Galt's Gulch
10

Venezuela Story

Posted by $ Abaco 7 years, 1 month ago to Economics
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So...as my dad used to say, "Did you learn something?"
SOURCE URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/25/world/americas/hungry-venezuelans-flee-in-boats-to-escape-economic-collapse.html?_r=0

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  • Posted by freedomforall 7 years, 1 month ago
    I learned that the NYT hasn't learned a thing. They stilll infer that this is the fault of the rich and middle class who left instead of having their hard earned assets confiscated by looters.

    Then the NYT blames the "smugglers" who charge for the boat ferry service that the illegal immigrants voluntarily hire to escape from the socialist disaster that the NYT admired.
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    • Posted by $ allosaur 7 years, 1 month ago
      Uh, uh, nothing to see here, folks. Move along.
      The NYT, all the lib mass media, the Jackass Party, RINO moles and so-called progressives everywhere operate under the delusion that good ole' Yankee ingenuity can make socialism work--not just for America but for a whole globalist freaking world!
      Yay! Whoopee! Clap! Clap! Clap!
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgxZr...
      Just noticed on the YouTube sidebar that libs have their Donald Palpatine version. Well, of course they do.
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  • Posted by $ jbrenner 7 years, 1 month ago
    Venezuela is reaping the rewards of its anti-Vive policies.
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    • Posted by Dobrien 7 years, 1 month ago
      The article could explain why the food shelves are bare but it doesn't. The reference to Chavez as follows"........ But after President Hugo Chávez vowed to break the country’s economic elite and redistribute wealth to the poor, the rich and middle class fled to more welcoming countries in droves, creating what demographers describe as Venezuela’s first diaspora."
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      • Posted by $ jbrenner 7 years, 1 month ago
        Meanwhile, the finest students from Venezuela are coming to my university, a couple of whom now work for me.
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        • Posted by Dobrien 7 years, 1 month ago
          Best freedom to those students as they will be needed in the future reconstruction of all Venezuela . Brain drain, another aspect of the destruction Socialism causes to its populace. Sad for the Venezuelan folks who opposed Chavez and his minions. The rest of the looters beware.
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          • Posted by $ Abaco 7 years, 1 month ago
            I was thinking that too...that, eventually, somebody may want to return to rebuild from the rubble.

