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England Sucks posted:I'd also like to point out that such a large percentage of work in South America is informal and has zero government oversight that labor laws are about as effective here as drug laws. That sounds like a good way to run an economy and a generally desirable situation all in all. Shows those idiots who think the labor and tax laws may have problems icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 04:25 on Nov 27, 2014 |
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Nov 27, 2014 04:23
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icantfindaname posted:That sounds like a good way to run an economy and a generally desirable situation all in all. Shows those idiots who think the labor laws may have problems It only takes a few factories burning to the ground with employees inside before people learn.
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Nov 27, 2014 04:25
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Zeitgueist posted:It only takes a few factories burning to the ground with employees inside before people learn. I'm saying that having labor laws so strict they are unenforceable and drive most economic activity underground is a bad thing
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Nov 27, 2014 04:27
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icantfindaname posted:I'm saying that having labor laws so strict they are unenforceable and drive most economic activity underground is a bad thing Is that what you're saying?
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Nov 27, 2014 04:30
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icantfindaname posted:I'm saying that having labor laws so strict they are unenforceable and drive most economic activity underground is a bad thing England Sucks doesn't agree with that but I guess you are the middle class American he should be listening too, unlike the rest of us posers. Though he said South America in general so unless they have uniform labor laws (they don't) this doesn't make much sense anyway.
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Nov 27, 2014 04:33
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Chile really needs to open up immigration. There are plenty of Chinese willing to come over and build extended family-run businesses that neatly sidestep labor laws that choke the economy. Last time I checked, immigration to Chile is essentially impossible, either due to rule of law or bureaucratic hijinks.
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Nov 27, 2014 04:40
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drat, I was excited for a general Latin America megathread and it's people pining for Pinochet.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZQxBcubc2Y
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Nov 27, 2014 04:50
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icantfindaname posted:I'm saying that having labor laws so strict they are unenforceable and drive most economic activity underground is a bad thing The labor laws could be as light as the US and there would still be tons of informal labor because the problem has existed forever and until recently not many people have been interested in fixing it.
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Nov 27, 2014 05:07
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CharlestheHammer posted:England Sucks doesn't agree with that but I guess you are the middle class American he should be listening too, unlike the rest of us posers. The irony is that he bemoaned "leftists middle class Americans" commenting on Chile, then started to give a bit of wisdom of his own that is nonsensical. Plenty parts of Latin America have weak labor laws and haven't become economic meccas.
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Nov 27, 2014 05:17
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Ardennes posted:I always thought they were more stuck (dress and hairstyle wise) in the 1980s. I'm not sure it's separate. Wanting Chileans to be less poor is one thing. Wanting Chileans to be less poor whilst operating small farms in marginally arable scrubland is fantasy. And Chile gets the lovely end of the geographical stick, in having lots of land with barely enough water to sustain vegetation and then having an export industry that requires unbelievable amounts of water and then generates vast amounts of toxic, polluted wastewater. e: with reference to the current thread of discussion - the large informal economy serves an important purpose; it segregates the recent "immigrants" from the incumbents (in the context of the immigration metaphor on pg 1), which reduces the pain of integration. ronya fucked around with this message at 05:43 on Nov 27, 2014 |
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Nov 27, 2014 05:38
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icantfindaname posted:I'm saying that having labor laws so strict they are unenforceable and drive most economic activity underground is a bad thing The activity isn't underground it's just that the way economy work in other nations make the systems that more developed countries use to track employment and income tax completely unfeasible. When 10% of the nation lives off selling goods out of their house or on the road and businesses open up shop and close within months you're not exactly going to get people to fill out a W4. Once again privileged americans have zero understanding of the inner functions of american culture and economy. Most big businesses follow these labor laws because otherwise they are liable but the fact of the matter remains that for a lot of economic activity, especially those that don't involve external investment these laws are unenforceable and not really paid attention to. And the reason why makes sense.
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Nov 27, 2014 05:43
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on the left posted:Chile really needs to open up immigration. There are plenty of Chinese willing to come over and build extended family-run businesses that neatly sidestep labor laws that choke the economy. Chile has plenty of immigrants. They are mostly Colombians of African descent. It's caused quite a bit of racial strife in the cities where mining is common.
