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Cicero posted:As opposed to those other socialist governments that didn't turn authoritarian, like, uh... Norway and Sweden. If you want to go Latin America, Uruguay's ex-president was socialist as all hell. They're just not the ones screaming about how the US is evil so they don't get the "gently caress you dad" left-wing fringe in America excited.
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Oct 22, 2015 06:21
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Adventure Pigeon posted:Norway and Sweden. If you want to go Latin America, Uruguay's ex-president was socialist as all hell. They're just not the ones screaming about how the US is evil so they don't get the "gently caress you dad" left-wing fringe in America excited.
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Oct 22, 2015 06:41
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Cicero posted:I meant real socialist states, y'know, the ones with the planned/command economies and a minimal or non-existent free market, which is what Venezuela has been moving towards with the various nationalizations (and is clearly what Chavez and Maduro were aiming for). Social democracies that have both strong public and private sectors are fine, everyone knows those can work ok. Vietnam? I dunno if that counts though, since even it's moved towards a mixed economy since the mid-1980s.
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Oct 22, 2015 06:49
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ComradeCosmobot posted:Vietnam? I dunno if that counts though, since even it's moved towards a mixed economy since the mid-1980s.
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Oct 22, 2015 06:56
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Azran posted:Rocket League is real good, don't feel bad!  are you a wizard?
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Oct 22, 2015 08:23
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Cicero posted:I meant real socialist states, y'know, the ones with the planned/command economies and a minimal or non-existent free market, which is what Venezuela has been moving towards with the various nationalizations (and is clearly what Chavez and Maduro were aiming for). Social democracies that have both strong public and private sectors are fine, everyone knows those can work ok. The issue is beyond some scattered nationalization and price controls, there really isn't any real ideological relation between the PSUV and Marxist-Leninist states. If anything Venezuela is a good example of how trying to issue price controls is mostly a free market economy doesn't work at all. Anyway, nationalizations at least once happened quite often in social democracies, the big difference is price controls. We will see if the PSUV finally kills the idea of radical price controls, because they really just don't work and encourage overbuying and eventually re-selling. It would have been so much smarter to just have used to resources on the missions and direct assistance than pissing away literally all of their resources on an economic idea (price controls) that no one (not even leftists) was seriously interested in. That said, I guess you could say price controls also undermined most of the bloc states with the same issue. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 10:57 on Oct 22, 2015 |
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Oct 22, 2015 09:33
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Cicero posted:I meant real socialist states, y'know, the ones with the planned/command economies and a minimal or non-existent free market, which is what Venezuela has been moving towards with the various nationalizations (and is clearly what Chavez and Maduro were aiming for). Social democracies that have both strong public and private sectors are fine, everyone knows those can work ok. postwar britain
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Oct 22, 2015 09:39
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Hugoon Chavez posted:
It's just the first game that came to mind when I think what I'd spend $20 on 
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Oct 22, 2015 10:41
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The WSJ published an article yesterday about corruption at PDVSA (http://www.wsj.com/article_email/u-s-investigates-venezuelan-oil-giant-1445478342-lMyQjAxMTE1NzIyMjAyMTIwWj). It's full of gems, so forgive me for the quote-fest:quote:Now, U.S. authorities have launched a series of wide-ranging investigations into whether Venezuela’s leaders used PdVSA to loot billions of dollars from the country through kickbacks and other schemes, say people familiar with the matter. The probes, carried out by federal law enforcement in multiple jurisdictions around the U.S., are also attempting to determine whether PdVSA and its foreign bank accounts were used for other illegal purposes, including black-market currency schemes and laundering drug money, these people say. quote:No charges have been made public in the PdVSA matter and it is possible none will be filed. Earlier this month federal prosecutors from New York, Washington, Missouri and Texas met in person or by teleconference in Washington to coordinate actions and share evidence and witnesses in the various PdVSA-related probes, say