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Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:given the choice between those two, it's mostly on Chavez. the core problem is and remains the problem that put the PSUV in power in the first place: a third-world country with massive resource deposits faces TREMENDOUS international pressure to become a one-export economy, and when the price of that one export dips, the country promptly explodes. You may want to explain how Maduro's current policies are socialist. Looks an awful lot like hypercharged Osbornian austerity to me.
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Jun 19, 2019 01:00
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Darth Walrus posted:You may want to explain how Maduro's current policies are socialist. Looks an awful lot like hypercharged Osbornian austerity to me. arming the colectivos. Osbornian austerity tends to shy away from giving the people it starves the firepower to turn on it if they lose confidence, and indeed tends to punish such activity with <file photo of last dozen countries Elliot Abrams 'shepherded towards democracy'>. but when you take all the young angry men you need to get your coup on, and get them invested in the success of the regime, you make yourself much more resistant to popular discontent. it's a devolution of powers you do not ever see out of right-wing regimes, because it involves trusting that the people aren't going to immediately throw you out on your rear end, and right wing regimes never trust their people not to do that. as Castro showed the world, though, it's an excellent way to make yourself highly resistant to external coup attempts, and not half bad at insulating you from internal ones as well. you can't eat trust. but it can redirect who you try to take it out on when you get hungry.
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Jun 19, 2019 01:18
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Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:arming the colectivos. Osbornian austerity tends to shy away from giving the people it starves the firepower to turn on it if they lose confidence, and indeed tends to punish such activity with <file photo of last dozen countries Elliot Abrams 'shepherded towards democracy'>. but when you take all the young angry men you need to get your coup on, and get them invested in the success of the regime, you make yourself much more resistant to popular discontent. As far as I can tell, colectivos aren't just random dudes with guns. They're paramilitary units trained and armed by the government, and have extensive crossover with trusted criminal organisations. They're more like a crappy budget version of G4S or Serco, a public-private armed force that makes its criminality overt rather than covert.
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Jun 19, 2019 01:34
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Darth Walrus posted:As far as I can tell, colectivos aren't just random dudes with guns. They're paramilitary units trained and armed by the government, and have extensive crossover with trusted criminal organisations. They're more like a crappy budget version of G4S or Serco, a public-private armed force that makes its criminality overt rather than covert. consider, briefly, that the thing that separates "random dudes with guns" from "paramilitary units trained and armed by the government" is a PSUV guy saying "this is how you clean and fire this thing." the criminal fiefdoms resulting are 900 different types of predictable, bad, and argument for Maduro to go. hard to argue with the results, tho.
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Jun 19, 2019 02:22
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punk rebel ecks posted:How much is Venezuela's current economic state is due to Chavez's legacy collapsing on itself and how much of it is Maduro failing at handling a current crisis. Maduro is definitely worse, but I do think Chavez managed to die at a pretty lucky time to avoid the repercussions of a lot of the polices he implemented that helped lead to the ongoing economic collapse.
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Jun 19, 2019 02:32
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fnox posted:Is Guaido a military dictator now? They're clearly not pushing for anything other than a democratic government, be it as flawed as it may be. He doesn't have to be a military dictator for there not to be democracy. You're just incredibly naïve if you think the US would pour this much effort into a coup and then allow the people to make the wrong choice in a couple of years. They're going to protect their investment.
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Jun 19, 2019 02:42
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WhiskeyWhiskers posted:He doesn't have to be a military dictator for there not to be democracy. You're just incredibly naïve if you think the US would pour this much effort into a coup and then allow the people to make the wrong choice in a couple of years. They're going to protect their investment. I mean the counterpoint here is that the US really didn't put that much effort into it, which is why Maduro is still in charge.
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Jun 19, 2019 02:44
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Acebuckeye13 posted:I mean the counterpoint here is that the US really didn't put that much effort into it, which is why Maduro is still in charge. They thought they'd gotten the minister of defence and much of the military. The fact they were brilliantly played and got absolutely hosed because of it doesn't mean effort wasn't expended.
