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Truga posted:Maduro absolutely had a hand in everything happening in Venezuela since at least 2012, nobody's denying that. Cuba's been in a worse situation for longer and they managed to survive, so obviously if Maduro's goons ran their poo poo competently, they would have probably avoided at least the mass starvation. They probably can't get much more imported farm equipment, parts to maintain their existing farm equipment, as it appears they are having issues keeping enough garbage trucks running (per one al Jazeera video I saw).
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Jun 3, 2019 11:35
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Truga posted:The way I see it, mass starvation under Maduro could have only been avoided by expropriating land and start farming on now state owned land. And Venezuela has a fuckton of land where agriculture works real well for now. The problem is that they did do that. Most food production and distribution became handled by the state, most of the time directly, but also indirectly through price controls and currency controls which directly affect how companies were able to import goods necessary for agriculture. You look at the reports and Venezuela was mostly self sufficient in terms of production of its staple foods, corn, beef, milk, eggs, etc. The problems began with expropriations, that ramped up significantly under Maduro. Many of these expropriated farms and companies became extremely inefficient and idle after being expropriated, because they were managed poorly, mostly by people who had no idea on how to run them, appointed due to nepotism, or for being in the military. Venezuela was absolutely able to import whatever goods it needed. It received a much publicized award from the UN FAO for apparently reducing malnutrition, right before shortages really ramped up. Again, this crisis started with Maduro, not with any US action.
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Jun 3, 2019 11:48
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Just want to repost this again https://youtu.be/T2vLoW04Bc4 It’s a giant poo poo show
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Jun 3, 2019 13:39
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Farmers have to acquire Colombian pesos to buy whatever tools/chemicals they need because there is next to nothing in Venezuela. Producing food is an uphill struggle.
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Jun 3, 2019 14:04
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fnox posted:Pay them back, just not right now. Default, prioritize ending the economic crisis first, then restructure the debt. This is not exactly unheard of in world politics, but it is an admission of having hosed up, which is why Maduro instead committed to continue paying the debt he could pay, and just delayed payment whenever he was forced to. The US financial system was repeatedly shocked by Maduro's commitment to honour its payments. In doing this Maduro just committed to give very wealthy people a lot of money as they bought up bonds at a bargain. While the country starved. My friend have you ever heard of shock therapy
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Jun 3, 2019 15:36
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Blue Nation posted:Farmers have to acquire Colombian pesos to buy whatever tools/chemicals they need because there is next to nothing in Venezuela. Producing food is an uphill struggle. Exactly, the reason for the destruction of local production is due to an economic policy that is directly harmful to them. You’re only allowed to sell in bolívares but you don’t need bolívares to buy the stuff you need since it’s all imported. Not being able to freely exchange to a currency that is accepted internationally cripples every part of the economy. It’s hard to understand by foreigners because of how absurd it is, but when you’re forced to take a loss because your income comes in the form of a hyperinflating currency you can’t continue normal operations. Unless you exchange it immediately, your income is always getting depreciated.
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Jun 3, 2019 15:37
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Truga posted:The way I see it, mass starvation under Maduro could have only been avoided by expropriating land and start farming on now state owned land. And Venezuela has a fuckton of land where agriculture works real well for now. I keep seeing people post this and it still confuses me. Tons of land was expropriated after 2005. Following expropriation, Venezuelan agricultural production rapidly started decreasing, before and after the collapse in oil prices.  If you are going to call for nationalization as a solution to under production, you should be able to explain why what was done in the last decade failed to increase production, and how it will be different next time. Typically before when I have pointed this out, land reform advocates have switched emphasis. For most of the people who want land nationalization, the thing about it that really gets them excited is not food self-sufficiency, but destroying land-owners as a political class. Which well alright, but I think most of them overestimate the political significance of rural landowners when Venezuelan politics is overwhelmingly dominated by urban workers and capitalists. Venezuela is not like El Salvador was in 1980. In any case, regardless of how politically convenient it is to eliminate class enemies, you still have to consider production if you don't want people eating trash and dying in the gutter.