three people familiar with the matter. The meeting also included agents from the Department of Homeland Security, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies, these people say. quote:Mr. Ramírez was also suspicious of outsiders, say people who worked closely with him, so he placed relatives in senior positions. His mother-in-law, Hildegard Rondón, a former Supreme Court judge, was a top lawyer for the energy ministry. Mr. Ramírez’s brother-in-law Baldo Sansó was an aide who handled much of the oil company’s international bidding processes. And Mr. Ramírez’s wife, Beatrice Sansó, managed PdVSA’s cultural branch. quote:People close to Mr. Salazar say he enjoyed a life of private jets and sumptuous meals in the company of beauty pageant contestants. He was known to lead his own private orchestra, singing romantic ballads in concerts attended by friends and employees, these people say. quote:Inadequate financial controls made it difficult to detect fraudulent transactions, say current and former PdVSA officials. In 2005, Mr. Chávez created off-budget funds that spent billions in petrodollars generated by PdVSA on such things as subsidized housing and projects for Venezuela’s allies. The funds weren’t subject to central-bank controls. “There was no auditing in the management of the money,” says Ramon Espinasa, a PdVSA chief economist before the Chávez takeover, in an interview. In other news, amongst Maduro's announcements a couple of days back was the appointment of Diosdado Cabello's brother, Jose David Cabello as Minister of Commerce. The guy is currently Minister of Industries, Commerce and the National Center of Exterior Commerce (CENCOEX), formerly CADIVI, which manages the allotments of foreign currency for private individuals and companies. I mean, come on, at least have the decency to appoint a second cousin or something like the rest of the top chavista guys do. Labradoodle fucked around with this message at 12:12 on Oct 22, 2015 |
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Oct 22, 2015 12:08
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The only actual communist (I know of) in this thread's only post was to criticise the PSUV for shite economic policy.
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Oct 22, 2015 12:19
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What the gently caress kind of super-mutants are these evil Venezuelan commies making if they're strong enough to grind up a watch with a mortar and pestle? Or is it bullshit made to make him sound extremely wasteful, hmmm...
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Oct 22, 2015 12:20
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Pack it in, boys! Forget that 2-foot stack of incriminating documents, this anecdote has ruined it all. Also, they make electric mortars and pestles, you know. Or he could have just smashed them up a bit to make a point.
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Oct 22, 2015 13:32
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I love the idea that he had a dedicated mortar and pestle just to gently caress with people's watches, I also choose to believe he snorted the remains during orgies with Venezuelan beauty queens  .
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Oct 22, 2015 13:43
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Edit: Never mind, misunderstood something.
Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 14:06 on Oct 22, 2015 |
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Oct 22, 2015 14:04
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Honestly that sounds about right considering how cartoonishly evil they've become.
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Oct 22, 2015 14:12
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I like to think that he's using at least some of the watch powder to mix into smoothies using opposition supporters' tears. Also, how convenient is it that the people most capable of holding high-level public offices are so often closely related? Jorge Rodriguez (former VP, head of the CNE and now mayor of the Libertador municipality) is Delcy Rodriguez's brother, who is the current Foreign Affairs Minister and former Minister of Communications. Diosdado Cabello's brother is the Minister of a bunch of things as Labradoodle pointed out, and Diosdado's wife (Marlenys Contreras) is the Minister of Tourism.
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Oct 22, 2015 15:10
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I can only assume that if it is true its an electric M&P. Not because that task would take superhuman strength but because it would be no fun to sit there and wait for your host to grind everybody's watches to dust before handing out new ones as a party favor.
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Oct 24, 2015 02:31
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Can someone quickly sum up the core reasons for the shortages? Is it just inflation loving with imports?
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Oct 24, 2015 02:55
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Demiurge4 posted:Can someone quickly sum up the core reasons for the shortages? Is it just inflation loving with imports? The whole wildly spiraling inflation plus the crashing economy is playing hell with imports, yes.