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Jun 19, 2019 02:47
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WhiskeyWhiskers posted:He doesn't have to be a military dictator for there not to be democracy. You're just incredibly naïve if you think the US would pour this much effort into a coup and then allow the people to make the wrong choice in a couple of years. They're going to protect their investment. Counter point: Daniel Ortega is now President of Nicaragua again. Also counterpoint: the US would have really preferred if Iraq had elected a Prime Minister other than al-Maliki in 2010, preferably someone who wasn't planning on throwing them out of the country.
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Jun 19, 2019 03:24
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Moridin920 posted:Venezuela has its own special set of problems I'm talking more like national debt doesn't really matter if you have a fiat currency but if you are like Greece and you use Euros and owe your sovereign debts in Euros then it does matter. If you devalue your currency to deal with domestic currency denominated debt your borrowing costs will sky rocket.
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Jun 19, 2019 03:40
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Squalid posted:Counter point: Daniel Ortega is now President of Nicaragua again. Also counterpoint: the US would have really preferred if Iraq had elected a Prime Minister other than al-Maliki in 2010, preferably someone who wasn't planning on throwing them out of the country. would you be willing to accept the softer statement "The US is highly unlikely to empower an individual that deviates from the neoliberal consensus, and whoever has the resources of the US behind them is the overwhelming favorite to win an election" ?
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Jun 19, 2019 03:56
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A big flaming stink posted:would you be willing to accept the softer statement "The US is highly unlikely to empower an individual that deviates from the neoliberal consensus, and whoever has the resources of the US behind them is the overwhelming favorite to win an election" ? mhmm. . . I'm not sure. It depends on a lot factors and how much deviation you are talking about. Also what you think the US really wants from Venezuela. I doubt any opposition is really going to go hard against policies like the gas subsidies, although necessity make it likely that policy will be dialed back from the virtually free present circumstances. I think it is easy to overestimate the US's sway on internal affairs in other countries. For example, during the Salvadoran civil war the US tried to lean hard on the junta to initiate land reform. That sounds surprising, however the US used land reform frequently as a means to preempt and outflank communists in places it had influence. However the Salvadoran landholding elite were having none of it, the program was de jure enacted but immediately sabotaged and never went anywhere. Today we can see in Rojava, the US convinced them to change their name to the inoffensive Syrian Democratic Forces, but no amount of money or weapons could convince them to abandon socialism as an ideology. I recall a Rand study on insurgency that complained that no matter how much cash you give a movement or rebellion, it gives you very little leverage to make them change policy. The opposition has basically already agreed to do a lot of things the US wants bad, like cutting Cuba off from subsidized gas. It would stop bad mouthing America at the UN. I think it could probably get oil pumping again. Those are I think the main things I think the US wants, and if it can get those I don't think its going to look too closely at anything else.
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Jun 19, 2019 04:33
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Btw, at least personally, MMT doesn't work unless your currency is a major reserve currency (Euro, USD, Yen) otherwise it will also certainly devalue. Major reserve currencies may slightly devalue but due to their place in international finance as stores of value they hold up.
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Jun 19, 2019 05:50
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Ardennes posted:Btw, at least personally, MMT doesn't work unless your currency is a major reserve currency (Euro, USD, Yen) otherwise it will also certainly devalue. Major reserve currencies may slightly devalue but due to their place in international finance as stores of value they hold up. In the short to medium term, and depending on how much reserve currency govs rely on devaluation. But this is way beyond Venezuela, which doesn't have an important reserve currency, so we can put that to one side.
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Jun 19, 2019 06:15
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Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:consider, briefly, that the thing that separates "random dudes with guns" from "paramilitary units trained and armed by the government" is a PSUV guy saying "this is how you clean and fire this thing." Again, though, that is basically an exaggerated form of Osbornian austerity, which consists of cutting police and military budgets while giving contract after contract to incompetent and corrupt but usefully mercenary publicly-liable private entities. I'm certainly not clear on how the erosion and concealment of established accountability structures for the people who do the jobs of the police and military is socialist. Darth Walrus fucked around with this message at 08:17 on Jun 19, 2019 |
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Jun 19, 2019 08:10
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Darth Walrus posted:Again, though, that is basically an exaggerated form of Osbornian austerity, which consists of cutting police and military budgets while giving contract after contract to incompetent and corrupt but usefully mercenary publicly-liable private entities. I'm certainly not clear on how the erosion and concealment of established accountability structures for the people who do the jobs of the police and military is socialist. at least in theory, the democratization of the government's monopoly on violence is a good idea.