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Jun 3, 2019 15:56
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From what I read, while a lot of land was expropriated, the vast majority still remains in private hands. As for why it's not being run better, well: Truga posted:so obviously if Maduro's goons ran their poo poo competently, they would have probably avoided at least the mass starvation. Truga fucked around with this message at 16:08 on Jun 3, 2019 |
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Jun 3, 2019 16:06
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Truga posted:From what I read, while a lot of land was expropriated, the vast majority still remains in private hands. but why would you believe that increased expropriation would have increased production, given the context of an incompetent Maduro government? Your statements are not consistent. In any case, what possible reason do you have to believe that nationalization would have led to increased production under any government? Declines in production started long before Maduro took office. This is why I keep asking where yall are getting your ideas from. . . I know you're not just making these things up on the spot, but its real hard to engage with you when you're just repeating the same lines over and over without connecting them to real world examples or theory or something
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Jun 3, 2019 16:33
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I receive my marching orders from the ghost of Vladimir Lenin himself. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Jun 3, 2019 16:40
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Squalid posted:but why would you believe that increased expropriation would have increased production, given the context of an incompetent Maduro government? Your statements are not consistent. In any case, what possible reason do you have to believe that nationalization would have led to increased production under any government? Declines in production started long before Maduro took office. From what I could read in sources I trust these days, what happened was Chavez's govt has redistributed a relatively small amount of land, which either was originally owned by the government or where ownership of that land was in dispute. The majority of private land remains in private hands. These are a few years old sources, though I don't think much has changed in this since ~2015? Considering that, it appears to me any expropriation/redistribution itself couldn't have hurt the private agriculture all that much? Indeed, people blame price controls and inability to replace broken machinery for the decline, which is fair game. But the problem is, without price controls most people wouldn't be able to afford what little there is. "Price controls bad" sounds great when you have 100 dollars and food costs $10 but you can only buy any once per week. Not so much when you have $100 but the market decided a loaf of bread costs $50. Obviously the solution is going to have to be something else. If that something else is literally "get every family that can do it to grow their own food", it's at least temporarily better than the alternative of "everyone is hungry most of the time", although that kind of large scale action should have started before the crisis got going seriously. Obviously mechanized agriculture is infinitely better, but if you can't get fuel or parts, that poo poo don't fly, and you need some kind of alternative. e: i won't even say this is a good idea i'm sure there's better, i'm just a dumbass working class nerd. it just seems like a mildly better idea than letting people do whatever they're doing instead of actually producing food, since obviously the "work in office -> buy food" thing is not turning out so well right now. Truga fucked around with this message at 17:18 on Jun 3, 2019 |
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Jun 3, 2019 17:10
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fnox posted:
I was more wondering what specific policy changes you think were caused specifically by Maduro. You list some examples here but a bunch of them seem more like long term consequences of the government's attempts to hold power rather than just be the specific and exclusive decisions of Maduro. I'm mostly curious because most posters here who are anti-Maduro seem to also be anti-Chavez. It's a bit unusual to see someone arguing that Maduro taking office was a huge break from the Chavez years and that the cause of Venezuela's problems are overwhelmingly due to actions taken since Chavez' death.
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Jun 3, 2019 17:43
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Truga posted:From what I could read in sources I trust these days, what happened was Chavez's govt has redistributed a relatively small amount of land, which either was originally owned by the government or where ownership of that land was in dispute. The majority of private land remains in private hands. These are a few years old sources, though I don't think much has changed in this since ~2015? Your sources sound wrong, but maybe you just explained them poorly. Why don't you read the wikipedia article: ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_Venezuela Redistribution was largely restricted to government land until 2005, when Chavez began a program more heavily targeted at private land. Of course redistribution is also different from nationalization, a lot of land ended up in the hands of private producers and independent cooperatives. In 2006 Chavez nationalized 10 of 16 sugar refineries. Since that time sugar production has decreased by 66%, according to this report. Now I'm not sure what proportion of land was redistributed, but there appears to be no evidence that the prior efforts increased productivity. I don't understand your point about price controls. Venezuela's problem is there is not enough food. To have enough food, it needs to produce more, or buy more from abroad. You can't feed people with food that does not exist. Somehow you need a plan for production to go up. I'm also not sure you fully grasp the implications of getting "every family that can do it to grow their own food." Venezuela was historically a high income and urbanized society, most people are not farmers. If you send people into the countryside to become subsistence farmers, they will be sacrificing their access to healthcare, education, and other services all for a meager living. Personally, I would try to emigrate before I would do that.