            More power to these folks...
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            • Posted by Dobrien 7 years, 1 month ago
              Yes , more power to them and all individuals.
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              • Posted by ewv 7 years, 1 month ago
                It depends on how much they understand. If they don't understand the fundamental cause of their plight they may want to return and re-implement socialism in a "better" way. The false ethical beliefs are what drives people to continue promoting collectivism as an ideal regardless of its historical wake of disaster.
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                • Posted by conscious1978 7 years, 1 month ago
                  Indeed. More frequently, I encounter the delusional notion that the only reason socialism has not been successful is due to the restraints that keep it from being "properly" implemented.
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  • Posted by $ Abaco 7 years, 1 month ago
    This reminds me. I recently hit the half-century mark. Feeling a little older (finally). The more I see this kind of thing now, I'm finding that it really bothers me. I see it even here where I live. I see women begging, and so many people here now just sleeping on the sidewalk. I see these people and, as a father I suppose, I'm deeply saddened by it. Strange to explain. I recently saw a photo in an article about how many parents in Venezuela are abandoning their kids to the government because they can't feed them anymore(?) I couldn't bring myself to actually read the article. Too troubling a concept. Somebody gave me a book about the young man who, after being born in a labor camp in N. Korea, managed to escape and come to the U.S. I didn't bother to read that, either. I just shelved it. I've gotten to the point in my life where I'm thinking, "Yeah. Things are really messed up. People are being royally hosed by 'leaders'. By way of our low value towards children we are now not valuing anybody. I get it. I can't help." When the establishment tells you that you can help, they just want your resources (altruism). All this is manifested in what we're seeing in Venezuela - just the absolute hell-on-earth environment brought on when people lose track of the sanctity of life...
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  • Posted by Herb7734 7 years, 1 month ago
    "Did you learn something?" Apparently not Venezuelans. They voted in and approved collectivist regimes on several occasions and sentenced themselves to death by starvation.
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  • Posted by $ blarman 7 years, 1 month ago
    My brother was in Venezuela about a decade before it all went to h-ll. He could see the writing on the wall and was glad to know his time there wasn't going to extend to the collapse surely to come. I do pity the people who couldn't leave and got trapped in what is now the epitome of Atlas Shrugged's final chapters: widespread looting and corruption by the few remaining elites while the nation itself crumbles - despite the rich oil deposits and plentiful labor.
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  • Posted by term2 7 years, 1 month ago
    Enough people who live there must STILL believe in socialism to keep their president and government. It is mind-boggling actually. I am amazed that their government is still in power and Maduro isnt assassinated already. But he must have supporters, so they deserve what they get...
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    • Posted by freedomforall 7 years, 1 month ago
      On the one hand you are assuming elections are unbiased.
      On the other hand do we assume that Venezuelan people have the understanding of and respect for free markets and individual liberty (that Americans are supposed to have,) or is socialism propaganda pervasive and convincing enough to create a socialist majority in Venezuela?
      Stalin ruled Russia for 3 decades. Arguably many of Stalin's "supporters" did so in fear for their lives. The same could be true in Venezuela, and the NYT would never mention it.
      Truth is elusive when the mainstream media is active.
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      • Posted by term2 7 years, 1 month ago
        hitler kept in power for years too. perhaps I am minimizing the effect of fear of the government, since we really dont have that here (at least I havent been affected by it (yet)). With all the assassinations going on, one would just think Maduro would be killed off. All it would take is one bullet for a disaffected person to accomplish that. Worked on JFK and nearly worked on Reagan....
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        • Posted by ewv 7 years, 1 month ago
          They believe in collectivism but don't like the results, not seeing the connection. They don't realize their ideology makes the destruction possible. Whether or not they deserve the results depends on how honest they are in looking for the right ideas.
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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 7 years, 1 month ago
    The pictures and story are tragic. All these people want to serve one another, want to provide one another the things they need to live, in free trades, but they have to risk their lives to get to places were they're allowed to do it.
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    • Posted by ewv 7 years, 1 month ago
      The articles is about mass attempts to escape because they can't survive there anymore, not that that they want to serve others. They have to risk their lives to get out because serving is all that is legal.
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        Posted by CircuitGuy 7 years, 1 month ago
        “not that that they want to serve others”
        This is an issue of semantics, but I insist on saying it how I said it. Prosperity requires people serving one another. We can do it freely for ourselves or under some kind of coercion: money or guns. These people are fleeing guns, and what's the first thing they do according to the article? They make money however they can.
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        • Posted by ewv 7 years, 1 month ago
          The article is about mass escapes because the people can't survive, not about anyone wanting to serve others. That is not semantics. Words stand for concepts. Prosperity requires trade, not service to others. Socialism requires the opposite and is based on a moral duty of service. The politics doesn't sprout out of a vacuum. Whatever different Venezuelans understand about that in whatever degree, the article is about their trying to escape the very visible consequences.
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        • Posted by $ Abaco 7 years, 1 month ago
          Now THIS is interesting, "Prosperity requires people serving one another." I say that because I was thinking that we see that a little socialism (people serving one another) repeatedly managing to function where there is prosperity (a strong free economy). But, it appears that Socialism always fails when not surrounded by a strong free economy that provides the excess wealth to feed from. I know - semantics. And, it depends on our definition of "prosperity". Been a long week.....
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          • Posted by Dobrien 7 years, 1 month ago
            Just because it exists along side capitalism, a little socialism is still a failure. It never produces positive results. Socialism fails every time because it is fundamentally and philosophically flawed.
            Prosperity is never the result of collectivism.
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            • Posted by ewv 7 years, 1 month ago
              It fails but can be propped up for a while by productive people inside or outside of it who continue to try to help it. Some "prosper" for a while at the expense of others, whether crony fascists or isolated businesses selling into it while it still functions at all. That is how mixed economies survive and outright dictatorships survive too long, but that occurs due to productive individuals paying and working for it. The socialism itself contributes nothing and is morally and economically destructive.
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              • Posted by Dobrien 7 years, 1 month ago
                Propped up or supported it is a cancer on the economy and it always is a failure. I guess prosper could be a word to describe the ill gotten gains from cronyism I call it theft.
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          • Posted by CircuitGuy 7 years, 1 month ago
            "socialism (people serving one another)"
            Socialism is NOT the same as service, by my definition. Serving people in some form of slavery is just one type service, a perverted, evil type. Most service in the world is voluntary. I know socialists will say things like it's not really service if you're want to do it and benefit from it. They'll say if you have fun doing something and made money serving clients, you must have stolen from the fixed pie of happiness and value in the world. I won't give them the word.
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            • Posted by ewv 7 years, 1 month ago
              A duty to sacrifice to others as an end in itself is altruism. That is the realm of ethics. Socialism is the political result and implementation.

