AHC: Venezuela with a good economy

You did seem to have taken my post about the Venezuelan electricity supply to be a post about how America had sabotaged Venezuela and how Stalinism was a wonderful thing.

fasquardon

Your post was about "The truth is that Chavez actually did a pretty good job with regards to domestic policy in Venezuela. It is hard to improve on his performance," which is absolute nonsense.

Even when compared to similar corrupt thugs of energy based states, he is the worst. There hasn't been any similar kind of collapse and shortages in Putin's Russia (even with sanctions on it, and him spending money on wars in Ukraine and Syria) or Morales's Bolivia despite their dependence of energy revenue like Venezuela. If you compare to Latin America in general, again no such disaster regardless if the country is Peru, Colombia, or Brazil. Brazil has economic difficulties right now, but nothing like Venezuela.

And you brought up America when you said:

A more cautious foreign policy with less resources spent boosting regional allies might free up resources for more internal investment, but given the hostility of the US (which began even before Chavez took office) the "Bolivarian" foreign policy was actually quite rational.

Sounds like to me you are trying to place some of that blame on America. "Of course if Chavez didn't spend $18 billion on behalf of Cuba, that money could've been spent on Venezuelans. But he had no choice because... America!"

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

A drought impacting hydroelectric power doesn't explain why Venezuela has run out of toilet paper. It doesn't explain why food, consumer staples, and basic medicine has disappeared. It doesn't explain why PDVSA went from one of the best managed national oil companies in the world into a bankrupt, incompetent company managed by Chavista cronies with plunging oil production. It doesn't explain why Hugo Chavez's daughter is worth $4.2 billion. It doesn't explain an inflation rate expected to hit 720%. It doesn't explain how Venezuela's currency has lost 93% of its value in two years.

That's because the drought is not the root cause of these problems. It is a relatively minor contributing factor. The root cause is Chavismo. It is about placing cronies in charge of the national bank and oil companies. It is about expropriating private businesses. It is about spending way too much money. It is about the destruction of the rule of law and the corruption of the court system.

Yet all of this seems to have escaped you. You don't see how any of this can be traced back to Hugo Chavez - whose performance could not have possibly been improved. Instead, it must be the weather.

You sound like the same people who blamed all the problems of the Five Year Plan at anything else other than Stalin and the Soviet system. Nope, it's not because this kind of socialism doesn't work - it has to be somebody's else's fault. Hence my sarcasm.

As for the OP - simple, get rid of Chavez. It's that simple. You'll still have some level of corruption and bad governance, but Venezuela will avoid the distinction of being the next Zimbabwe, and they'll have at least something to show for all those years of high oil prices.
 
I'm well aware. But Brazil was never left-populist; Lula was a mainline social democrat, and as a result, Brazil does not have the inflation problems that Venezuela and Argentina are experiencing. Even Kircher was a social democrat rather than a socialist - he just engaged in Peronist political polarization, setting the stage for Fernandez to nationalize industries and run heterodox monetary policy even when it was time to tighten.
Plus Argentina was out of the financial markets due the 2001 default. Avoid that (somehow) and, depending on the debt to gdp ratio, it's entirely possible for Kirchner and specially Fernandez to finance deficits with debt, not inflation.
 
Look at those boring things people always ignore like building strong institutions, implementing rule of law, creating a sovereign wealth fund etc. An economy that is primarily reliant on primary resources can result in a stable political environment such as Botswana or Norway, if there is the political will. Find that & the right person or group and we can have a stable prosperous Venezuela.
 
Look at those boring things people always ignore like building strong institutions, implementing rule of law, creating a sovereign wealth fund etc. An economy that is primarily reliant on primary resources can result in a stable political environment such as Botswana or Norway, if there is the political will. Find that & the right person or group and we can have a stable prosperous Venezuela.

Please do not put Botswana and Norway in the same sentence. Botswana is well-run by sub-Saharan standards, but by Latin American ones, eh. It's trying to leverage its diamond wealth toward human development, but it still lags.
 
Look at those boring things people always ignore like building strong institutions, implementing rule of law, creating a sovereign wealth fund etc. An economy that is primarily reliant on primary resources can result in a stable political environment such as Botswana or Norway, if there is the political will. Find that & the right person or group and we can have a stable prosperous Venezuela.
A quick wiki search says Botswana has 2 million people. It's easy to run an economy based on primary resources if you have a small population base. Such countries simply don't need to generate to many jobs, so if the direct and indirect employment generated by the primary goods extraction is relatively little, who cares?
 

So, since I "sound like" someone who would say alot of idiotic ****, I must be someone who secretly thinks those things.

Charming.

Stop assuming that I'm saying things that I'm not.

Sounds like to me you are trying to place some of that blame on America. "Of course if Chavez didn't spend $18 billion on behalf of Cuba, that money could've been spent on Venezuelans. But he had no choice because... America!"

This being a particularly egregious case.

I was saying that Chavez had reasons for feeling threatened by America that seemed rational from the information available to him at the time. As such, the choice to spend large amounts strengthening allies was not obviously incorrect given the information the Venezuelan government had.

That is a world away from saying "America forced him and it was the right choice to waste money all over the world".

A drought impacting hydroelectric power doesn't explain why Venezuela has run out of toilet paper. It doesn't explain why food, consumer staples, and basic medicine has disappeared.

In fact it does. Electricity is important in any number of basic industries in Venezuela (or, for that matter, anywhere in the world). Without it, those industries must shut down, meaning that local production is crippled and trade is even more dependent than usual on oil which is at rock bottom prices currently.

This means more needs to be imported, while food, consumer staples and basic medicine supply chains lack the electricity to run the refrigerators needed to distribute these things and to store them in shops, medical centers and homes. (The lack of refrigeration for vaccines is causing Venezuela serious problems right now.)

As far as corruption and lack of investment in the state oil company, certainly Chavez was a malign actor in this area. But given the low oil prices today, improvement in this area alone cannot lift Venezuela to the "good economy" the challenge demands.

Even when compared to similar corrupt thugs of energy based states, he is the worst. There hasn't been any similar kind of collapse and shortages in Putin's Russia (even with sanctions on it, and him spending money on wars in Ukraine and Syria) or Morales's Bolivia despite their dependence of energy revenue like Venezuela. If you compare to Latin America in general, again no such disaster regardless if the country is Peru, Colombia, or Brazil. Brazil has economic difficulties right now, but nothing like Venezuela.

...

You might want to compare the 1999-present statistics on all of these countries. I recommend using at least 3 data sets so you don't get misled by any artifacts of the methodology used to build any data set (the CIA, IMF and World Bank numbers make for a good starting point).

Note that up until the drought, all of these countries followed roughly similar trajectories. When the drought hit, Brazil and Venezuela started having problems, with Venezuela's being particularly severe.

But you seem to think this is coincidence, despite Venezuela following a similar trajectory for a Latin American country for the 14 years of Chavismo before the drought hit.

fasquardon
 
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