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Jun 3, 2019 17:55
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the only reason my family could eat every single day through the early 90s was because my grandparents had a small patch of land we could use to grow our own food that'd last for about half a year each year, and "all" it took was working through a bunch of weekends during spring summer and fall and watering it daily during summer. personally, i would take that over not having food, but i guess some people prefer to not eat? i also don't see how doing that would be sacrificing health care or education, those are separate issues that need separate solutions.
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Jun 3, 2019 18:08
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Helsing posted:I was more wondering what specific policy changes you think were caused specifically by Maduro. You list some examples here but a bunch of them seem more like long term consequences of the government's attempts to hold power rather than just be the specific and exclusive decisions of Maduro. Maduro doubled down on the worst aspects of Chavez policy. I'm not someone who supported the economic measures that Chavez did, and I directly fault him for creating avenues of corruption such as CADIVI and the Fondo Chino. But I will recognize that he was a more able administrator than Maduro, Chavez was willing to comply to having a workable market economy. This is the difference between him and Maduro, Maduro had no intention whatsoever to maintain a market economy, despite needing it due to just how the oil industry works. The most specific example of policy I can think of is the Ley Organica de Precios Justos. This is often what I refer to when I say price controls. This is a piece of legislation that is flawed in its very core as it is based on a core tenet of Maduro's belief that separates him from Chavez: he believes inflation is just speculation. Due to this law, businesses are not able to adjust their prices to account for inflation, inflation which is caused by a combination of the massive fiscal deficit caused by public spending still depending on the oil barrel being at over $90, and currency controls. I personally saw how items were added to the Ley de Precios Justos, had their prices controlled, and all of a sudden they would disappear off shelves and black markets for them would appear. Currency controls are also a specific area where Maduro tripled down, literally, by creating three tiers of exchange rates for different industries, which did nothing, absolutely nothing for reducing inflation, and only decreased access to foreign currency, driving the black market. The concept of having a black market for currency is so alien to people that I doubt there's an apt metaphor I can use, the currency controls as implemented by Maduro are such an abomination they're hard to even explain. CADIVI already had well documented issues with corruption, which is the entire reason why it got removed. SIMADI, SICAD I and II, DICOM, all they do is make currency exchange far less transparent and far more bureaucratic. Maduro is not a continuation of the same policy, not even close. It's a significant departure. It may have some of the same names but the nonsense of it is innately Maduro's. Truga posted:the only reason my family could eat every single day through the early 90s was because my grandparents had a small patch of land we could use to grow our own food that'd last for about half a year each year, and "all" it took was working through a bunch of weekends during spring summer and fall and watering it daily during summer. ...What's gonna happen to the people working the oil fields? fnox fucked around with this message at 18:30 on Jun 3, 2019 |
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Jun 3, 2019 18:24
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because the Venezuelan working class mostly live somewhere that looks like this: There's no land here for them to farm. Chavez's land reform sent a lot of urban workers into the remote countryside without equipment or seeds or farming experience. There's a disconnect between people live and where you can farm. Obviously people who have land do try and grow food, but its hard to see how that's a viable solution to Venezuela's systemic problems. Every year there are stories about people surviving on the fruit of the mango tree in their yard. It's connected to service provision because by virtue of living in the countryside it is more difficult for rural people to access services, because they live further away from them. Its one of the reason people have tended to move to cities over time. Generally urbanization is good for health and other indicators of national well being, so moving people into rural areas is sort of undesirable. Of course the way things are now it really might be the better choice for a lot of people, even if it is the worst possible solution. idk, maybe the Cuba style special period program would work. Obviously something different needs to be done compared to the past decade at least.