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Oct 24, 2015 02:58
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icantfindaname posted:postwar britain
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Oct 24, 2015 02:59
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Demiurge4 posted:Can someone quickly sum up the core reasons for the shortages? Is it just inflation loving with imports? You could write a dissertation on this, but here's the most basic gist of it:
I'm missing about a bazillion nuances, but there it is. Venezuela has destroyed its ability to feed itself, and economic restrictions plus rampant corruption make it extremely difficult for food to be imported.
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Oct 24, 2015 03:15
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Demiurge4 posted:Can someone quickly sum up the core reasons for the shortages? Is it just inflation loving with imports? Inflation plus price controls plus an absurdly low fixed "official" exchange rate severely constraining access to hard currency. The end result? Consumers have "lots" of (otherwise worthless) money to buy things fixed at absurdly low prices and stores and factories can't get any dollars with their limited cash flow to import new stock or the raw materials to make it.
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Oct 24, 2015 03:18
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Welp.
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Oct 24, 2015 03:25
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Basically, price controls really aren't the route you should be ever really going in, nationalization may or may not work but meaningful price controls will gently caress with your economy every time. Economies need floating prices as a feedback system, and while you can increase supply or increase demand, set prices will pretty much generally cause a supply shock. The PSUV proved incompetent, authoritarian and corrupt, but I think standing by price controls is what ultimately screwed both them and the country. Low oil prices would have caused a deep recession, and their corruption would have been a burden but price controls are what ultimately spurred hyperinflation and the necessity of currency controls. Hopefully, it may be a decent lesson someday of just what never to do. That said, I think Venezuela hasn't seen the end of non-sense economics, we will see.
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Oct 24, 2015 07:02
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Ardennes posted:Basically, price controls really aren't the route you should be ever really going in, nationalization may or may not work but meaningful price controls will gently caress with your economy every time. Not necessarily. The minimum wage is a price control, for example. But it's evident that what Venezuela is doing with them isn't working.
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Oct 24, 2015 14:37
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Frankly, the fascinating thing about Venezuela is how utterly predictable the whole mess was from the very beginning. But they just went ahead and did it anyways.
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Oct 24, 2015 14:44
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Another corrupt counter-revolutionary sleeper agent has thrown off his cloak and revealed his true form. This time it's Franklin Nieves, a prosecutor with the Public Ministry and one of the men responsible for carrying the government case against Leopoldo Lopez. Rumours surfaced on October 22 that Nieves was missing, possibly since as early as October 19. He re-appeared last night and said that he had left Venezuela with his family. He said that the "distress" caused to him by the national executive and his superiors to mount a "farce" of a case against Lopez forced him to come clean with the truth. He also said that allegations against Lopez were false. Here's the video, and my translation is below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfbJ8CUOiuo quote:I'm Frankling Nieves, National-level No. 41 prosecutor for the Public Ministry con competencia plena [I think this means something like, "I have full powers"]. I was one of the prosecutors who presented the accusations against Leopoldo Lopez, who was sentenced to and is today held in the Ramo Verde prison in Los Teques. Spazzle posted:Frankly, the fascinating thing about Venezuela is how utterly predictable the whole mess was from the very beginning. But they just went ahead and did it anyways. The worse thing is that it's obvious today that the whole thing hasn't worked, and the government's solution so far has been to do the things that broke the country harder. Like Hugoon said, it's not about ideology at all - it's about "How do I remain in power, and how do I extract as much money from this as possible?" Chuck Boone fucked around with this message at 15:15 on Oct 24, 2015 |
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Oct 24, 2015 15:12
