny)
'National guardsmen, some of whom had assault rifles, were positioned around outlets of [Daka] ...
FIRE! Sale
This was just a personal vendetta or vote fishing. (Score:4, Insightful)
For the record, this is not what socialists want (Score:3)
Re:Why bother? (Score:4, Interesting)
Thailand Sugar (Score:4, Interesting)
Thailand last non-elected Prime Minister tried to buy popularity in a similar way, by capping sugar prices very low. The penalty he introduced was 7 years in prison!
Sugar producers smuggled the sugar and sold it across the border, others abandoned crops since it wasn't worth the cost of the fertilizer.
There was a sugar shortage after that.
(comment snipped due to NSA surveillance).
Venezuelan Economy 101 (Score:5, Informative)
This is something people need to understand (Score:4, Informative)
Many Americans and Europeans may have trouble with the idea of "official" and "real" exchange rates. You can go in to any bank and purchase or sell currency, you can trade larger amounts on foreign exchange markets. You find the price never varies much place to place at a given time, because you can always go elsewhere. If Citibank wants more for Euros than Deutsche Bank, well you can buy them from Deutsche Bank even if you are in America. The currencies truly float, their value against each other varying all the time based on trading.
This is not the case in a place with a fixed currency like Venezuela. The government says "You can buy X amount of our currency for Y amount of foreign currency," with the foreign currency usually being US Dollars. Ok, easy enough to understand, and generally the government is happy to sell you as much of their currency as you want at that rate. The problem is when you try to go the other way. The government won't buy their currency back and give you dollars. In and of itself that makes sense, governments generally sell their currency to other people, they don't buy it back, since they are the ones who generate and control it.
So you say ok, well I'll sell that currency on the foreign exchange markets. Ahh well here's where your problem comes in: Those markets don't value the currency the same as the government that sold it does. You have to give them a whole lot more of it to get the same amount of dollars (or other currency). So you have two rates: The real one and the official one. The real one being the rate things actually trade for on markets.
Well government who implement currency controls don't like this. That is why they are implementing currency controls, to try and fix prices (it doesn't work, but they are still trying). Hence they usually restrict or ban trading like this. That then of course leads to a black market, where things are even higher, since the people involved are skirting the law.
This is just the kind of thing that happens with fixed currencies/price controls. While it might seem to be workable internally, it doesn't work on a global scale since other countries don't value your currency the same and they don't sell goods directly in your currency.
Dictatorship, plain and simple. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wow (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
can you then tell are the "fair" prices high enough that they can restock or did venezuela just fuck up over-the-table electronics retailing for good in the country?
if the prices are't high enough then it's a short term robbery solution really..
I mean who the fuck would officially import ANYTHING to the country after this if they might e forced to sell the inventory at a lower price than what they paid for it...
Re:Wow (Score:5, Informative)
It's enough if you exchange the Venezuelan currency to dollars at the official exchange rate. Of course only a complete fool would exchange dollars for bolivars at the official exchange rate. If you do at the rate people who actually do have dollars will agree to, then the store is only getting like 10% of what they paid for the electronics.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Informative)
It's enough if you exchange the Venezuelan currency to dollars at the official exchange rate. Of course only a complete fool would exchange dollars for bolivars at the official exchange rate. If you do at the rate people who actually do have dollars will agree to, then the store is only getting like 10% of what they paid for the electronics.
No, you didn't read the story. Importers specifically said they could not purchase replacements of the TVs Washers/Dryers at the official exchange rates.
Importers complain that there is such a shortage of dollars they are having to buy them on the black market to import inventory at a good price. If they were to charge clients based on obtaining the dollars at the official rate, they say they would make no profit.
If you buy on the black market with dollars, you can get a washer/dryer cost $650, which is about what you would pay in the states shopping at the low end devices at Lowes or Sears. But at the official exchange rate, re-sellers can't survive.
So, the importers will simply not import. It really is that simple.
Its a political ploy by a party facing an election, and the currency will be devalued shortly after the election is held. For all the oil money Venezuela makes, they have never gotten a grasp of basic economics. If they want a command economy, they are going to have to start manufacturing their own goods, because nobody will sell to their importers at dictated prices.
Re:Wow (Score:4, Interesting)
No, you didn't read my comment.
Hence the "only a complete fool would exchange dollars for bolivars at the official exchange rate" in my comment.