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Nov 27, 2014 05:45
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ronya posted:I'm not sure it's separate. Wanting Chileans to be less poor is one thing. Wanting Chileans to be less poor whilst operating small farms in marginally arable scrubland is fantasy. The question is exactly how much of a debt drag of cutting water rights to the rural poor would actually benefit the economy especially if you don't have a place to put them (assuming you just let the farms dry up) and you let the educational system collapse at the same time. The informal economy is always going to exist but there actually seems little to be gained from cutting worker rights across the board. The goal should be integrating them into the system, not killing to system to save companies some labor costs. (It would also be the surest way to heightened tension.) Ardennes fucked around with this message at 05:55 on Nov 27, 2014 |
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Nov 27, 2014 05:49
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England Sucks posted:Chile has plenty of immigrants. They are mostly Colombians of African descent. It's caused quite a bit of racial strife in the cities where mining is common. I'm not talking about uneducated immigration, i'm talking about skilled immigration from countries that have a surplus of college graduates, but low salaries.
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Nov 27, 2014 06:00
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Ardennes posted:The question is exactly how much of a debt drag of cutting water rights to the rural poor would actually benefit the economy especially if you don't have a place to put them and you let the educational system collapse. Yes - Chile should seek to move them and then pursue development. That's not really in the direct interests of either the incumbent middle class (who would resent adding even more people) or the remaining rural poor (who would join the back of the queue of people integrating into the formal economy). So it's not going to happen. We've had this discussion of speculatory ideal reforms which won't happen for lack of constituencies before, of course. Cutting worker rights would definitely heighten tension, but in the Venezuelan "problematic middle class unions" sense, I think. That is, a lot of fluidity over which income class is the oppressed worker. See also: a social democratic government battling teacher's unions.
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Nov 27, 2014 06:04
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ronya posted:Yes - Chile should seek to move them and then pursue development. That's not really in the direct interests of either the incumbent middle class (who would resent adding even more people) or the remaining rural poor (who would join the back of the queue of people integrating into the formal economy). So it's not going to happen. "Pursue development" is a bit vague unless you are citing a specific case that would actually benefit the country enough to make such large relocation a useful endeavor. Ultimately, it is just a race to the bottom that will likely impact consumption of those middle class workers, and create larger issues for the economy. You give the example of a social democratic government versus a teach union, when this is going to be companies being able to dramatically lower their labor costs at the cost of wages. Putting it together you are going to have the rural poor being run out of villages with little education while at the same time you deregulate labor costs as a boon to business, creating a massive army of reserve labor. I mean it may make profit for someone, but it is unclear where the country is going to go at that point once you break the back of the middle class and if anything increase unemployment. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 06:22 on Nov 27, 2014 |
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Nov 27, 2014 06:12
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More generally I have a question that I think pertains to Latin/South America as whole. How many years or iterations of peaceful political power handovers are required for the civil services in a nation to achieve a sort of independence from patronage systems that breed corruption? The first real efforts did not occur in the United States until the late 19th century and tammany hall and the like were around until the 30s. Knocking over governments and rebuilding them every 20 or 30 years has to wreck havoc with that process and I think for that reason on its own the monroe doctrine poo poo that we're still pursuing has been so detrimental to the development of south america as a whole.
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Nov 27, 2014 06:14
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Ardennes posted:"Pursue development" is a bit vague unless you are citing a specific case that would actually benefit the country enough to make such large relocation a useful endeavor. The specific case I had in mind was the curious push to use expensive desalination to supply copper mining, which bundles expensive electricity and expensive water all in one. A typical Western perspective is the lazy one of arguing that there shouldn't be any mining at all, but I'm sure that it is more obvious to you that it isn't tenable, Chile needs the export revenue. Your perspective is quite typical of how the guilty middle classes regard immigrants, yes (albeit internal migrants, in the Chilean case). At some level you are cognizant that for the general good there must eventually be fewer people in subsistence agriculture and therefore more migrants. At another level it's clear that adding these people will harm your material interests via unskilled competition for wages. And to top all of this off, there is no credible capacity for state-owned industries to vacuum up all these reserve labour, such that one could at least argue that 'the people', loosely defined, benefit from the explosion in reserve labour - instead there's a lot of petite bourgeoisie who will benefit (a quick lookup suggests that Chilean small businesses employ about 70% of the labour force). So there's no easy answer. Integration will gently caress over the middle class; therefore the middle class will prefer to ensure that the remaining poor remain in low-productivity industries like non-mechanized agriculture or tourism. That's the political-economy version of the middle income trap.