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Jun 3, 2019 18:34
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Truga posted:From what I could read in sources I trust these days, what happened was Chavez's govt has redistributed a relatively small amount of land, which either was originally owned by the government or where ownership of that land was in dispute. The majority of private land remains in private hands. These are a few years old sources, though I don't think much has changed in this since ~2015? "price controls bad" in Venezuela's case is generally shorthand for "price controls managed by economic morons bad / price controls below the cost of production very dangerous" If you're going to have price controls below the cost of production for food (and not have basically everyone partially or fully subsistence farming), you need to either - subsidize private farms a whole bunch - subsidize nationalized farms a whole bunch - import everything or - functionally subsidize the first two via non-controlled goods being profitable enough to offset the (potentially gigantically expensive, if, say, you're in a country with a high poverty rate) controlled-good loss leaders The PSUV decided to quietly hope for the fourth one or assume the third would be enough forever because they were very bad at the first two, and it hasn't gone great. I happen to think some level of intranational food production is a good strategic choice even if you're not a revolutionary socialist state defending yourself against the rest of the world and am therefore dubious of option 3 despite being kinda a fan of international trade. edit and yeah squalid expands on why universal subsistence farming is a difficult prospect to square with a modern state
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Jun 3, 2019 18:34
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Yeah obviously the poo poo started to seriously hit the fan when oil prices cratered, making importing enough food basically impossible.
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Jun 3, 2019 18:36
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Also Truga, thinking about your proposal a bit more. I think it would probably be a good idea to give people there own individual private plots, to cultivate for their own needs. Maybe if they grow more than they need, you could also let them sell the extra? After all probably not everyone will want to farm, you just have to relax price controls a bit so people can sell their surplus legally. at a profit. Seems like a win-win. Also collapses in agricultural product predate the oil price collapse. It probably contributed by cratering the import of fertilizers and machinery, but it can't explain all of the problems.
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Jun 3, 2019 18:45
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Yeah obviously not everyone will want to grow their own food, and hell many people probably can't. Small scale farming is fairly trivial to learn, but it's pretty hard loving work, and some things can be impossible to do solo. On the other hand many could grow more than needed, so they could sell extras to get other stuff. Also yeah, that's the issue. Agricultural output dropped, then followed by a drop in oil prices which meant that the drop couldn't be compensated with importing food either.
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Jun 3, 2019 20:07
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Squalid posted:I keep seeing people post this and it still confuses me. Tons of land was expropriated after 2005. Following expropriation, Venezuelan agricultural production rapidly started decreasing, before and after the collapse in oil prices. I'd be curious to see that graph prior to 2005. fnox said Venezuela was mostly self sufficient in terms of production of its staple foods, corn, beef, milk, eggs, etc., however this segment from a 2005 publication seems to suggest this wasn't the case around that year, and that Venezuelan agricultural was being undermined by imports/policy since the 80s. Library of Congress – Federal Research Division Country Profile: Venezuela, March 2005 posted:Agriculture: Prior to the 1950s and the initiation of large-scale oil exports, agriculture, fishing, and forestry were central to the Venezuelan economy, producing more than half the gross domestic product (GDP). As the petrochemical industry expanded rapidly in the 1970s and 1980s, however, the proportion of the labor force in agriculture dropped from one-fifth to about one-tenth. Agriculture has continued to decline, accounting for about 5 percent of GDP and 10 percent of employment in 2004. Gross agricultural production growth declined 0.3 percent in 2003 but is estimated to grow by 3 percent in 2004 and 0.5 percent in 2005. The country imports most of its food, mainly from Colombia and the United States. Agricultural products include bananas, beef, coffee, corn, eggs, fish, milk, pork, rice, sorghum, sugarcane, and vegetables. E:  The above excerpt is from a FAO publication highlighting some issues with price controls and the agricultural industry in the 90s Corky Romanovsky fucked around with this message at 08:02 on Jun 4, 2019 |
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Jun 4, 2019 07:22
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Corky Romanovsky posted:I'd be curious to see that graph prior to 2005. I am referring to what happened under Maduro. Maduro implemented new expropriations and actions that were disastrous for agricultural output, as the numbers will show. This is yet another sign of proof of Maduro not being a simple continuation of Chavez, as some people in this thread seem to believe. Before him, there weren’t any food shortages. They began with his version of the price controls. I remember very clearly what supermarkets used to look like compared to what they became after merely 2 years of Maduro.
