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uninterrupted posted:2. Are an easy way for the opposition (which is mostly the Venezuelan upper class) to attack the poor, because they support Maduro. The opposition has a large majority in the National Assembly. Venezuela must be incredibly wealthy, to have such a massive upper class! Why, the whole society must look like an inverted pyramid.
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Feb 27, 2019 18:58
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uninterrupted posted:Removing price ceilings is absolutely a revenue raising move. How much tax do you thing the government collects on a $1 bag of potatoes versus an identical $10 bag of potatoes? I don’t know, what is the Venezuelan potato tax?
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Feb 27, 2019 18:58
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Pharohman777 posted:https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...m=.296bf1fcddc1 I’m sorry I don’t take media sources owned by American oligarchs seriously, please find an objective sources. Also again: why do you think the focus is price controls and not capital investment in agriculture? Why is the only solution from the coup supporters having more people starve? Especially since government-funded capital investment in agriculture would fix the crisis way faster than “let the poor starve until farmers can bring in enough money off selling to the wealthiest of the country.”.
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Feb 27, 2019 19:01
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uninterrupted posted:I’m sorry I don’t take media sources owned by American oligarchs seriously, please find an objective sources. Ok, so what sources are objective? What English-language sources meet your approval?
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Feb 27, 2019 19:03
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ditty bout my clitty posted:This Maduro character is not very madure This gimmick wasn’t funny when Control Volume did it in CSPAM either. Go away.
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Feb 27, 2019 19:14
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uninterrupted posted:I’m sorry I don’t take media sources owned by American oligarchs seriously, please find an objective sources. Where is the government supposed to get that capital though? Chavez promised the farmers who benefitted from his land reform that he would supply them with seeds, and tractors, and fertilizer. The Venezuelan government has not delivered on those promises, in large part because it can’t. Venezuela doesn’t have enough foreign currency to meet its import needs. You say removing price controls will cause more people to starve. Yet how well has the current system served the people? What will be the result of keeping the current system as it is now? How do you expect it to perform in the future? By starving domestic industry of investment Chavez and Maduro have sacrificed future output for lower prices today. It is not a sustainable policy.
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Feb 27, 2019 19:16
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Squalid posted:Where is the government supposed to get that capital though? Chavez promised the farmers who benefitted from his land reform that he would supply them with seeds, and tractors, and fertilizer. The Venezuelan government has not delivered on those promises, in large part because it can’t. Venezuela doesn’t have enough foreign currency to meet its import needs. and when you ask "where did all the money to do domestic investment go," well. remember! the sanctions are because we care so much about the people of Venezuela!
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Feb 27, 2019 19:18
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Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:and when you ask "where did all the money to do domestic investment go," well. If the US wants to see the state oil company privatized, the easiest path forward is to drop the sanctions and let Venezuela take out loans they can't repay with be company assets as collateral. It's weird that we're letting the Chinese corner the market.
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Feb 27, 2019 19:27
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Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:and when you ask "where did all the money to do domestic investment go," well. Domestic investment in farmers was not good even before any sanctions though.
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Feb 27, 2019 19:28
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Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:and when you ask "where did all the money to do domestic investment go," well. I think the evidence is clear sanctions have effected these problems since 2017. It doesn’t explain all or even most of the decline in domestic Venezuelan production however. Venezuelan sugar production peaked in 2006 at 8 million tons, and by 2016 had declined to 3.1 million, according to FESOCA. Livestock production peaked in 2011, corn in 2006. We see some dramatic declines in 2017 as a result of decreased imports of fuel, fertilizer, parts, and etc. but it is still a continuation of longer trend.
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Feb 27, 2019 19:37
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Norton the First posted:If the US wants to see the state oil company privatized, the easiest path forward is to drop the sanctions and let Venezuela take out loans they can't repay with be company assets as collateral. It's weird that we're letting the Chinese corner the market. Actually not, because in that scenario it’s doubtful Venezuela would ever be exposed to the US financial system any more than needed, given the US and its allies steal the foreign holdings of any country it doesn’t like. Chinese/Russian banking is objectively safer for any non-US-aligned country.
