Venezuela is so messed up, they have to wait in line for ...

Has Chavez been resurrected?


Is he a zombie or the second coming?

a reply to: ketsuko

Chavez took a typical western country, with it's ruling elite 1% and politicians who didn't care, and gutted the bastard 'powers that be'. He ripped them up and they either fled or got locked up. Chavez nationalized key industries, like Oil, that should belong to everyone in the country instead of letting the Oil cartels export billions and billions in profits every year.

There is no doubt Chavez didn't find the right balance to keep the economy rolling, but when you gut the elite like he did then you are in for the fight of your life. Now the people of Venezuela have a new order of things. Poor people have a say in how things are run. Eventually they will find a better way to run the country.

It is rarely pretty when power gets taken away and redistributed. It should happen in many other countries sooner rather than later.

www.bloomberg.com...

a reply to: noeltrotsky

Oh so you fall in the "but they just didn't find the right people to run it" camp. When will you realize that no one will EVER find the right people to run socialism? It's one of those things like a perpetual motion machine, the concept looks great on paper but it will never, ever work in practice?

From OP link:

Venezuela had the third-fastest rate of HIV infections per capita in South America, after Paraguay and Brazil in 2013, United Nations data shows. The country also has the highest rate of teenage pregnancies on the continent after Guyana, at 83 per 1,000, according to 2012 data from the World Bank. This compares to just 4 per 1,000 in Germany and 31 in the U.S.


“Without condoms we can’t do anything,” Jhonatan Rodriguez, general director at the not-for-profit health group StopVIH, said by phone Jan. 28 from Venezuela’s Margarita Island. “This shortage threatens all the prevention programs we have been working on across the country.”

The condom shortage, caused by a scarcity of dollars among importers, has prices on a website used to find scarce goods soaring and risks aggravating one of South America’s highest HIV infection and teenage pregnancy rates.

Condoms and other contraceptives disappeared from many Venezuelan pharmacies and clinics starting in late December, as the government tightened dollar disbursements amid sliding oil revenue, according to the Venezuelan Pharmaceutical Federation. No condoms were available in 10 eastern and central Caracas pharmacies visited in late January, compared with as many as 20 different kinds available at some locations in November, including Reckitt Benckiser Group plc’s Durex and Church & Dwight Co.’s Trojan brands.

Not a good situation and the current president Maduro wants to take socialism further:

Unfortunately, the country whose president two weeks ago said that "Venezuela Must Deepen Socialism To Improve Economy", which is the political equivalent of "we must do even more QE to fix record wealth inequality", may have just hit rock bottom when Venezuelans, who already must line up for hours to buy the simplest of daily necessities

Those people have been going through hell lately. No TP, soap, limited food and water. Socialism sucks.

originally posted by: ketsuko
Oh so you fall in the "but they just didn't find the right people to run it" camp. When will you realize that no one will EVER find the right people to run socialism? It's one of those things like a perpetual motion machine, the concept looks great on paper but it will never, ever work in practice?

Well first off I don't think a serious socialist system has ever really been set up. The vast majority have dictators hiding not so well behind the facade. But your right, there are lots of issues to correct in a socialist system.

But ultimately I'd rather live in an inefficient system and spend a few decades trying to make it work better...than live in this Western styled 'democracy' where 1% own everything and maintain power by holding out a little carrot that you might get to join them one day if you just work hard enough and crush enough people under your boot.

a reply to: infolurker

Actually welcome to the results of capitalist economic warefare, and the propaganda you are being fed. Not that their system or socialism in general is utopic, but really the scope of knowledge parroted about the situation in Venezuela is extremely narrow and myopic, and I might add, willfully ignorant of facts as to the causes of their economic instability. Read some history. Pay attention to the current oil war. Do not neglect the contunual destabilizing efforts of the CIA. And please dont stop there.

originally posted by: Dabrazzo
Oil accounts for about 90% of Venezuelan exports.

2014 Venezuelan protests

This is some background to it, stupid people will blame Chavez I suppose but thats to be expected.

I made a post back when oil went to $90 barrel and dropping that Venezuela will collapse. They need $150 to $200 per barrel to sustain their economy and anything less we will see hyper inflation, hyper interest rates and a collapes of that society.

I suspect that Colombia and Brazil are licking their lips to get rid of that pain once and for all.

originally posted by: pirhanna
a reply to: infolurker

Actually welcome to the results of capitalist economic warefare, and the propaganda you are being fed. Not that their system or socialism in general is utopic, but really the scope of knowledge parroted about the situation in Venezuela is extremely narrow and myopic, and I might add, willfully ignorant of facts as to the causes of their economic instability. Read some history. Pay attention to the current oil war. Do not neglect the contunual destabilizing efforts of the CIA. And please dont stop there.

The Real story of Venezuela and the Chavez period is actually amazing. It's like a blueprint of how the poor can take over the country from the elites. Sadly the poor didn't manage the after take over very well.

A good and neutral brief history here, latinamericanhistory.about.com...

A BBC writeup that is a little slanted but tries not to be
www.bbc.com...