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Peel posted:Not necessarily. The minimum wage is a price control, for example. As implemented price controls on goods are usually 10-50% of the market price of the product. Also, I wouldn't necessary conflate wages controls and traditionally price controls since they work rather differently. You don't have panic buying as part of a minimum wage even if you are still setting "wage prices." Also, most attempts at raising a minimum wage haven't led to noticeable economic difficulties, while price controls are notorious at this point. Part of it is just a labor market and a consumer market work rather differently, regulation in one may be not possible in another. Anyway, I think part of the issue is that the actual structure of the Venezuela economy was rather opaque, specifically how price controls and the currency system worked. Once it was readily apparent what they were actually doing, it was clear it was completely doomed to failure. The Missions for the most part were decent ideas that could have worked, but they were effectively ignored in the budget versus the entire import subsidization system they setup. Now they choice at this point: is to go quietly or just became a full autocratic one party state. That said, if they do that, the economy is so hosed, it probably just couldn't last very long. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 15:49 on Oct 24, 2015 |
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Oct 24, 2015 15:39
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I decided when I woke up this morning that I wanted to ruin my chance at having an enjoyable weekend, so I headed over to Venezuelanalysis to see what they were up to. The story at the top of the page is titled, "Maduro Makes Moves toward Economic Reform as New Poll Predicts PSUV Win". I haven't seen a single poll this year putting national PSUV support above the 25% mark, so I was shocked by the headline. Then, I read the article, part of which reads (emphasis added): quote:Chavismo Leads in New Poll Vargas has 4 out of 
Chuck Boone fucked around with this message at 16:49 on Oct 24, 2015 |
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Oct 24, 2015 16:34
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It's the first time I've seen that. You know a poll is biased, you publish it anyway, and then you mention that the poll is biased. At least they're honest about their dishonesty.
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Oct 25, 2015 12:16
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If you want a rough intuitive grasp: as magnitudes go, it's mostly a hard currency crisis at this point. The mismanagement of nationalized supply chains, rumoured shoddy investment in oil extraction, the flow of goods over the Colombian border, the continuation of massive domestic+regional oil subsidies, the experiment with buying gold, grandiose foreign-aid missions to Cuba, etc. are probably not helping but they aren't decisive - Venezuela could still totter on if not for the exchange rate. That aside: a minimum wage is a relative price control, to raise the price of low-productivity labour, relative to goods or other kinds of labour. Venezuela is attempting absolute price controls, to control the price level of goods generally; hence hard currency shortage.
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Oct 26, 2015 02:38
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Chuck Boone posted:Vargas has 4 out of Not to mention the polling pool is 500! 500! That's basically a student project on stadistics and polling. I mean, it's baffling not because it's right or wrong, it's just completely useless, this is not a poll. Phlegmish posted:It's the first time I've seen that. You know a poll is biased, you publish it anyway, and then you mention that the poll is biased. At least they're honest about their dishonesty. At least there's this, it's like a pre-emptive defense against people that would point at the poll being biased. "Before you mention it: yes this is a useless poll that we did between a small, chavist community. And even in a handpicked few we have 25% opposition."
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Oct 26, 2015 09:44
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ronya posted:hard currency shortage. Exacerbated by the legacy of Chavismo. You'd expect a country massively devaluing its currency would become more attractive to foreign investment and tourism, which would provide a source of hard currency, but foreign companies don't want their investments to be nationalized and tourists don't want to be kidnapped and murdered.
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Oct 26, 2015 17:24
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JeffersonClay posted:Exacerbated by the legacy of Chavismo. You'd expect a country massively devaluing its currency would become more attractive to foreign investment and tourism, which would provide a source of hard currency, but foreign companies don't want their investments to be nationalized and tourists don't want to be kidnapped and murdered. 120$ is roughly what a Venezuelan working minimum wage makes in a year. Venezuela should be the ultimate vacation destination right now. My father was there last year and he said that when he exchanged money at the airport, he panicked because the number of Bolivares he received was such that he physically couldn't put it all in his pockets.