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Nov 27, 2014 06:51
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ronya posted:The specific case I had in mind was the curious push to use expensive desalination to supply copper mining, which bundles expensive electricity and expensive water all in one. A typical Western perspective is the lazy one of arguing that there shouldn't be any mining at all, but I'm sure that it is more obvious to you that it isn't tenable, Chile needs the export revenue. No a desalination plan wouldn't make sense, and Chile needs copper exports but I think I would have to study to claims before I took a position of stripping way water rights without due process. We are talking about two different things happening at the same time (cutting labor protections versus increased immigration), cutting labor protections is a one way trip, once you cut them they will likely stay cut for a very long time and even if immigration drops, they aren't coming back. The "guilty" middle class claim is garbage. Ultimately, if anything immigrants are going to be harmed by lack of education spending in the long term, and their integration is going to be much harder to actually achieve. In this case though you are really talking about privileging the entrepreneurial class over the urban working class in the name of helping rural workers but ultimately it is actually going to be a good thing for Chile if small businesses simply consolidate their workers rather than hire or is consumption drops from wages. You are playing up the moralizing of it, when ultimately it boils down to what the hard results of this would be. That said, I suspect you also probably think offshoring is a good idea as well (you eventually run out of consumers). Ardennes fucked around with this message at 07:41 on Nov 27, 2014 |
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Nov 27, 2014 07:37
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Im going to put my foot down on this: labor protections are almost always a positive thing for a society as a whole despite the economic costs (which I guarantee are minimal). Education of your populace is the most important thing you can do and the more you remove profit motives from it the better.
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Nov 27, 2014 07:48
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Ardennes posted:No a desalination plan wouldn't make sense, and Chile needs copper exports but I think I would have to study to claims before I took a position of stripping way water rights without due process. Due process with regards to water is very much a creation of governments, as the divergent ways in which the United States merges English and pueblo water rights shows. Chile itself has experimented quite dramatically, albeit in limited areas. I'm not sure what to make of your argument. I never mentioned education spending, but since you raise the point, I will say that it is important to track whose education is being funded. The present backlash against Bachelet's plans are predictably led by middle-class parents demanding the continuation of subsidies for fee-charging middle-class schools. This is characteristic of the guilty middle class phenomenon - for as long as social democratic parties support education spending, they endorse it, but if it means cuts to their own existing subsidies, they hastily withdraw their support. Free stuff is always good. If there's not enough revenue to support free stuff, then it's someone else's fault. You say: it would be better for small businesses to simply consolidate their workers rather than hire. Certainly! Better for the incumbent workers. Not so good for the unhired. That is the point I was making. I am not saying that the entrepreneurial class should be privileged. I am saying it will be privileged, as a straightforward fait accompli from a moderate government steadily reducing the percentage of people in subsistence agriculture (and using two decades of relatively high copper prices to paper over costs of transition). In fact it has already been privileged for a while now. It will continue to do so until Chile runs out of domestic people to add to the labour pool - better hope that the copper lasts until then. wateroverfire was, you know, editorializing about the need for a more competent government. But this transition is itself thorny and Chile is doing remarkably well at balancing a screaming middle class demanding its first-world labour, environmental, and public-consultation rights with a desperate urban poor demanding entry into that middle class lifestyle. Better Bachelet than Chavez, who has demonstrated just how badly one can squander a resource windfall. Better Bachelet than Pinochet, at that. When the hated resource corporations are already wholly-owned by the state - when there are no more visible enemies within easy grasp - it is best for the middle class to not notice who its remaining material enemies are. Remember that 44% voted for Pinochet. ronya fucked around with this message at 10:27 on Nov 27, 2014 |
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Nov 27, 2014 09:57
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rscott posted:More generally I have a question that I think pertains to Latin/South America as whole. How many years or iterations of peaceful political power handovers are required for the civil services in a nation to achieve a sort of independence from patronage systems that breed corruption? The first real efforts did not occur in the United States until the late 19th century and tammany hall and the like were around until the 30s. Knocking over governments and rebuilding them every 20 or 30 years has to wreck havoc with that process and I think for that reason on its own the monroe doctrine poo poo that we're still pursuing has been so detrimental to the development of south america as a whole. Recall the circumstances in which the United States embraced Jacksonian cronyist democracy to begin with - namely a drive to bring democracy to the common man and abolish oligarchy. Tammany Hall likewise empowered ethnic minorities, most notably the Irish community. These systems did not collapse on their own, they collapsed when these constituencies began to organize politically in other ways. It's not a matter of accumulating a sufficient number of iterations, it's a matter of a formation of a bourgeois consensus over what has to be done - the idea that politics is a matter of identifying the neutral and discoverable empirically-optimal policy, rather than jousts over zero-sum competitions. In the US, progressive reform of machine patronage came with Progressivism and its distinctly northeasterner, industrial, middle-class, puritan, modernizing character. The contemporary ideology invoking policy efficiency and neutral standards as a solution to invisible cronyism/corruption is, of course, neoliberalism, both in its right-wing Thatcherite and left-wing Blairite forms. In the early 1910s US Progressivism demanded removing teacher employment from the control of ward bosses and transferring it to supposedly-neutral teacher's colleges exam qualifications; today the same impulse demands removing teaching employment from union bosses and transferring it to supposedly-neutral standards-based education reform. That's not evidence whether it is desirable, but rather that the sources of that political impulse are similar. Knocking over governments certainly doesn't help but what mainly matters is the formation of such a relative policy consensus in the national zeitgeist. One can certainly slaughter one's way there (see: East Asia). Or one can let mutual exhaustion lead to a sufficiently long inter-class détente that growth and a cynical acceptance of most of the outrages of the status quo emerges, which I think may glibly capture South America. ronya fucked around with this message at 10:58 on Nov 27, 2014 |
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Nov 27, 2014 10:55
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ronya posted:I'm not sure what to make of your argument. I never mentioned education spending, but since you raise the point, I will say that it is important to track whose education is being funded. The present backlash against Bachelet's plans are predictably led by middle-class parents demanding the continuation of subsidies for fee-charging middle-class schools. This is characteristic of the guilty middle class phenomenon - for as long as social democratic parties support education spending, they endorse it, but if it means cuts to their own existing subsidies, they hastily withdraw their support. Free stuff is always good. If there's not enough revenue to support free stuff, then it's someone else's fault. Yes, my point is that the education plans need to go forward despite middle class opposition, Chile is going to let too much talent go to waste if it loses effective universal education. The government might have to back was from making private/public schools fully public, but the subsidies need to be trimmed. quote:You say: it would be better for small businesses to simply consolidate their workers rather than hire. Certainly! Better for the incumbent workers. Not so good for the unhired. That is the point I was making. I am not saying that the entrepreneurial class should be privileged. I am saying it will be privileged, as a straightforward fait accompli from a moderate government steadily reducing the percentage of people in subsistence agriculture (and using two decades of relatively high copper prices to paper over costs of transition). In fact it has already been privileged for a while now. It will continue to do so until Chile runs out of domestic people to add to the labour pool - better hope that the copper lasts until then. I didn't mean to say it was better, but it very well may happen. The question is the necessity of cutting labor protections at the same time. If rural migrants have access to education they may very well slowly but surely have access to those same rights rather than have them completely gutted when it is their turn. The entrepreneurial class is going to be doing fine either way and doesn't need a hand out. As for water rights, I am fully aware the Chilean system of water rights is quite different, nevertheless it is an open question if the government needs to dramatically change those rights by fiat or a compromise can be reached that is moderately more costly but more sustainable. The government has a interest in not having to spend a ton of money to desalinate its water, nevertheless while copper is still going to be important, if mines simply become unprofitable then the need mostly vanishes until global demand returns. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 13:22 on Nov 27, 2014 |
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Nov 27, 2014 13:16
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on the left posted:Chile really needs to open up immigration. There are plenty of Chinese willing to come over and build extended family-run businesses that neatly sidestep labor laws that choke the economy. They already do this. on the left posted:Last time I checked, immigration to Chile is essentially impossible, either due to rule of law or bureaucratic hijinks. It's a beurocratic maze that people coming into Chile, and not knowing Chilean culture or institutions, are really ill equipped to navigate. I know people who have done it and people who are tearing their hair out trying to do it. Ardennes posted:The "guilty" middle class claim is garbage. Ultimately, if anything immigrants are going to be harmed by lack of education spending in the long term, and their integration is going to be much harder to actually achieve. In this case though you are really talking about privileging the entrepreneurial class over the urban working class in the name of helping rural workers but ultimately it is actually going to be a good thing for Chile if small businesses simply consolidate their workers rather than hire or is consumption drops from wages. That's certainly a point of view, I guess. Not good for the people left unemployed, for the companies, for the treasuries, for other small businesses, etc, but sure I guess the employees who don't get squeezed out during consolidation are doing alright. A fluid labor market would be better. Doing worker protection in a way that doesn't create perverse incentives that feed back into lower wages would be better (that is the dynamic created by #1 I mentioned above). Having sick time, basically state-provided short-term disability insurance, is fine if the state would enforce the actual rules. Spending more on education is fine. A good idea. But not willy-nilly on a plan that doesn't address quality or access. Unfortunately, in Chile, none of those things are easy to fix except by abstracting away the politics.
