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Venezuela is collapsing.

Posted by Dobrien 6 years, 5 months ago to History
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Statement from President Donald J. Trump Recognizing Venezuelan National Assembly President Juan Guaido as the Interim President of Venezuela
FOREIGN POLICY
Issued on: January 23, 2019
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Today, I am officially recognizing the President of the Venezuelan National Assembly, Juan Guaido, as the Interim President of Venezuela. In its role as the only legitimate branch of government duly elected by the Venezuelan people, the National Assembly invoked the country’s constitution to declare Nicolas Maduro illegitimate, and the office of the presidency therefore vacant. The people of Venezuela have courageously spoken out against Maduro and his regime and demanded freedom and the rule of law.

I will continue to use the full weight of United States economic and diplomatic power to press for the restoration of Venezuelan democracy. We encourage other Western Hemisphere governments to recognize National Assembly President Guaido as the Interim President of Venezuela, and we will work constructively with them in support of his efforts to restore constitutional legitimacy. We continue to hold the illegitimate Maduro regime directly responsible for any threats it may pose to the safety of the Venezuelan people. As Interim President Guaido noted yesterday: “Violence is the usurper’s weapon; we only have one clear action: to remain united and firm for a democratic and free Venezuela.”
J

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  • Posted by fosterj717 6 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Most of them don't even know WHERE it is located let alone what it is.........Products of a corrupted and dysfunctional national educational system. One designed to create automatons that will blindly and without thinking follow the orders of their masters! Unfortunately, they all subscribe to what they believe Socialism is as opposed to what it really represents. Generation after generation, blindly following a propaganda driven agenda created by an oligarchy bent on creating a three tiered society (peasants, bureaucrats and oligarchs). That is the NWO in a nutshell.......
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  • Posted by fosterj717 6 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    AOC (Occasional Cortex) is probably the most maleducated person in Congress! Unfortunately, she is the product of educational malfeasance now systemic in the public educational system. Brainwashed by several generations of totally brainwashed, under educated teachers and professors who know more about arbor day than they do about history.

    As everyone knows (or should know) those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. That is especially true for the brainwashed (light rinse will do!) students that we are turning out. All now believe they understand Socialism (nee Communism) but have no clue! They are the shock troops of Gramsci, Stalin, the Fabians and Saul Allinsky!

    As for AOC and her ilk, she will realize too late that she has been sold a worthless bill of goods and that she is only carrying the water for the 1/10th of 1% who truly rule (or will rule the world). She along with the rest of us peons will be nothing more than a vassal in a modern feudal society where slavery will be the norm. Best of luck to all of the brainwashed Democrat Socialists and their fellow travellers!
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  • Posted by ewv 6 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    It is like the plot of Atlas Shrugged in the sense that it's another example of the collapse when the human mind is not left free to operate and withdraws, but all we see is the destruction, with no one emphasizing the role of rational thought and the egoistic ethics of exercising it the way Atlas Shrugged did. The most we're being told is "socialism did it".
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  • Posted by ewv 6 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    People formulated, learned and accumulated better ideas over time as they became more civilized. Sometimes there was major regression, such as the Dark Ages, and much of the previous progress had to be started over. The less brutal people were, the more they were able to be productive. The Enlightenment emphasis on reason and individualism made capitalism possible as a social system. It was never fully adopted, but in the 19th century freedom dominated. Reread "What is Capitalism" and "The Roots of War".
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  • Posted by $ jbrenner 6 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    The progressively socialist mentality actually makes a Hank Rearden trial even more likely, but it would have to be a company with the inventor (ex. Rearden) and/or his family in charge (the D'Anconia lineage). There are a few companies like that left such as Huntsman.
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  • Posted by $ jbrenner 6 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Very true. The Venezuelan case is particularly sad because they once knew prosperity and voted for its disappearance in less than a generation. It's very much like Atlas Shrugged.
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  • Posted by term2 6 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    How do you explain how humans advanced from cave dwelling to high rise living except through cooperative trading? Pure capitalism as you describe it has never existed and probably never will , yet some elements of it must have been around to explain the advances in human life
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  • Posted by ewv 6 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Yes bad ideas must be unlearned and replaced ("a much more meaningful "repeal and replace"), but the bad ideas were learned; they weren't innate in dna.

    And yes it takes time to go through the whole intellectual establishment and through the educational system, but there is no substitute in order to achieve fundamental change.

    In mixed economies the producers can at least function at some level, but can't go somewhere else to produce unless there is such a place (which now there is not). They can leave Venezuela for improvement, but not the relatively civilized countries. Starting a utopian enclave is not realistic, but the best people do "shrug" by dropping out or cutting back even in mixed economies. Why work for punishment? Even when economic conditions cyclically vary, we often don't trust it because know the trend: "fool me once, ..."