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Feb 27, 2019 19:39
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uninterrupted posted:Actually not, because in that scenario it’s doubtful Venezuela would ever be exposed to the US financial system any more than needed, given the US and its allies steal the foreign holdings of any country it doesn’t like. Oh, Maduro's government could just take or leave Western capital, huh? So we agree that the pre-2017 sanctions had no effect on the Venezuelan economy. It's not like the government is in desperate need of hard currency or anything.
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Feb 27, 2019 19:44
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He has no knowledge of economic systems or financial backgroud so everything hes posting is regurgitated telesur article
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Feb 27, 2019 19:48
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Norton the First posted:Oh, Maduro's government could just take or leave Western capital, huh? So we agree that the pre-2017 sanctions had no effect on the Venezuelan economy. It's not like the government is in desperate need of hard currency or anything. I’m saying right now, if the US dropped all sanctions, it’s much more likely that Maduro would limit their exposure to the Western financial market; as the seizures of Venezuelan assets are now a huge concrete risk. I’m not sure if you’re just poorly educated in finance or trying to score D&D Argument Points but you should take a more nuanced look at your arguments. Arguing the US has made no efforts to destabilize Venezuela pre-2017 is ahistoric and makes you look wildly ignorant.
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Feb 27, 2019 19:50
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uninterrupted posted:I’m not sure if you’re just poorly educated in finance or trying to score D&D Argument Points but you should take a more nuanced look at your arguments. Arguing the US has made no efforts to destabilize Venezuela pre-2017 is ahistoric and makes you look wildly ignorant. I'm making fun of your ignorant and completely ad-hoc arguments. If you want to argue, which you have, that the sanctions through 2016 contributed to Venezuela's woes, the only mechanism for that is that the sanctions discouraged Western investment in Venezuela, diminishing the regime's access to Western finance capital. You cannot argue that, while also arguing that actually, Venezuela doesn't want Western investment anyway, so nyah!
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Feb 27, 2019 19:59
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I think the argument would be more along the lines that Venezuela no longer wants Western capital, given what happened to its gold reserves. Which, by the way, would be a 'ballistic-missiles-on-the-way' or thereabouts offense to a developed country, but since it's Venezuela everybody just shrugs.
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Feb 27, 2019 20:02
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mortons stork posted:I think the argument would be more along the lines that Venezuela no longer wants Western capital, given what happened to its gold reserves. Which, by the way, would be a 'ballistic-missiles-on-the-way' or thereabouts offense to a developed country, but since it's Venezuela everybody just shrugs. If that were practical -- and it's not, unless you're fine with China's sovereign wealth fund owning PDVSA within the next decade, which should presumably bother the people who keep going on about privatization -- then hey, no harm, no foul, with regard to the previous sanctions. uninterrupted contradicts himself, because he doesn't care about making sense, only on finding more ways to complain about the US. "They don't need US capital/how dare the US wage economic war by cutting off their supply of US capital!" is laughable.
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Feb 27, 2019 20:09
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Norton the First posted:If that were practical -- and it's not, unless you're fine with China's sovereign wealth fund owning PDVSA within the next decade, which should presumably bother the people who keep going on about privatization -- then hey, no harm, no foul, with regard to the previous sanctions. Norton the First, I feel like you’re projecting a bit with your “ad-hoc argument” comment. I don’t think anyone else in this thread would argue that if sanctions ended tomorrow, Maduro would not limit the amount of Venezuelan assets the US can steal. Your attempts to make this an argument about the effects of sanctions doesn’t really follow and appears to be a failed attempt to ‘dunk’. To your one somewhat coherent point though, US sanctions affect access to financing beyond the US, as is widely understood. Foreign financial groups trading with sanctioned countries can themselves be blocked from the US market. This increases the risk to lending money, which decreases the pool of credit which can be accessed, and increases missed payment penalties, interest, collateral requirements, etc. If you look at my earlier post this morning, the US is looking to restrict the travel and access to the US market of David Martinez for a perfectly legal loan.