Re:Wow (Score:4, Informative)
Point being, he was saying the same essential thing originally. You misunderstood his post, then proceeded to write a fairly informative summation of the incentives, so honestly I was too confused on how to mod you. :)
Re: Wow (Score:4, Funny)
Why? He's doing an EXCELLENT job of flushing the country down the drain. All by his widdle lonesome self.
Eventually the people in his own country are going to wake up to the consequences of his policy of thuggery and theft.
At that point, if he actually survives the coup, it'll be a miracle.
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but so, you cannot buy 1 dollar for 7 bol(or whatever the official rate is) from the government, I suppose? but they will gladly take your dollar and give 7 bol?
thats what the government should have been fixing.. not robbing importers. it's their fault the importers can't buy dollars for so cheap.
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but so, you cannot buy 1 dollar for 7 bol(or whatever the official rate is) from the government, I suppose? but they will gladly take your dollar and give 7 bol?
thats what the government should have been fixing.. not robbing importers. it's their fault the importers can't buy dollars for so cheap.
Anyone who knows how economics works has been chased out. This is what you get, a mentality that everything should be free and money magically appears. Not even socialists are this idiotic.
Re: Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
Who's to say that everything shouldn't be free?
I guess no one...
But what I can say is that if my hard work is now "free", then I won't work hard anymore.
If you don't compensate people for what they do, they'll stop doing it, unless you enslave them and use brute force. It works for awhile, until it doesn't.
Re: Wow (Score:4, Insightful)
Or if there is more than everybody could possibly consume, and nobody needed to produce it.
This is why I like robots.
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So why shouldn't everything be free? Because without money, most people will not exert effort beyond their own existance which is why communism and pure socialism tend to migrate to oppressive implementations. So in short, the people and human nature say it shouldn't be free.
You're partly right, but then stop mid-track. You're absolutely right that there needs to be an incentive to show that "effort beyond existance", but in theory this could anything that is seen as a reward. You'rer educing that to money because that's what we're currently are used to as the only form of reward.
How could the native americans have a society for centuries without a concept of wealth and currency? Or go back a few hundred years in Europe. People from knights to bards did not queue up to work for
Re:Wow (Score:4, Interesting)
Venezuelans cannot by dollars from the government for any number of Bolivars. It's illegal for them to have any currency other than Bolivars.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
What's really going to make this thing sting is that it is illegal to fire or lay people off in Venezuela. I guarantee you that this is going to cause their profits to dry up really fast. What happens when there's no money to pay the workers? The management gets sent to jail? Executed? I'm sure that will work out real nice.
Entrepreneurism is well known to be what drives economies. What's going to happen when people realize that starting a business in Venezuela is a bad idea? (Hell, they probably already do at this point; Venezuela will probably see foreign investment dry up very fast as a result of this, assuming it hasn't already.)
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Well, if I plan to sell TVs, I need to hire someone whose expertise is selling TVs. No matter if I'm a country or a electronic retailer.
Espescially if you're a country. If a retailer fails at selling TVs, Crazy Eddy goes down the drain and no one would notice. You don't want your country to fail just because they didn't know how to sell their stuff.
In theory, there are pros for planned econoomy. But the biggest con is that so far, no one got it to work...
Re:Wow (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
bummer.
i've been to venezuela many times. it is a great place. the last time i was there the black market exchange was Bs.7 to $1. that was just 3 years ago. now it is Bs.60 to $1. a country with vast oil reserves should be investing not spending!
With this Maduro is killing the last vestiges of business. Nobody will start one because the government will just call them thieves and seize everything. Maduro is digging his own grave.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it has been in a death spiral for a while now.
The country is spending money like crazy while keeping their money printing presses running around the clock. Read the line in the article, "Venezuela's central bank said the country's money supply grew 70% in the past year." The currency is collapsing due to stupidity and power-grabs in government.
Many countries have seen this sort of thing happen, and it is not pretty. Wheelbarrows of money to buy bread, only accepting payment in foreign currency, and financial collapse are common with this scenario that is playing right now.
Zimbabwe did this about a decade ago as the currency collapsed. Collectors picked up the trillion dollar notes that were printed at the end of the collapse and worth practically nothing. I hope it doesn't happen but part of me thinks it would be fun to collect a billion bolivar note from the country if/when the collapse happens.
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Interesting theory, but it looks like they have 35 Billion in the bank.