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Nov 27, 2014 13:19
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Ardennes posted:Yes, my point is that the education plans need to go forward despite middle class opposition, Chile is going to let too much talent go to waste if it loses effective universal education. The government might have to back was from making private/public schools fully public, but the subsidies need to be trimmed. Why these plans in particular, though? They are not going to result in effective universal education and Chile doesn't have effective universal education to lose.
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Nov 27, 2014 13:21
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the timing of events suggests to me that the government hoped to use parental demands for improvements in the public schools they will be effectively forced into in its long-postponed showdown with the teacher's unions, but instead is now facing a teacher's union deftly slamming the cuts as well - not on the principle of retaining the subsidies, but on an alleged lack of consultation. Nonetheless, it brings teachers and the parents together, rather than pitting them against each other. e: vvvvvv "reduced subsidies" doesn't readily map onto "increased funding"... ronya fucked around with this message at 13:42 on Nov 27, 2014 |
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Nov 27, 2014 13:27
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wateroverfire posted:That's certainly a point of view, I guess. Not good for the people left unemployed, for the companies, for the treasuries, for other small businesses, etc, but sure I guess the employees who don't get squeezed out during consolidation are doing alright. A fluid labor market would be better. Doing worker protection in a way that doesn't create perverse incentives that feed back into lower wages would be better (that is the dynamic created by #1 I mentioned above). Having sick time, basically state-provided short-term disability insurance, is fine if the state would enforce the actual rules. Spending more on education is fine. A good idea. But not willy-nilly on a plan that doesn't address quality or access. Unfortunately, in Chile, none of those things are easy to fix except by abstracting away the politics. It was a sleep deprived typo, but I think it will happen eventually either way, but it will just be quicken by removing labor protections. If posters are worried about labor protections "choking the country to death" I think their fears are inflated simply because labor supply is likely to increase, labor protection need to be more flexible to an extent to protect them but the flexibility needed is probably going to be far different than what they want. As for the politics of Chile itself, the country is very polarized and historical memory is a big thing, it very well may better if some horse-trading happened and labor protections were modified, made more flexible in certain areas and then stronger in others and the same thing with educational reforms but there seems to be very little chance of consensus. It also makes laws harder to actually apply since there will be extra-parliamentary politics resistance. That said, I think that it is simply part of Chile's national psyche at this point and there isn't much to be done. quote:Why these plans in particular, though? They are not going to result in effective universal education and Chile doesn't have effective universal education to lose. They are going to move in a better direction if only through increased funding, and some equalization. Chile doesn't have effective universal education now but the question is how you are going to get there without that funding or addressing some of the stark differences in education. It very well be a better set of reforms could theoretically happen but I just don't see it happening in Chilean politics, so it is binary choice. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 13:37 on Nov 27, 2014 |
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Nov 27, 2014 13:31
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Ardennes posted:I didn't mean to say it was better, but it very well may happen. The question is the necessity of cutting labor protections at the same time. If rural migrants have access to education they may very well slowly but surely have access to those same rights rather than have them completely gutted when it is their turn.... There's a whole essay to be written here over whether one believes that wages and workplace conditions are predominantly shaped through labour struggle or through marginal labour productivity, of course. I don't want to pull the whole thread into this topic but I want to point out that your assertion is contingent on a worldview. Ardennes posted:As for water rights, I am fully aware the Chilean system of water rights is quite different, nevertheless it is an open question if the government needs to dramatically change those rights by fiat or a compromise can be reached that is moderately more costly but more sustainable. The government has a interest in not having to spend a ton of money to desalinate its water, nevertheless while copper is still going to be important, if mines simply become unprofitable then the need mostly vanishes until global demand returns. The government did, in fact, order mines to stop outbidding communities for water for new mines, so it already changed things by fiat. Nonetheless the mining companies seem to be taking the position that no government would have had the political capital to allow them to access the water anyway, since industry websites seem to have been steadily buzzing about the oncoming problem for a while now. Certainly nobody puts together plans for a desalination plant in months. The cost of producing copper is very much dependent on energy and water costs, so it's not separable from profitability. It's very much a case of incrementally trading off degrees of marginally-surviving communities and marginal ecosystems for marginally more foreign exchange - it is fundamentally a political decision, not a question of pure environmental econ. There's no "this is sustainable and this is not" bright line.