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Jun 19, 2019 08:19
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A big flaming stink posted:at least in theory, the democratization of the government's monopoly on violence is a good idea. Privatisation isn't democratisation. The public don't have a say in the running of the colectivos - they have no accountability structures.
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Jun 19, 2019 08:28
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well yeah in practice its all kinds of fucky, but the principle being it is a good one.
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Jun 19, 2019 08:31
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A big flaming stink posted:well yeah in practice its all kinds of fucky, but the principle being it is a good one. I remain unconvinced that that is the principle behind it, given how consistently Maduro's policies have resembled modern austerity more than socialism.
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Jun 19, 2019 08:33
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True "giving the most violent criminals in society AK-47s and impunity from the law in exchange for them terrorizing your political opponents" has never been tried.
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Jun 19, 2019 09:07
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M. Discordia posted:True "giving the most violent criminals in society AK-47s and impunity from the law in exchange for them terrorizing your political opponents" has never been tried. True, the US prefers Glock 22s. Seriously, though, this is pretty standard practice for a colonial militia. It's just that the country that Maduro is practicing your typical extractive colonialism on is, uh, his own?
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Jun 19, 2019 09:21
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The unusual thing about the colectivo armados is that there's not really much of a centralized authority at all - the comparison that springs to mind off the top of my head (as far as authorized state-adjacent groups go, vs rando insurgents) is the pre-1981 Iranian Basij. Government control over the colectivos is fairly weak and indirect. It's a neat idea, if you don't particularly care that a lot of them engage in extracurricular armed entrepreneurship.
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Jun 19, 2019 15:30
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GreyjoyBastard posted:It's a neat idea, if you don't particularly care that a lot of them engage in extracurricular armed entrepreneurship. It’s not only the colectivos that do this. There are also members of the GNB who moonlight as colectivo members, so the difference isn’t really that clear cut. Some friends from school were kidnapped by uniformed GNB soldiers and held random inside their house a couple years back. That’s one of the things that makes disparaging comments about expats and refugees so enraging, almost every single one has stories like that. Even the ones that are wealthier have stories like that, the anarchy in Venezuela spared no one. Among my group of friends, we’ve been all victims of armed violent crime, gently caress, I’ve been kidnapped and held at gunpoint on a random carjacking. I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I say that most people who have left the country have some form of PTSD from the extraordinary levels of violence in the country.
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Jun 19, 2019 16:49
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https://twitter.com/APjoshgoodman/status/1140686745597599750 This seems about right to me: a divided population, but slightly more of them will go with the devil they know than the puppet devil they don't.
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Jun 20, 2019 06:30
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Literally from the same poll https://www.elimpulso.com/2019/06/17/datincorp-nadie-quiere-a-nicolas-maduro-como-presidente-de-la-republica-17jun/ If you read your article it even says that if a hypothetical election were to happen today, Guaido would win with a 30 point lead. This is why Twitter sucks, the guy who posted it removed the context and you didn’t bother/couldn’t read the article. fnox fucked around with this message at 06:44 on Jun 20, 2019 |
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Jun 20, 2019 06:39
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fnox posted:Literally from the same poll That doesn’t really contradict my point. Regardless of how unpopular Maduro is, Guaido is a non-starter. Having the backing of the superpower that has implemented the sanctions that most Venezuelans blame for their woes will only help Maduro. e: and it’s great that Guaido would beat Maduro in a free and fair election. But you and I agree, I assume, that free and fair elections are not really on the table. We would also agree that that’s largely Maduro’s fault. But that being the case, the way that Guaido has been trying to take power is through a coup, backed by the US. And that’s clearly something most Venezuelans don’t support. We have data that proves this now. Majorian fucked around with this message at 06:56 on Jun 20, 2019 |
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Jun 20, 2019 06:45
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Majorian posted:That doesn’t really contradict my point. Regardless of how unpopular Maduro is, Guaido is a non-starter. Having the backing of the superpower that has implemented the sanctions that most Venezuelans blame for their woes will only help Maduro. Then why would they vote him into into office over Maduro with a 30-point lead? Randarkman fucked around with this message at 07:13 on Jun 20, 2019 |
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Jun 20, 2019 07:08
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Majorian posted:That doesn’t really contradict my point. Regardless of how unpopular Maduro is, Guaido is a non-starter. Having the backing of the superpower that has implemented the sanctions that most Venezuelans blame for their woes will only help Maduro. While you may very well be right, I feel you're kinda reading a bit more into these results than can legitimately be stated.