Re:Wow (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, 35 billion is nothing. That's half the budget, annually, for California. If they have these reserves and pull them out then the country truly is at rock bottom. It will be heading there as the attack on Daka demonstrates only state owned stores will flourish and they likely won't have anything in stock because nobody wants to sell to Venezuela and be paid in toilet paper Bolivars. It'll be like the good old days in Soviet Russia - where you sell your neighbor for a pair of blue jeans.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone will be piss poor.
The saddest part is that is never quite what happens.
Private property is the most fundamental component of freedom and democracy. Strong private property rights both in the form of society won't allow a strong man to just smash and grab and society does not appropriate property at will are key. Add to that a currency and you get a form of democracy. One mans money is as good as the next and if you want more of it you'll have to get offer him something he will consider a fair trade for it.
What you get in the face of communism/socialism is political currency becomes a new sort of exchange. Politically important people still find a way to concentrate wealth in their hands. Even shortly after the Russian revolution while perhaps most people were hungry and being forced to share what had been single domiciles because nothing could get built or maintained, loyal party members got to eat tea-biscuits and watch the ballet. Sixty years later when it all comes a part a small group of people who'd managed to get into the right government roles managed to walk away with lots of formerly state property giving themselves quite the leg up in the new economy.
Marxism might be a nice ideal but it completely ignores human nature. Whenever anyone really tries to implement you don't get your Marxist workers paradise you instead get something that is a lot more tribal; an oligarchy where a few guys share power with their sons, nephews, and old army buddies who live very comfortably, a little more equal if you will, and everyone else who gets to support it.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately, that's not a good plan either. If you look at the place in which it's succeeded the most, the US, you'll still see lots of undesirable byproducts of unregulated business, like major income inequality and, consequently, a higher prison population. Not to mention the decline the US has been experiencing due to relying on unsustainable exponential growth. What I mean to say is that we're fucked either way, embracing or extinguishing the free market.
The prison growth has nothing to do with unregulated business, there is not even a correlation between regulation and prison population, or it would be decreasing. One of the few things that does correlate with prison population is single parent households. When children of single parents are corrected for there is little difference in crime rates between blacks and whites, 70% of children in juvenile prisons are from simple parent households, 80% of inmates are from single parent households. Many of these studies were done in the 90's when only 25% of children were raised by single parents, while now the number is over 40%, which would correlate with the growth in prison population. CEO's making 6 or 7 figure salaries are not causing it there is not evidence to even correlate it.
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Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
Next comes the blood. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Next comes the blood. (Score:5, Informative)
Crime is already very high, Caracas is the murder capital of the world last I checked.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caracas#Crime [wikipedia.org]
Re:Next comes the blood. (Score:5, Informative)
Yes and as stupid as it sounds. This will work for a short while. Every person of means is probably desperately trying to leave. Once the "bargains" are gone, there will be no more product. Price controls drive growth into the ground and set the stage to inflation when they are released. Next comes wage control, then shortages, rise in crime (fueled by black markets), persecution of the wealthy, then hollowing out the middle class, and finally riots and needless death.
But that should not be happening in a country with a highly marketable commodity (oil). The nationalization of the oil industry has not been able to maintain previous levels after US and Dutch oil techs were driven out of the country, and production has fallen off by a quarter, and exports fallen off by half [nytimes.com] since Chavez came to power.
Nationalization has been a major fiasco.
Venezuela depends on the United States to buy 40 percent of its exports because US Gulf of Mexico refineries were designed to process low-quality Venezuelan and Mexican crudes that most refineries around the world cannot easily handle. But in recent years, the United States has been replacing its imports of Latin American crudes with oil from Canadian oil sands fields, which is similarly heavy.
American imports of Venezuelan oil have declined to just under a million barrels a day, from 1.7 million barrels a day in 1997, according to the Energy Department. And while Venezuelan exports of oil are in decline, its dependency on American refineries for refined petroleum products has grown to nearly 200,000 barrels a day because of several recent Venezuelan refinery accidents.
And those (nationalized) refineries aren't going to be fixed by Big Oil. Fool them once. They have a long memory.
Re:Next comes the blood. (Score:5, Informative)
But that should not be happening in a country with a highly marketable commodity (oil). The nationalization of the oil industry has not been able to maintain previous levels after US and Dutch oil techs were driven out of the country, and production has fallen off by a quarter, and exports fallen off by half [nytimes.com] since Chavez came to power.
Nationalization has been a major fiasco.