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Oct 26, 2015 17:48
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Hugoon Chavez posted:Not to mention the polling pool is 500! 500! That's basically a student project on stadistics and polling. I mean, it's baffling not because it's right or wrong, it's just completely useless, this is not a poll. n=500 is actually a reasonably adequate sample size for this sort of thing, it'd be somewhere around a +/- 5% MOE for Venezuela as a whole at a 95% confidence interval if the respondents were actually randomly selected from the populace most polls of the U.S. general electorate (10x as many people as Venezuela) are only around n=1000 respondents weren't selected randomly from the populace though, so it is in fact total garbage as a national poll even if everything else was done correctly in terms of survey design and data collection
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Oct 26, 2015 18:46
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JeffersonClay posted:Exacerbated by the legacy of Chavismo. You'd expect a country massively devaluing its currency would become more attractive to foreign investment and tourism, which would provide a source of hard currency, but foreign companies don't want their investments to be nationalized and tourists don't want to be kidnapped and murdered. Some devaluation might help, but ultimately having a stable economy and a currency is more important than what is hyperinflation at this point. Yeah so hyperinflation and everything else is a pretty good incentive not to invest in Venezuela. That said, if anything Venezuela might have still been able to pull it together despite all its issues if hadn't gone the route they did with pricing in the first place. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 19:08 on Oct 26, 2015 |
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Oct 26, 2015 19:04
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Phlegmish posted:It's the first time I've seen that. You know a poll is biased, you publish it anyway, and then you mention that the poll is biased. At least they're honest about their dishonesty. This poll is all Jimmy Carter will need to certify the fairness of PSUV's 68 to 32 percent victory in the December elections.
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Oct 26, 2015 20:14
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Nobody has posted about this? Venezuelan Prosecutor Says Opposition Leader’s Trial Was a Farce NYTimes posted:MEXICO CITY — A few weeks ago, prosecutors in Venezuela won the conviction of a prominent opposition leader who had been charged with inciting violence during antigovernment protests. It was widely seen as a sign that the government of President Nicolás Maduro would continue to pursue a hard line against its opponents — and critics inside and outside Venezuela condemned the trial as being politically motivated. Glad that he made it out of the country OK, and hopefully there are many beans left to spill. Not that it wasn't obvious that the outcome of the trial was politically decided but it's good to hear it stated so bluntly by someone who knew the best.
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Oct 26, 2015 21:10
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The opposition doesn't even need to plan a coup or anything similar since they would win the elections by a landslide. The shady thing is how the elections are being rigged by those in power, they even have the guts to pretend that they are the underdog "look at these corporate men asking for a coup" as if any intervention was even needed; internally people would already vote the psuv out. Noone needs or asks for anything other than the votes of every person being counted... At least there are other socialist parties in venezuela that are also critical of the psuv, parties and ideologies are two different things. I'm all for socialism, not for charismatic cults of worship towards your dear leader's wealth dynasty. Mozi posted:Nobody has posted about this? Uruguay just did the same last month to an ex-guerrilla who wanted to publish a book calling certain people out. Ended up sent to jail accused of invented charges. The formula is to confuse public opinion enough and divide it with shocking accusations, divert the attention from the real reasons these people are being imprisioned, so when the real reasons come out among people discussing it ... they become as worthless as the fake diversion. The book wasn't even that controversial ... Higher ups just clenched their asscheeks and sent him to the dungeon out of fear and built up grudges. wiregrind fucked around with this message at 22:59 on Oct 26, 2015 |
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Oct 26, 2015 22:29
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Mozi posted:Nobody has posted about this? Chuck mentioned it earlier and people have been talking about it these days, the Attorney General denied the accusations and said Nieves had been relieved of his duties due to "abandonment". The thing is everyone knows Leopoldo's trial was a farce, no one thinks otherwise except hardcore deluded chavistas, so his declarations aren't exactly shocking. Unless he rode off into the sunset with some damming incriminating evidence I don't see this rattling the government, since they're already being called out for their incompetence, corruption and authoritarianism constantly by the international media. Personally, I don't have a lot of sympathy for the guy. I can understand being scared for his family, but let's be honest here, if the government assigned him to the Lopez case his hands probably weren't clean to begin with. I'll bet he has some nice assets in the US and he was scared of sanctions due to his involvement.
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Oct 26, 2015 23:24
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