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Jun 4, 2019 11:25
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Squalid posted:Also Truga, thinking about your proposal a bit more. I think it would probably be a good idea to give people there own individual private plots, to cultivate for their own needs. Maybe if they grow more than they need, you could also let them sell the extra? After all probably not everyone will want to farm, you just have to relax price controls a bit so people can sell their surplus legally. at a profit. Seems like a win-win. Sounds like we've got a NEP-man in the thread.
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Jun 4, 2019 14:16
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Corky Romanovsky posted:I'd be curious to see that graph prior to 2005. USDA used to have a convenient site where you could quickly find all these statistics, but for some reason I can't find it a again. Here's an image of the data I saved a few months ago:  Note corn production increases in the initial phase of Chavez's land reform. This is just my speculation but I wouldn't be surprised if land really was being put to better use. I'm not surprised there were a lot of weird issues with import policy before the Bolivarian Republic. A lot of the problems with Maduro have been in his tendency to repeat the same mistakes as those who came but before, but worse.
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Jun 4, 2019 15:48
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I got to throw some things in here because I guess people were ignoring my previous posts. The core issue with Venezuelan inflation happened before Maduro took power and honestly was the fault of Chavez. IF you use up your currency reserves, you are going to experience rapid mounts of inflation, once Chavez used up almost all of those reserves between 2008-2012, very inflation was predictable. Maduro might have pretended it didn't exist but in reality, it was going to happen either way. Furthermore corn production is going to be highly depended on international prices for corn, between 1998-2009, those prices were steadily increasing and the global recession kneecapped them and then the fall in commodity prices around 2015 they took another hit. Furthermore, the government, especially now doesn't have the resources to support farming even if it wanted to. Subsidizing domestic petrol consumption in Venezuela wasn't a good idea but it is has been an issue in Venezuela for decades. Venezuela needed currency controls especially after 2012 simply because there was nothing to back the currency if anything without them inflation might have been even higher. Venezuela bond ratings have declined because the government doesn't have any cash to pay with, it is predictable they would decline. If the government had stopped paying all loans earlier, they couldn't receive any further funding to support themselves: so you could save some money briefly and get screwed soon after. Chavez deserves blame for arguably supporting the Bolivar too much, arguably, too much even 2008-2012. It wasn't an easy choice since the savings of the population would have been eradicated earlier than they were but at least the state could have saved resources it has needed later. (Also, price controls should have been dropped early on because the government couldn't afford the price arbitrage.) Anything else? Ardennes fucked around with this message at 16:12 on Jun 4, 2019 |
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Jun 4, 2019 16:07
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yeah those are good points. although I think if prices and currency stuff was handled better we'd have seen better performance in agriculture and many other sectors. Especially for a sector like sugar, where Venezuela should have had comparative advantages. The production of virtually all agricultural products declines in Venezuela after 2005, even sectors like livestock that should benefit from low feed prices. I still have a hard time understanding all the currency issues. I can tell the policy is weird and makes no sense, but its so weird and confusing that its hard to grasp all the consequences. Its a complex piece of macroecon minutiae. The weird thing about Venezuela not having the resources to support agriculture is it always did a terrible job of supporting it. That's why everyone brings up the failed nationalized sugar refineries. Even though most sugar refiners were nationalized production at those run by the government quickly plummeted, resulting in the majority of production reverting back to private hands. Farmers who benefited from land reform were bitterly complaining about all the support they had been promised but never received as early as 2009, and probably earlier. Possibly the scale of support that was promised was never deliverable. I feel like if you can't afford to support agriculture, you should probably let it support itself. I found Truga's confused and nonsensical proposals to be a funny harkback to the policies of the Eastern bloc. Nationalize the land, but if the nationalized land turns out to be horribly inefficient and under produce, give the farmers their own private plots and let the market provide. It makes no sense but that's basically how agriculture worked in a lot of state-capitalist economies.