And those (nationalized) refineries aren't going to be fixed by Big Oil. Fool them once. They have a long memory.
Off by over 30 years, pal. The Venezuelan oil industry was nationalized in 1976, and it ran pretty well long after "US and Dutch oil techs were driven out of the country". The decline started in 2003, after Chavez fired en-masse those not loyal to his party. Chavez, not nationalization, ruined the oil industry.
Re:Next comes the blood. (Score:5, Insightful)
Nationalization has been a major fiasco.
You are being disingenuous, or are merely ignorant of the wider context (IMHO). You can't debate this subject honestly without seriously discussing the CIA and USA's role in attempting a violent overthrow of Chavez, early in his widely accepted as legitimate democratic leadership. Something the USA is famous for. I'm thinking right now that some machiavellian elite of the USA are probably pretty happy with being able to drive a country to insanity and suffering the way it appears they are succeeding in driving Venezuela (or this is all some B.S. slashdot twisting of reality, but I come here for the philisophical debate that results). Sort of like that line in Hotel Rwanda explaining how some elites convinced two sets of natives to be racist against one another based on their nose shape or something. Divide and Conquer. Or the machiavellian move here- fuck with other countries leaders- not kill them mind you- but just keep on fucking with them in order to get their country to be weaker so that you can perpetually dominate them.
It's a jungle out there kids... Good Luck.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Next comes the blood. (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, I buy about as much music now as I did in the 70's and 80's. I just never rebuy it. I bought the "Days of future passed" album by the Moody Blues on LP, 8 track, LP again when the original got scratched, on cassette 3 times and CD twice. I ripped it to my computer and never bought it again. I never will buy it again. They can keep the fucking copyright for the next 3 Trillion Millennium if the greedy fuckers want to but I have it in perpetuity because it's digital. I don't have any problem with them making money but do they really need to make 30 million dollars off a CD where there may be one or two hits and the rest are mediocre filler? Give me a break.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
I remember all the morons on Slashdot who thought Chavez was the best thing since sliced bread and wanted the U.S. to follow in his footsteps.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't worry, they still do. Socialists never let a little reality get in the way of their ideals.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny how the definition of socialism changed over the years. First it was social ownership of everything with no private property. Then it was central planning of the industry with some made up price system that never worked like the various schemes Soviet Union came up with (usually followed by a famine). Then it was the "third way" of countries like Yugoslavia (at the time it was briefly prosperous before the collapse) with a mix of state owned industry and some small scale private enterprise. Now it's basically a capitalist economy like Sweden with a slightly higher taxes than in the US and more welfare spending. Pretty soon you guys will finally be driven all the way to the right and call laissez-faire capitalism "socialism".
Re:Wow (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry for pissing on your righeous parade, but Sweden is a social democrat [wikipedia.org] state, and social democracies are still a form of socialism. In fact, it's further to the left than a textbook social democracy, because Sweden still forces some sectors of the economy to be centrally planned and managed, such as housing and licquor selling. In fact, the swedish government has a ministry dedicated to managing Sweden's housing and construction.
Where would you fit a ministry dedicated to housing and construction in your laissez-faire capitalism idea?
That's not exactly a policy which is to the right of Europe's typical social democracies, is it?
The slippery slope [wikipedia.org] nonsense is nonsense, and you're only showing off your ignorance.
Re: (Score:3)
Straw man. Social democracies have existed for decades. Some stuff (like the postal service, and power) is better nationalised. The US, bastion of the free market supposedly, pumps billions into infrastructure via private companies. It's more socialist than you realise.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Notice a pattern? The definition changes to fit whoever someone needs to have made a bogeyman out of.
Pretty soon you guys will finally be driven all the way to the right and call laissez-faire capitalism "socialism".
I think that line has already been crossed when simpkly the thought of everyone having health insurance has been called "socialism".
Re: (Score:3)
This is spot on. I'd guess that the tendency to redefine Western European countries like France, Germany, Sweden and even the UK (with its NHS and high welfare spending) as 'socialist' comes from the rhetoric of a particular American political party opposed to the introduction of universal healthcare. Or from people opposed to that particular party who want to draw a definite line between the US system and what's done in every other western developed country (including ones outside Europe like Australia, Ca
Re:Wow (Score:4, Informative)
Many fell for Chávez et al.'s socialist act, especially since out there you don't have enough tidbits to glean and see their true colors: authoritarian, bald-faced liars, sore losers, sectarian... It's all been a gradual power grab with "boiled frog" written all over it.