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Feb 27, 2019 20:20
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e: nm
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Feb 27, 2019 20:28
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us bad because us cut off western capital Us bad for trying to open country to foreign investment us bad because burned fake aid Us bad for smuggling guns into country Us bad for false flagging burning aid
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Feb 27, 2019 20:32
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Oil prices dropped, causing a major economic collapse in Venezuela, and the government response was rendered ineffective by heavy corruption and flawed policies. The severe deprivation inflicted upon the Venezuelan populace led to riots, which led to political instability and encouraged opposition figures to attempt coups, while the government committed human rights abuses as it attempted to violently suppress the dissent. Now, am I talking about the last few years...or am I talking about 1988-1993? Venezuela's economic problems run way deeper and older than any of the following:
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Feb 27, 2019 20:39
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Norton the First posted:If the US wants to see the state oil company privatized, the easiest path forward is to drop the sanctions and let Venezuela take out loans they can't repay with be company assets as collateral. It's weird that we're letting the Chinese corner the market. that particular clause is my strongest evidence for some wonks at State involved in the process being non-horrible (or at least wanting US sanctions to be perceived as non-horrible) fun fact, not too long ago (but before the current debacle), a bunch of PDVSA's Caribbean assets that were used as collateral prior to the ban got parceled out to creditors, including some of the big scary names in US finance
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Feb 27, 2019 22:22
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Pharohman777 posted:The price controls have ruined farms, since farmers dont make back enough to recover the costs to grow crops and feed animals. If the government actually subsidized and compensated farmers and bakers for selling stuff they would take a loss on, the price controls might have been good. this isn't a problem that could be solved by nationalizing or democratizing the agricultural sector, obviously you'd still have to subsidize a state company or a little collective if they were required to sell their poo poo at below the price of production Main Paineframe posted:Oil prices dropped, causing a major economic collapse in Venezuela, and the government response was rendered ineffective by heavy corruption and flawed policies. The severe deprivation inflicted upon the Venezuelan populace led to riots, which led to political instability and encouraged opposition figures to attempt coups, while the government committed human rights abuses as it attempted to violently suppress the dissent. do you think there's any meaningful chance of any venezuelan government being able to escape the trap, or are they pretty much hosed regardless and it's just a question of how badly and in which ways?
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Feb 27, 2019 22:25
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Venezuela has always been a petrostate for the better part of the century, there is no way to change that state of affairs without pouring serious capital into alternative industries. That capital is not forthcoming, and even during periods of high oil revenue it is insanely difficult to redirect investments from the oil sector. So yeah Venezuela is hosed.
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Feb 27, 2019 22:35
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GreyjoyBastard posted:this isn't a problem that could be solved by nationalizing or democratizing the agricultural sector, obviously Venezuela has long traded oil for food and other things abd had a lack of subsidised argiculture. Unfortunately the coup occured a little while before the oil profits was getting to its peak and the practice of none ample subsidied continued. Communist corruption continued the status quo. It is doubtful that the US didnt know just how badly the country would suffer due to the rampant corrption in the oil industrtm but most staticisrics used only rely on the dollar per barrel variant. However we must also factor in oil production dropping aswell. So oil price drops from (fictional examples) 100 to 40 bucks, and at 1000 barrels you made 100 a barrel now you make 40, in unison with price drop oil production also fel. so you're making 30% as many barrels at 40% of the price of oil its a massive difference. pdvsa never maintained the equipment needed to pump the very difficult to work with venezuelan heavy oil type. They hired unqualified friends to collect ghost paychecks and sold ghost maintenance contracts.
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Feb 27, 2019 22:40
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Main Paineframe posted:Oil prices dropped, causing a major economic collapse in Venezuela, and the government response was rendered ineffective by heavy corruption and flawed policies. The severe deprivation inflicted upon the Venezuelan populace led to riots, which led to political instability and encouraged opposition figures to attempt coups, while the government committed human rights abuses as it attempted to violently suppress the dissent. While Chavez and Maduro have definitely continued bad policies inherited from their predecessors, they've also added a few new problems that have made the current crisis worse. In 1993 President Carlos Andrés Pérez, who Chavez famously tried to coup in 1992, was impeached for corruption, stripped of his Presidential immunity by the Venezuelan Senate, and removed from office by the National Assembly. He was an unpopular leader who presided over a severe economic crisis, so it is not surprising that was removed by political opponents. He ultimately served several years in jail for his crimes. I'm pretty sure he really was corrupt, but he wasn't responsible for the collapse in oil prices which wrecked the economy and the economy was really what everyone was mad about. When people got mad, they were actually able to push for real change in Venezuelan politics. If it had few other virtues, the sclerotic Venezuelan democracy of the late 20th century at least functioned as a safety valve, allowing political discontent and class conflict to manifest in nondestructive ways. That political openness was what allowed Chavismo to thrive and develop, with the people genuinely able to fight and achieve what they believed to be necessary reforms within the legal political system. In 2014 when the opposition won control of the National Assembly, it appeared Maduro might suffer the same fate as Perez. Instead of accepting this state of affairs, the PSUV chose to fight via gross procedural manipulations. While usually their actions were vaguely within the letter of the law, provided you squinted a bit, the effect was to shut down the normal process of political change and government transition. In this they were bolstered by Chavez's changes to the constitution, which strengthened the executive and weakened separation of powers. Further while corruption was not new during the Chavez era, it is generally considered that under his leadership a culture of blatant corruption extended to most of the PSUV leadership. As a result if they ever left office, they would likely be exposed to prosecution just like Perez. Therefore it makes sense that they are willing to do anything to prevent that from occurring. In effect Venezuela has closed and sealed the safety valves that permitted discontent to blow off through harmless or even productive political activism. So it is not surprising when the whole system explodes.