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Nov 27, 2014 13:37
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ronya posted:The government did, in fact, order mines to stop outbidding communities for water for new mines, so it already changed things by fiat. Nonetheless the mining companies seem to be taking the position that no government would have had the political capital to allow them to access the water anyway, since industry websites seem to have been steadily buzzing about the oncoming problem for a while now. Certainly nobody puts together plans for a desalination plant in months. There isn't a firm line but as copper prices continue to drop there is a question of utility of the government shifting its position in order to improve profitability that may only be temporary. It isn't purely about the environmental aspects of it but it is a political decision that is going to have to take global prices and government revenue into account and obvious political liability is going to be a part of it as in every liberal(ish) system.
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Nov 27, 2014 13:47
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Yup. I agree, esp on political liability. Hence why I initially said:quote:Yes - Chile should seek to move them and then pursue development. That's not really in the direct interests of either the incumbent middle class (who would resent adding even more people) or the remaining rural poor (who would join the back of the queue of people integrating into the formal economy). So it's not going to happen. Digging an increasingly expensive copper was always going to be limited, but the Chinese copper boom has been valuable in stabilizing things post-Pinochet, I think. It is easier to form compromises when there is prosperity and some revenue to grease arguments.
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Nov 27, 2014 14:00
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ronya posted:Yup. I agree, esp on political liability. Hence why I initially said: Well, I won't be surprised if political stability takes a big hit. There is clearly slowing of demand and currently copper is at 2.96. What you are most likely going to see is a lack of consensus as both right and left wing groups on the streets are (from what I have heard) radicalizing. However, this is been a long topic discussion for a while among people who expected Chinese growth to follow historical trends, and it was from from a consensus even a year ago. Now obviously everyone accepts a Chinese slowdown, but it took literally for it to happen for everyone to admit it.
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Nov 27, 2014 18:22
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The Warszawa posted:At the risk of being glib: Sectarian/Xenophobic culture issues are a barrier. But smartphones are getting better at translation, so actual language might be a non issue in another 10 years for someone who is digitally literate. There's also concerns of economic dominance like Germany in the EU - the US/Canada would be similar heavyweights, and part of the first acts of this union would be acts of mercy and debt jubilee. It is appalling to see US courts are ruling that Argentina has to pay 100% of its debts because of a few holdouts when Buenos Aires had a deal with most of its debtors.
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Nov 27, 2014 18:35
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Ardennes posted:Well, I won't be surprised if political stability takes a big hit. There is clearly slowing of demand and currently copper is at 2.96. What you are most likely going to see is a lack of consensus as both right and left wing groups on the streets are (from what I have heard) radicalizing. Curious which right wing groups are on the streets. What's your source for that?
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Nov 27, 2014 18:52
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wateroverfire posted:Curious which right wing groups are on the streets. What's your source for that? http://santiagotimes.cl/chiles-coup-40-years-on-pinochetistas-and-the-active-far-right/ (admittedly it isn't about street politics) Also, if you want to go that far Vice media has a mini-doc on recent bombings. http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Chilean-Government-to-Use-Undercover-Agents-after-Terrorist-Attacks--20140914-0009.html quote:Since July, at least four bombs have detonated in the country, injuring 17 people. The biggest attack happened on Monday in the subway of Santiago, Chile's capital city. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 19:12 on Nov 27, 2014 |
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Nov 27, 2014 19:04
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McDowell posted:Sectarian/Xenophobic culture issues are a barrier. Already Spanish dialectal variation isn't much of an issue. Written Spanish is nearly identical across various Hispanophone countries, particularly if you aren't including Spain. Spoken dialects vary a bit more, with Rioplatense, Chilean, and Caribbean dialects the most divergent, but still I can't see 'which Spanish' ever being an obstacle. Dialect chauvinism is a nonissue today. Native speakers consider Iberian to be effete, and Mexican slang to be excessively vulgar, but there's little problem with intelligibility.