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Jun 4, 2019 16:54
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Squalid posted:yeah those are good points. although I think if prices and currency stuff was handled better we'd have seen better performance in agriculture and many other sectors. Especially for a sector like sugar, where Venezuela should have had comparative advantages. The production of virtually all agricultural products declines in Venezuela after 2005, even sectors like livestock that should benefit from low feed prices. That is the thing if you nationalize sugar refiners, you either going to have to pay farmers market rates for sugar or just collective it and force producers to fixed pay those rates. I think the Venezuela government was just stuck inbetween wanting to move in a more socialized direction without going full Stalinist and was stuck with the problems of both (as others have said). Also, in all likelihood, even in an industry like sugar, the government probably should raise tariffs to protect it at least intentionally but if anything by subsidizing imports they were undermining it. They should have stepped back when it wasn't working but I think a big part of the problem was Chavez himself didn't have a clear vision. I don't think Maduro knows what he is doing either, but I contest the point the real issues started with him, but rather it the later years of Chavez. If you want to make large scale changes in an economy you need a clear and direct plan of what is going to happen, I don't think this was the case. Btw, I would say the currency issue is more of a issue with developing countries especially with oil than it is really an issue with socialism or left-wing politics. In comparison with Azerbaijan, which drained over half of its currency reserves in 2015-2016, Venezuela drained 90% of them between 2008-2012....that is actually nuts.
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Jun 4, 2019 17:09
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The currency controls are meant to not make sense. They’re a way of legalizing handouts, a tiny chunk used to go to everyone in the form of CADIVI and the infamous “card scratching”, that’s the reason it was tolerated. It was always a way to guarantee handouts to loyalists and elites, and it’s the reason why so much poo poo in Venezuela didn’t get done. There is absolutely no justification for currency controls. None. It supposedly exists to curb inflation, yet it is its principal cause. It’s actually a throwback from the Neoliberal governments of the 90s who invented a proto CADIVI called RECADI, which ended after a corruption probe indicted 8 officials. The CADIVI probe is even more ridiculous, but Maduro took it to new extremes, along with the Odebrecht connection. And people tend to play this down but ultimately this is the reason why Venezuela’s infrastructure is in shambles. The biggest, juiciest projects were all related to the power grid and water supply. We all know how those projects ended. That just reminded me of a promise Chavez made that he was going to bathe in the Guaire by 2012. Good lord what a joke.
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Jun 4, 2019 17:18
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fnox posted:The currency controls are meant to not make sense. They’re a way of legalizing handouts, a tiny chunk used to go to everyone in the form of CADIVI and the infamous “card scratching”, that’s the reason it was tolerated. It was always a way to guarantee handouts to loyalists and elites, and it’s the reason why so much poo poo in Venezuela didn’t get done. The argument that there is corruption is different than currency controls should exist. If they don't cash is going to flood out of the country easier will greatly increase inflation. You can say the wealthy and the elite will move their money out regardless...but that pretty much what always happens and a real issue with the USD and other Western currencies having reserve status. The issue if anything was Chavez trying to bolster the Bolivar when in reality it was already screwed by 2009.
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Jun 4, 2019 17:36
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I don't know about this Guaidó guy, sounds like a loon https://twitter.com/timgill924/stat...ingawful.com%2F
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Jun 4, 2019 17:52
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Ardennes posted:The argument that there is corruption is different than currency controls should exist. If they don't cash is going to flood out of the country easier will greatly increase inflation. You can say the wealthy and the elite will move their money out regardless...but that pretty much what always happens and a real issue with the USD and other Western currencies having reserve status. I assume some degree of capital flight is inevitable after an oil crash, but with a free floating currency and no price controls, wouldn't this increase the competitive advantage of domestic agriculture, and therefore encourage local production? There would still be inflation, but I wouldn't think the production crashes would be so bad. Oil exports fall -> currency devalues -> Venezuelan sugar, gold, tourism become cheaper, globally more competitive -> non-oil sector increases production. That's the basic expected behavior under a free floating currency yes?
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Jun 4, 2019 18:30
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brugroffil posted:I don't know about this Guaidó guy, sounds like a loon please do not shame the cultural practices of the global south (I'm only 2/3 joking, there are countries where astrology is still a big fuckin deal to this day and I have literally no idea whether there are any in South America and would be genuinely curious to find out)
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Jun 4, 2019 18:35
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GreyjoyBastard posted:please do not shame the cultural practices of the global south Hell Nancy Reagan's astrologer was deeply influential in the Reagan administration.