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Feb 28, 2019 02:04
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GreyjoyBastard posted:this isn't a problem that could be solved by nationalizing or democratizing the agricultural sector, obviously It's hard to say. In large part, I think it depends on how much leeway the US and Europe give them in the way of favorable trade terms and protection from big investor fuckery. So it's possible, but not very likely. This is something that affects a lot of poor countries in some way: if a country didn't have a diversified production economy by the 60s or so, then it became extremely difficult to do so without either getting a lot of very generous outside help and preferential treatment (for example, Japan and South Korea), or selling most of your economy to investors from already-wealthy countries and then stealing it back after they build it up (for example, China and Iran). The problem is that building up new industries is expensive to begin with, and those new industries then require heavy support to survive because they have to compete on the global market against other countries' already-developed industries. It's a huge economic burden that can take a long time to become a net gain, and there's no guarantee that it ever will: these infant industries may never be able to become competitive on global markets. After all, it's not enough to just build some paper factories or whatever - they also have to be noticeably cheaper or better than Chinese or European paper factories. Otherwise, why would anyone bother to buy from Venezuela when the existing paper producers already churn out more than enough to meet global needs? So trying to develop new industry is not only extremely expensive but also a huge risk, and even if it works, it takes a long time to take effect and even longer before the populace starts seeing any benefits. People like to make cracks about petrostates that cling to oil despite the fact that their economies crash every time prices move a bit, but stop and think about it: how many former petrostates can you think of? Plenty of them have tried to break their dependence, but found progress to be slow or nonexistent. Even the fabulously rich Saudi Arabia has so far failed to make much progress on diversifying their economy. It's certainly attractive to rely on the easy prosperity of those big oil dollars, but just spending that money on factories instead of social services wouldn't necessarily have been enough to break Venezuela free from oil prices. A century or two ago, the answer to all of that would have been protectionism, imposing trade restrictions to at least give those fledgling industries a domestic advantage, creating a market to feed the new industries without relying solely on investment or subsidies. But these days, the West is very insistent on free and open trade, and protectionist measures are met with extremely strong international opposition. So in practice, modern industrialization usually ends up in turning your country into an economic colony to a major power one way or another, which then invests money into building up that country's economy...in exchange for hoarding the vast majority of the benefits for themselves.
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Feb 28, 2019 02:34
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I mean it's hard for petrostates to escape the boom-bust cycle, but Chavez also did everything in his power to exacerbate its extremes. Everybody knows oil prices are volatile, to compensate you have to build up large currency reserves and spend them down when prices are low to moderate economic cycles. Instead of doing that Chavez spent as much as possible while prices were high. Venezuelan government spending under Chavez also radically spiked in the year before elections, and then dropping immediately afterwards. When prices crashed Venezuela had no cushion, and the result was economic disaster. If the best we can say about Chavez is that he was no different from his predecessors, its not exactly a ringing endorsement of the Bolivarian Republic. edit: One thing I remember reading in this paper that surprised me was that between 1999 and 2014 Venezuela's economic growth was actually WORSE than the average of the rest of Latin America. It managed 2.5% vs 3% for the rest of the region. That is in spite of historically high oil prices. Add in the years since then and it probably looks a lot worse. Its a remarkably poor performance. Squalid fucked around with this message at 03:13 on Feb 28, 2019 |
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Feb 28, 2019 02:53
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I do think it bares mentioning the spending was at least for the benefit of the common person, but the mismanagement of the PDVSA was an issue in the making that ultimately had only one endpoint of failure, oil prices or not. Unsustainable policies will ultimately do more harm than good in the long run if nothing is done.