But you cannae change the laws o' economics, and the whole farce was teetering before Chávez died (officially on March 5, but his voice hadn't been heard since early December). Maduro's ineptitude as a statesman is more evident than Chávez's only because of his frequent blunders (Bush 43 shines by comparison), but the collapse was a matter of time:
* Local production of goods has waned, in good part because of ridiculous controls and destructive expropriation of businesses, increasing the demand for foreign goods and the currency to buy them.
* Venezuela barely exports anything beyond oil and some steel.
* The state oil company was run into the ground by bad management and direct social spending (by presidential mandate); even less dollars coming in.
Venezuela owes some $215bn (60% of GNP), and Maduro had to go in person to China to negotiate the latest $5bn loan. 12-month inflation is 54%, likely to increase as December rolls in. Nope, not looking good.
He forgot .... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wow (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Could be happening in the USA soon. (Score:5, Funny)
Without Zimbabwe, I'd never have achieved my dream of becoming a Trillionaire.
Suck on that, Bill Gates.
Re:For those who want a $15 minimum wage in the US (Score:5, Informative)
Hello from Australia.
Minimum wage here is $16.37 AUD ($15.23 USD).
Seems pretty prosperous.
Re:For those who want a $15 minimum wage in the US (Score:4, Informative)
Quote:
In a 2004 study published in the Australian Economic Review, economist Andrew Leigh looked at what happened after Western Australia increased its minimum wage compared to the rest of Australia.
He found: "Relative to the rest of Australia, the [percentage of people employed] in Western Australia fell following each of six [minimum wage] rises." (Study here [1], update here [2].)
Another Australian economist, John Humphrey, summarizes [3] the findings this way:
"[Leigh found] that for each 1 percent increase in the minimum wage we can expect... [to lose] 96,000 jobs" in Australia.
[1] http://andrewleigh.org/pdf/Minimum%20Wages%20(AER).pdf [andrewleigh.org]
[2] http://andrewleigh.org/pdf/Minimum_wages_reply.pdf [andrewleigh.org]
[3] http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4064106.html [abc.net.au]
Re: (Score:3)
If you want to see what's really going on, you have to look at the wage in terms of individual productivity. If the minimum wage is significantly lower than the average amount of productivity generated by lowest-income workers, then rai
Re:For those who want a $15 minimum wage in the US (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
That's the sort of reasoning that underlies minimum wage, but there's little evidence it works that way. Individual small businesses making short term plans may "pay whatever is required". That's because businesses don't opti
Re: (Score:3)
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Yes, like all the people pumping gas, filling grocery store bags, etc. Full employment!
Or ... not. If you a make a job economically unproductive, it goes away. Businesses don't pay to lose money.
I understand and have sympathy for that argument. But in practice even a free employee needs things like paperwork, supervision, and co-workers. An employee so unproductive as to not justify the minimum wage could easily cause negative revenue.
There's a reason not every business accepts unpaid interns, lowering/eliminating the minimum wage probably won't make an appreciable dent in unemployment.
Re:Hidden Agenda (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
> Every day in Saudi Arabia
The Saudi regime doesn't act like crazy paranoid nutbags out to get us or out to convince their own citizens that we are out to get them.
That does alter the equation a bit.
As far as "atttacks on Venezeula" go, I see much more of that in European news sources as American ones just tend to ingore Venezeula and leave them to their self inflicted misery.
If anything, you're the frothing bigot here distorting reality by whatever means necessary to justify your little hate-gasm.
Re:No, the plasma TVs aren't ten a penny (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
> with assault weapons
That's just the sensational way of saying that the army was there. Bringing some soldiers when seizing a building doesn't seem so strange to me. They didn't fire, or surround the shop. It's just sensationalist reporting.
When a US cop does his job, is he described as "an officer with a Taser, Mace, and firearm"? Of course not. That sort of nonsense reporting is reserved for stories about Central and South America.
The article mentions a fridge being sold for more than five thousa
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Only thing is it's not getting more unequal. Income maybe, but income doesn't equal wealth. Wealth has actually been spreading in the US, but not thanks to any government, rather thanks to capitalism. Government has actually been slowing that down in the form of tariffs, wage floors, and price controls.
- Tariffs increase the cost of goods and reduce domestic production (imports and domestic production rise and fall with one another - this has been empirically proven numerous times.)
- Wage floors increase un