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Jun 20, 2019 07:31
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Randarkman posted:Then why would they vote him into into office over Maduro with a 30-point lead? Because they didn't; this wasn't an election. It was a poll, outside of the context of an election. Acebuckeye13 posted:While you may very well be right, I feel you're kinda reading a bit more into these results than can legitimately be stated. When the whole basis of Guaido's attempted coup was on him declaring himself president, and most of the country is now saying, "No, you're actually not," I think it's fair to say that that means most Venezuelans didn't support his attempted coup. I'll admit that 68% of the population blaming their woes on U.S. sanctions doesn't necessarily mean that Guaido's support from Trump, Bolton, et al., were the main reasons for why the Venezuelan people didn't end up supporting him, but I think there's a pretty good chance that it was a factor.
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Jun 20, 2019 07:37
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also for my worthless two cents, even if the opposition has been delegitimized in the eyes of most Venezuelans, it's not because of US involvement, it's because they're incompetent and/or ineffective shitbricks that were  personified until they hosed up a coup. I mean sure the US involvement probably matters to some people but fact of the matter is that the opposition is just kinda bad at everything other than organizing giant rallies that don't do anything, and that matters a lot more to most people
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Jun 20, 2019 07:41
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Acebuckeye13 posted:also for my worthless two cents, even if the opposition has been delegitimized in the eyes of most Venezuelans, it's not because of US involvement, it's because they're incompetent and/or ineffective shitbricks that were I'd put more stock in that argument if a full 68% of Venezuelans didn't blame their economic woes on the U.S. sanctions. But that's a huge number - the type you see when the population in question really doesn't like the U.S.' policy towards their country.
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Jun 20, 2019 07:42
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Majorian posted:I'd put more stock in that argument if a full 68% of Venezuelans didn't blame their economic woes on the U.S. sanctions. But that's a huge number - the type you see when the population in question really doesn't like the U.S.' policy towards their country. Unfortunately I think you're being lead astray by a misleading headline. In the article, 68% say their quality of life has been affected by the sanctions, but that's a far cry from "blaming their economic woes" on them. Using Google Translate: quote:4. Sanctions : 68% of Venezuelans believe that international sanctions against the Government of Nicolás Maduro have affected their quality of life. Also, as to the recognition of Guaidó, that may very well be a merely practical recognition that he did not, in fact, manage to become President, and likely isn't any time soon (see also: question 5)
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Jun 20, 2019 07:49
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Majorian posted:Because they didn't; this wasn't an election. It was a poll, outside of the context of an election. Except the poll literally says they would overwhelmingly vote for Guaido over Maduro in an election, why is that irrelevant but the things you mention not? Seems to me that that shows despite US sanctions, despite Guadio's support for US actions, the vast majority of Venezuelans would still rather have him as president rather than the "devil they know". I also believe you are kind of reading more into the whole recognize Maduro/Guaido as president than is actually the case. Looking at in the light of that hypothetical in the same election it seems more to be an acknowledgement of Guaido's failure than an endorsement of Maduro. It's a resignation and acknowledgement of the status quo, Maduro remains president and Guaido calls himself president but bungled it (as the opposition has done for years). But if they had the choice they would overwhelmingly vote for the man who failed at instigating a coup and supports the actions of the US, whose sanctions they mostly reject (though I want to add that ~30% of a country's population supporting harsh economic sanctions against their own country is really hosed up, it should not be that high almost whatever the circumstances, but Venezueala is not a normal case in anyway anymore). What does that tell you? Also popular support is almost completely irrelevant as to why Maduro remains president, if it weren't he would have toppled as numbers have shown for years that the opposition (despite their numerous fuckups and often their own affiliation with the status quo, I believe there were cases some years ago which implicated opposition politicans in government corruption scandals alongside PSUV members) has far greater public support than Maduro in almost any circumstance and have time and time again drawn far more people to the streets to demonstrate than what the government has been able to. Maduro remains in power because he retains the backing of the military leadership. That's it. e: Ah, if that's the translation of the question regarding the sanctions then that puts it in a somewhat different light. Randarkman fucked around with this message at 07:53 on Jun 20, 2019 |
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Jun 20, 2019 07:50