    In more extreme cases like communism, including Venezuela, they have no choice but to drop out, escape somewhere, or be killed. It's how collectivist economies decline and collapse.
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  • Posted by ewv 6 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Once again we see a coward engaging in bulk 'downvoting' in his irrational emotional outbursts without even an attempt at discussion. There are a couple of real jerks here who don't belong on this forum at all. Others can read what is written here in spite of the antics.
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  • Posted by ewv 6 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    It could, but not under the progressively increasing socialist mentality.
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  • Posted by ewv 6 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Peaceful trade is not a "natural" "default". Capitalism is an advanced social concept based on rational egoism and the rights of the individual. It took thousands of years to evolve and achieve. Primitive barter in ancient tribalism was not an "elementary form of capitalism". Tribal savagery -- not "peaceful trade", private property, and rational egoism with individual happiness as a moral goal -- was "natural" to them. Nor is the morality of capitalism "natural" to those voted for socialism that collapses.

    Chaos and death are the "natural" state of those without civilized concepts, principles, and the integrity to follow them. Capitalism is "natural", but not in that way -- it is based on "natural rights" as what should be protected as required for human life, not a "default" state.
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  • Posted by mccannon01 6 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Agreed. That is why I included the second sentence with the word "alleyway" as a reference to a branch of story that would move away from the main theme. Sorry if you picked up on that as a place where Dagny was going to get mugged. I should have been more clear.
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  • Posted by term2 6 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    what I meant by capitalism is the default system is that people will naturally trade with each other so that each of them is happy in the end. That means that each side thinks they are happy with the result. In practical terms, that would essentially be an elementary form of capitalism.
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  • Posted by ewv 6 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    People "trading among themselves while protecting their interests" is not a "default". People who don't know any better routinely savage each other with or without mixing it with primitive barter and trade. They don't know what is in fact in their "interest". Rational self interest with peaceful exchange of value for value must be discovered as rational behavior. It is not a "default".

    You can try to physically defend yourself at the last minute under any attack, with or without understanding the principle of rights, including tribal slaughter, a back alley, or anything else. Anarchism does not allow for the protection of rights in principle. This is not a matter of degrees of efficiency. It is not a system at all, let alone capitalism. When a "collectivist government fails for awhile and nothing replaces it" capitalism is not "the default system". There is no system. Nor is rational behavior of any kind the "default".
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  • Posted by term2 6 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    A person can protect himself AND live in anarchy. Not as efficiently as under an objectivist enforced set of rules. The default "system" is for people to trade amongst themselves while protecting their interests.
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  • Posted by ewv 6 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    It terms of non-fiction criticism it is one of the best, along with "Global Balkanization", "The Anti-Industrial Revolution" and others. On the positive side my favorite is Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.
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  • Posted by $ jbrenner 6 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    That is my favorite of AR's non-fiction works. It is far more valid now than it has ever been.
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  • Posted by ewv 6 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    "Today, we live in the Age of Envy. 'Envy' is not the emotion I have in mind, but it is the clearest manifestation of an emotion that has remained nameless... That emotion is: hatred of the good for being the good." Ayn Rand, "The Age of Envy" in The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution. She also referred to it in other articles such "Epitaph for a Culture".
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  • Posted by ewv 6 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    A civililized society does not require that everyone properly respect all aspects of productiveness with maximum possible intelligence. It requires that most people accept reason and individualism sufficiently to maintain reasonably rational and productive lives and a proper government to protect it. Those who can't even do that much behave as criminals and are treated accordingly.

    That is why political reform requires the proper basic philosophical ideas, which is not what we have now.

    The projected return to the world at the end of Atlas Shrugged was not a return to the same society, it was projected as a return replacing the collapsed society helpless to stop them. This was in the context of romantic fiction, not a political blueprint. https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...
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  • Posted by ewv 6 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    It takes reason to overcome the lack of rational thought, not "instincts". Proper ideas and principles take work to achieve, but it doesn't mean that primitive societies act only on instinct as opposed to bad ideas learned. An example of the Lord of the Flies syndrome is the atmosphere at Google -- they learned that behavior in their education, reinforced from each other; it isn't instinct.
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  • Posted by ewv 6 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    The novel wasn't about what happened after the collapse and it didn't describe what would be required in a return. The whole plot was artificially accelerated in showing the role of rational thought in human society and what happens when it is withdrawn. It wasn't intended to advocate a "strike" as a solution at all, let alone instantaneous recovery after a collapse.

    It is romantic fiction dealing in essential ideas abstractly. It is not a literal blueprint for politics, let alone politics without regard for anything else. In that context of romantic fiction the anticipated return represented the fulfillment of achieving (beyond the time span of the plot) a much more productive civilized country and economy than hiding in the Valley forever. It represented their full success as the ideal.
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  • Posted by $ jbrenner 6 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    "Look what we have now: there are always those who want what you have and find the necessary vehicles to make it a driving force for many." - You have encapsulated looters and moochers' motivations in one sentence. I will encapsulate it one word - ENVY.
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  • Posted by exceller 6 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    "Their "full success" would consist of the entire population respecting their productivity properly."

    Yes, and therein lies the problem of impossibility.

    There is no such thing as the "entire population" acting as one and what's more, intelligently.

    Look what we have now: there are always those who want what you have and find the necessary vehicles to make it a driving force for many.

    That is why I have an issue with the Gulchers returning to society.
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