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Jun 4, 2019 18:39
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Squalid posted:I assume some degree of capital flight is inevitable after an oil crash, but with a free floating currency and no price controls, wouldn't this increase the competitive advantage of domestic agriculture, and therefore encourage local production? There would still be inflation, but I wouldn't think the production crashes would be so bad. The problem was the Venezuela Bolivar wasn't floating, so in this case there would be high international inflation due to the fact that cash was leaving the country. Arguably Chavez should have gotten rid of the peg and just let it decline, this is basically what Russia did. Venezuela didn't, instead they tried to shift the peg but usually, it is was way too overvalued to the honest value of the Bolivar. Btw, you could have capital controls without necessarily a currency peg, more or less Argentina did this.
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Jun 4, 2019 18:46
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Isn't Russia's domestic economy pretty rough? Would following the same currency path have resulted in better outcomes for Venezuela?
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Jun 4, 2019 18:48
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brugroffil posted:Isn't Russia's domestic economy pretty rough? Would following the same currency path have resulted in better outcomes for Venezuela? Rough compared to Western Europe, yes, but honestly, I think perceptions of Russia for the most part of quite a bit off except for maybe parts of the rust-belt in Siberia. It's HDI is around Eastern European portions of the EU (lower than Hungary but higher than Romania and Bulgaria). Btw, I was there when the Rouble declined... surprisingly not that much changed. The price of electronics and appliances shot up but rental prices, food, and most consumer items saw far more modest increases more or less inline with pre-crisis inflation. It absolute certainly would have better outcomes especially in the long term.
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Jun 4, 2019 19:20
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This was some pretty good economic and historical track record to digest. It's depressing to me how instructive the PSUV may be to future collapse of national interests. Many countries may soon have their own guaidos. In other news we were very successful with our arepas tour. I may learn to cook them up myself, because the bread type will cross over so easily to the food I devour on the regular. In Harvard Square there's a Venezuelan place tucked back behind some storefronts that so far was the real standout but their arepas were flatter and denser. Particular style?
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Jun 4, 2019 19:25
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Kavros posted:This was some pretty good economic and historical track record to digest. It's depressing to me how instructive the PSUV may be to future collapse of national interests. Many countries may soon have their own guaidos. most of them have already had them they had fun names like Pinochet, Noriega, and Micheletti, and all went on to accomplish Extremely Good Free Market Reforms (tm) as per direction from their owner/operators in the US State Department. that last one is the source of all those dreaded Honduran refugee caravans you see Republicans losing their poo poo about on a regular basis.
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Jun 4, 2019 20:40
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brugroffil posted:Hell Nancy Reagan's astrologer was deeply influential in the Reagan administration. Yeah but I don't think that's a comparison that makes Guaido look good.  I was thinking more along the lines of Sri Lanka, because of course I was, I'm the only person on this subforum who pays attention to the place unless it recently got blown up on Easter or something. Surprisingly-not-President-for-life Mahinda Rajapaksa had an astrologer/numerologist whose advice on scheduling and such he took extremely seriously, and indeed he was substantially more into that than most high-status Sri Lankans - but it's not exactly unknown for astrology/numerology to feature a little bit in decision-making and they're definitely topics a good many people pay significant attention to over thar. As such, if someone hereabouts out of nowhere posted "oho, Rajapaksa had an astrologer on staff, clearly he was unhinged even for an authoritarian, consulting an astrologer on serious decisions is barbaric and insane", I'd feel just a little uneasy. like i said, mostly joking, dunno poo poo about venezuelan superstitions, and googling "astrology venezuela" is tremendously unhelpful even if I filter out the Guaido stuff
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Jun 4, 2019 23:39
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Reminder that Chinese imperialism in Venezuela and the left getting all its news from regime-funded propaganda outlets are both unquestionably great things. Telesur and Venezuelanalysis are exactly as unreliable as the New York Times and there no difference at all in the scale of, or reasons for, their biases.
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Jun 5, 2019 01:39
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