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Nov 27, 2014 20:51
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McDowell posted:Sectarian/Xenophobic culture issues are a barrier. So all government business will be done via iPhone? What?
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Nov 27, 2014 22:56
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Chile is the nicest country to live in Latin America and has a relatively efficient and honest bureaucracy compared to all of their neighbors. There is some, for Chile, relative backsliding with crime and social issues emerging as a problem, relative to what Chileans are used to, but really there is a wall of mountains separating Chile from the rest of Latin America and Chileans for the most part are lucky to live in their own little (globalized) first world bubble. Chileans are also free to travel without a visa pretty widely, and you don't see any exodus, so things are not that bad. Not to get all Rawlesian veil of ignorance, but I would rather be poor in Chile than poor in Argentina, Bolivia, or Peru. The nice thing you can say about the Chilean mainstream left is that they are very solidary people and actually do something about poverty, like people saw after the earthquake, Techo es another example. The other issue is there is the metropolitan region of Santiago, and the rest of Chile, and they may as well be two (or more) different countries in terms of attitudes and quality of life.
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Nov 27, 2014 23:29
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Ardennes posted:http://santiagotimes.cl/chiles-coup-40-years-on-pinochetistas-and-the-active-far-right/ (admittedly it isn't about street politics) I've seen the Vice documentary. Um...I would take with great skepticism what "some" suspect. The source is probably a politician in the left wing of Nueva Mayoria and, well, they would say that. Violence is mostly attributed to the anarchist groups, which are very active in Chile. In this case three suspects have been arrested so I guess we could do some digging and look for their actual affiliations. Hopefully they won't be released like the last bunch, who were later picked up for doing a bombing in Spain. Ardennes posted:There isn't a firm line but as copper prices continue to drop there is a question of utility of the government shifting its position in order to improve profitability that may only be temporary. It isn't purely about the environmental aspects of it but it is a political decision that is going to have to take global prices and government revenue into account and obvious political liability is going to be a part of it as in every liberal(ish) system. In the long term Chile faces water and energy shortages that are going to become crisis indepedant of mining. We already pay, iirc, the highest rates for electricity in Latin America. The north of the country is largely unsettleable without more water. In Santiago, there was a big water scare after mudslides in the Andes contaminated what were apparantly most of the city's sources of water. Ardennes posted:As for the politics of Chile itself, the country is very polarized and historical memory is a big thing, it very well may better if some horse-trading happened and labor protections were modified, made more flexible in certain areas and then stronger in others and the same thing with educational reforms but there seems to be very little chance of consensus. It also makes laws harder to actually apply since there will be extra-parliamentary politics resistance. That said, I think that it is simply part of Chile's national psyche at this point and there isn't much to be done. Eh. Like I said, if Bachelet hadn't swept the primaries with her star appeal we would have most likely ended up with center-leftist Andres Velasco as president. In that case the tone would have been much more moderate and education reform could have happened in a more productive way. But right now, yeah, there is very little chance of consensus. Most likely in a year or two the center of the Nueva Mayoria will bolt and Bacheletīs coalition will be broken. Then, well, who can say. But there is IMO a third way. In other news apparantly the customs workers' strike is now over. No word on what agreement was reached.
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Nov 28, 2014 13:42
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Viktor Laszlo posted:Chile is the nicest country to live in Latin America and has a relatively efficient and honest bureaucracy compared to all of their neighbors. I heard Costa Rica was also pretty nice, or are you just counting South America?
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Nov 28, 2014 14:31
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computer parts posted:I heard Costa Rica was also pretty nice, or are you just counting South America? We live well and apparently also rank pretty highly in Happiness Indexes, but then again we had the major advantage of having no wars, significant guerrillas or violent change of power since 1948. We also, however, suffer from a lot of Latin America's shortcomings, especially on an institutional level after the 80s. The general level of the political discourse is IMO quite low, too. e: So I really want a general LatAm thread, let's try to talk about something other than Chile. Enrique Peņa Nieto's government proposes to shift the police force from a municipal level to a state level after the utter shitstorm that Iguala has been. This doesn't sound like the worst of plans to combat local corruption, but how effective can it be in states far away from D.F.? I guess it also depends on how much you should trust your state government. Chewbaccanator fucked around with this message at 14:52 on Nov 28, 2014 |
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Nov 28, 2014 14:47
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