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Randarkman posted:Except the poll literally says they would overwhelmingly vote for Guaido over Maduro in an election, why is that irrelevant but the things you mention not? Because, as fnox has acknowledged quite a few times in the past, a free and fair election isn't in the cards in the near future. Maduro's probably going to stay in power until he's forced from it, and when he is, I hope it's by a non-right wing, non-puppet of a foreign imperialist power, who has the support of a majority of the country. But right now, the "anything is better than Maduro" mentality doesn't seem to have paid off for the Venezuelan people; the "anything" in question turned out to be an unbelievable loser who did everything he possibly could to broadcast that he's a puppet. quote:I also believe you are kind of reading more into the whole recognize Maduro/Guaido as president than is actually the case. Looking at in the light of that hypothetical in the same election it seems more to be an acknowledgement of Guaido's failure than an endorsement of Maduro. I've never once said that the Venezuelan people like Maduro. On the contrary, I pretty frequently acknowledge that the Venezuelan people really strongly dislike him, and for good reason - the guy's an incompetent piece of garbage. Majorian fucked around with this message at 07:58 on Jun 20, 2019 |
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Jun 20, 2019 07:53
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Randarkman posted:e: Ah, if that's the translation of the question regarding the sanctions then that puts it in a somewhat different light. I hope it is because I sure as hell can't read Spanish  The full alleged results: quote:According to the political cohesion study of the Datincorp polling place , on June 2, 2019, 36% of Venezuelans recognized the president of the National Assembly (AN) as president.
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Jun 20, 2019 07:58
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Majorian posted:I've never once said that the Venezuelan people like Maduro. On the contrary, I pretty frequently acknowledge that the Venezuelan people really strongly dislike him, and for good reason - the guy's an incompetent piece of garbage. I'd say the guy is pretty good at staying in power by retaining the support of the military. He knows what is important. IIRC, during this crisis, the government has been pretty careful not to put the military in a situation where the loyalty of its rank and file is tested for the most part, because that is where they would have fallen if they put the military against demonstrators and the soldiers refused to shoot or even joined them. But mostly the actualy dirty business of intimidating opposition, breaking up strikes and protests and that kind of business has been left to police forces and colectivos. Incompetence is not enough to describe Maduro and the PSUV government.
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Jun 20, 2019 07:59
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Randarkman posted:I'd say the guy is pretty good at staying in power by retaining the support of the military. He knows what is important. IIRC, during this crisis, the government has been pretty careful not to put the military in a situation where the loyalty of its rank and file is tested for the most part, because that is where they would have fallen if they put the military against demonstrators and the soldiers refused to shoot or even joined them. But mostly the actualy dirty business of intimidating opposition, breaking up strikes and protests and that kind of business has been left to police forces and colectivos. Sure, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out how to do that. Lots of authoritarian rulers have managed to do those things, held better approval ratings than Maduro (low bar, I know), and still ended up getting overthrown by widespread popular revolts - look at Mubarak in Egypt, for example. But when the opposition can't put up anybody who the public likes enough that they'll turn out into the streets to put him or her into power outside of an election, then the public often will stick with the devil they know.
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Jun 20, 2019 08:13
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How are you drawing literally the opposite conclusion from the poll? It’s very clear that, in any electoral scenario, the opposition would come ahead.
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Jun 20, 2019 08:26
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fnox posted:How are you drawing literally the opposite conclusion from the poll? It’s very clear that, in any electoral scenario, the opposition would come ahead. But again, as you yourself have said multiple times, a free and fair election is not in the cards anytime soon. The public would support him in a free and fair election above Maduro; they would not, and did not, support him in his attempted coup.
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Jun 20, 2019 08:26
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Majorian posted:But again, as you yourself have said multiple times, a free and fair election is not in the cards anytime soon. The public would support him in a free and fair election above Maduro; they would not, and did not, support him in his attempted coup. Alot of them did though? It's the military that didn't come over. Do you not realize that that was the crucial point of failure?
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Jun 20, 2019 08:28
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