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Feb 28, 2019 05:47
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uninterrupted posted:Price controls meant the poor could afford food; they’re an objective good. Mismanagement of the agriculture industry is separate. Price controls don't work in a country with hyper inflation. And they didn't work in Venezuela as we can see by the rampant malnutrition and weight loss. They've been a failure.
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Feb 28, 2019 05:57
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zapplez posted:Price controls don't work in a country with hyper inflation. I would say they contributed to supply issues. The Soviets in comparison kept a relatively tight check on the value of the rubles though very strict controls, and while a form inflation almost certainly happened, it controlled. The problem with the Bolivar obviously it was convertible in a restricted form, but nevertheless, it effectively allowed capital outflows to occur. As oil prices fell, the state no longer had revenues to cover this capital flight and the system collapsed. Obviously, Maduro needed to switch from control to direct aid (ie CLAP or something similar) far earlier. That said, reduced capital investment by the state as impacted supply issues, it is possible that increased supply could have countered falling real prices to some extent. Nevertheless, there is the other issue at play here, that many developing countries rely on oil so easily simply because it is often the only way they can compete in international trade (as other have mentioned). I think in this case the PSUV was too overoptimistic about the viability of prices. That said, at the same time, the steep price drop in 2015 was arguably quite artificial, the Saudis very clearly started to overproduce to counter fracking in the US and Venezuela was (mostly) an unintentional casualty (the prime secondary targets were probably Iran/Russia). Btw, also US sanctions beginning in 2017, very likely are making a bad situation worse. Even if want to write off the PSUV as hopelessly corrupt/incompetent, by hitting the oil industry, you are hitting the country's only viable route for exports. There is no way that isn't going to have a broader effect. Also, lifting price controls may help, but Venezuela already has a viable private dollarized market place for food at this point. The country is in a depression and there is no capital investment to go around. Arguably, the opposition could utilize IMF loans and increased revenue from its oil industry (without sanctions), but that is inflection point heavily controlled by the US. However, Guiado has also talked about not honoring oil for credit deals...which is going to piss off certain foreign powers who aren't hopeless to seek future concessions.
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Feb 28, 2019 14:29
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What Venezuela needs now is privatization and austeriy
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Feb 28, 2019 16:53
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Moridin920 posted:What Venezuela needs now is privatization and austeriy No, that would be stupid, much like the implication that the only options available are criminal dictatorship or austerity.
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Feb 28, 2019 17:18
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Well, there's always the option of a revolution, civil war, or even US invasion, that's true.
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Feb 28, 2019 17:22
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Or just muddling through, by reducing corruption, international help to assist the people, food aid, enforcing the laws, restoring the constitutional prerogatives of the National Assembly and the actual democratic nature of Venezuela, etc etc. International support and largess for the people and standing behind them, as they deserve better. Civil war and revolution, it goes without saying, would magnify their suffering even more.
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Feb 28, 2019 17:25
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The things you're describing lead to austerity, because the person implementing them is promising to implement austerity in exchange for international support.
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Feb 28, 2019 17:29
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Got a source for the austerity claim?
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Feb 28, 2019 17:35
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You mean besides the dude promising to end what little welfare venezuelans get and sell off all the national oil?
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Feb 28, 2019 17:37
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Do you have a source? That's...not....an accurate description of his stated policies anywhere I can see. The closest I can get is trying to specifically set up an alternative to CLAP because it's such a corrupt joke, and, like...sell off the national oil? That...that's what they do, yes. They sell oil to other countries.
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Feb 28, 2019 17:41
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Moridin920 posted:What Venezuela needs now is privatization and austeriy Austerity is being used as buzzword in this thread to virtue signal evil economic policies its really funny and obviously comes from media sources with zero economix understanding solely attempting fearsmear WAR CRIME GIGOLO fucked around with this message at 17:50 on Feb 28, 2019 |
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Feb 28, 2019 17:48
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