              "Service" in the sense of something provided in a trade is a different concept than the ethical injunction and motive to serve others as a primary or a complete end in itself.

              A "service worker" as someone who works in a restaurant or hotel, or a "service station" as the old name for a gas station, were not the concept of ethics expressing altruism.
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              • Posted by CircuitGuy 7 years, 1 month ago
                ""Service" in the sense of something provided in a trade is a different concept than the ethical injunction and motive to serve others as a primary or a complete end in itself."
                Right. I won't give collectivists the word. We're not the minority. Most people don't want to be forced with guns, manipulation, or pity into serving one another. They've re-defined it so when I even used the word "serve" it spawns this long discussion about whether we can use "serve" in the sense of a "service station". I support "service". I don't support arm-twisting, appeal to sympathy, being hit up for help/money. There are plenty of words for collectivists' forced service. We're about living life, being happy, serving one another in mutual deals that work for all parties involved. That's where our society's amazing wealth comes from. It's what appears to be wrong in Venezuela: People are eager to serve one another, but people with guns won't permit them to do it unless it's under threats, manipulation, etc.
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                • Posted by ewv 7 years, 1 month ago
                  It's not a matter of giving them the word. It defines the basis of their ethics. The economy is based on trade for mutual benefit, i.e., profit, not on service, and there are a lot more components to the economy than the so-called "service sector". (Why not say that the Venezuelans "want to manufacture" or "grow" or "write programs"?) Why focus on "service" at all about an article that was about people fleeing for their lives?

                  Service as an ethical primary should be rejected regardless of whether it is forced. Don't voluntarily accept or sanction an ethics of sacrifice in the name of voluntarism, as if politics were the only issue. Once that is done, the politics and the force follow, but serving others is a destructive basis of ethics, voluntarily accepted or not. Every ethics, including altruism, is accepted voluntarily when it is believed, and the notion of serving others as an ethical principle is destructive to one's life regardless of what others do to impose more of it.
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                  • Posted by CircuitGuy 7 years, 1 month ago
                    If service means what you say, then you're absolutely right. I think of manufacturing and writing programs as a form of service. It's doing things that help other people, meet their needs, and create a wealthy world. I find an energy in the notion of putting my heart into really helping people, trying to make something people are happy to pay well for. I call it service. I definitely see how the word could be misconstrued.
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  • Posted by NealS 7 years, 1 month ago
    Even from opposite ends of the African continent Venezuela has somehow followed Argentina's lead in destroying their economy, and still many American's will not understand how.

    Well done video and very good to listen to:
    "Don't Cry For Me Argentina (America)"
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33i_B...
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      Posted by CircuitGuy 7 years, 1 month ago
      Argentina and the US had the same per capita GDP at the beginning of the 20th century, but Argentina is far poorer now.

      The political thing at the end is nonsense though. If it were true, the deficit, which has been shrinking for the past seven years, would start shrinking faster now the Republicans control the government. Instead it will go up. The video has the political parties reversed.
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