Why Increased Socialism Leads to Increased Prices

originally posted by: ChaoticOrder
And for those trying to argue to expanding the money supply some how doesn't cause inflation, see this chart from my True Money thread:

Currently, the quantity theory of money is widely accepted as an accurate model of inflation in the long run. Consequently, there is now broad agreement among economists that in the long run, the inflation rate is essentially dependent on the growth rate of money supply relative to the growth of the economy.
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If economic growth matches the growth of the money supply, inflation should not occur when all else is equal.

causes of Inflation

Ok, so Bretton woods was not a “gold standard”. Yes, the us had a gold backing at the time, but all the rest of the world was pegged to the US dollar. And further, Bretton woods was a surplus circulation system. The us had all the production in the world at the time, and needed to have buyers for all the products. Bretton woods allowed other nations to borrow money from the us to purchase us goods. This created circulation, which is necessary for a functioning economy. The world left the Bretton woods system when the us ran out of surplus. Other nations became industrialized again, and the us shifted from a production industry economy to a financialized economy. This has resulted in massive bubbles, artificial scarcity, massive advertising, price fixing, monopolies and all the other joys of your “free market” and therefore massive “inflation”.

Now, to explain, inflation originally referred to increased cost of production due to rising labor costs, or rising costs of materials due to scarcity or whathaveyou. But this is not the cause of today’s inflation. Today’s inflation comes from increased Price fixing, monopolies, fees, interest and debt, etc. Meanwhile labor is fixed low by using outsourcing, immigrants, prison labor,, and tons and tons of bs.

a reply to: ChaoticOrder

Any form of governance that does not follow the Banking houses and financial institutions agenda to the letter would inevitably lead to an increase in price.

While their sorts exist in the manner a fashion that they do residing in their Ivory towers we are always going to have to pay over the odds and will be bent over the barrel.

originally posted by: pexx421
Today’s inflation comes from increased Price fixing, monopolies, fees, interest and debt, etc.

Again, this is not true. Was just looking around the Mises Institute since I haven't been there in a while and found this great book:

Yet the plain truth is that our political leaders have brought on inflation by their own money and fiscal policies. They are promising to fight with their right hand the conditions brought on with their left. Inflation, always and everywhere, is primarily caused by an increase in the supply of money and credit. In fact, inflation is the increase in the supply of money and credit. If you turn to the American College Dictionary, for example, you will find the first definition of inflation given as follows: "Undue expansion or increase of the currency of a country, esp. by the issuing of paper money not redeemable in specie."
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The word "inflation" originally applied solely to the quantity of money. It meant that the volume of money was inflated, blown up, overextended. It is not mere pedantry to insist that the word should be used only in its original meaning. To use it to mean "a rise in prices" is to deflect attention away from the real cause of inflation and the real cure for it.
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One of the most stubborn fallacies about inflation is the assumption that it is caused, not by an increase in the quantity of money, but by a "shortage of goods."It is true that a rise in prices (which, as we have seen, should not be identified with inflation) can be caused either by an increase in the quantity of money or by a short-age of goods—or partly by both. Wheat, for example, may rise in price either because there is an increase in the supply of money or a failure of the wheat crop. But we seldom find, even in conditions of total war, a general rise of prices caused by a general shortage of goods.

What You Should Know About Inflation (1960)

Another good article from the Mises Institute:

Inflation as a Process of Wealth Transfer

It is better to think of inflation as a process rather than a particular rate. The process starts with a particular type of monetary system, emerges in an expansion of the money supply by central bank printing and bank loans flowing into various areas of the economy, manifests itself in prices rising generally — though unevenly — higher than they otherwise would have been, finally leaving a wake of winners and losers.

This approach allows us to see inflation as not some inevitable force, but a deliberate process of wealth transfer enshrined in state policy.

Inflation as Trickery

Yet, mainstream economists believe that some degree of rising prices is “optimal.” Thus, central banks actually try to ensure consumer prices keep going up. But their reasons for this chiefly revolve around the trickery of inflation on unsuspecting people. For example, many inflation proponents argue that the best way to lower people’s wages to restore company profits is not to actually give them a pay cut, but to rather create inflation so they won’t fully notice their real wages falling.

Inflation: It’s a Wealth Redistribution Scheme

originally posted by: pexx421

Yeah I’m going to have to disagree. Venezuela under Chavez was doing quite well for the people until the us started their economic destabilizing and coup attempts. It was at one point the most rapidly improving nation in South America.

Venezuela was oil rich, once that oil ran out things quickly changed. The precise problem in Venezuela is hyper-inflation, the government printed far too much money far too quickly and now people are wheeling around carts full of notes. That is exactly what happens when government spending gets out of control. The simple fact is you have to pay for socialism some how and money doesn't come from nothing without any side effects.

China has had the greatest economic growth of the last decade, far greater than anywhere else in the world, and they are far from the ideologies you espouse.

Yeah and they achieved that growth by embracing extreme industrialism and by shifting to a more capitalistic economy instead of sticking to their fundamentalist communist system, which allowed them to conduct in free trade with the rest of the world. When they were living under heavy communism they had literally tens of millions of people die from poverty and violence. Also they are still far from perfect, they are one of the most authoritarian governments on Earth.

And if you don’t even understand how rising wages of labor can lead to increased costs then I’m not sure what you’re doing writing a “money” series.

I guess if wages increased faster than inflation it would increase costs for businesses, but that never happens so it's not a valid point. Price inflation is always slowly occurring due to a constant increase of the money supply, but wages are barely ever rising. I'm not sure why you find this concept so hard to comprehend, or perhaps you just don't want to accept the implications.

Banks create money every day, and they get to make a profit from it. The thing is, money is supposed to “redistribute “. That’s called circulation, and without it the economy fails.

The funny thing is, most Keynesian economics argue constant inflation is a good thing because it encourages circulation/liquidity. If the money in your bank account is constantly dropping in value you have less incentive to hold it and more incentive to spend it, the government can spend money it doesn't have to stimulate the economy, and banks can loan out money they don't have through fractional reserve banking. This is very precarious logic because as we know wages barely ever grow to keep up with inflation and there is good evidence that price deflation can actually be good for an economy despite it commonly being referenced as a bad thing. If the government were to stop inflating the money supply we would see deflation because GDP is always growing.

An article from the Mises institute challenging the traditional logic on Deflation being bad: Deflation and Depression: Where's the Link?

Price inflation is always slowly occurring due to a constant increase of the money supply, but wages are barely ever rising.

The US federal reserve bank appears to have stopped raising the interest rate that it charges banks for loans.
Good news since the banks loan the money that stimulates the economy through mortgage acquisition and new construction projects. With bank interest rates kept low stimulating GDP growth, wages should start to reinflate over 2%.

National debt could be paid off by issuing bonds but there is a supply and demand situation there since they are competing with socialist and non socialist countries to service the debt without paying a high rate of interest.

You issue too many bonds and the yield will have to be raised to stimulate demand. Some subprime third world socialist countries are going to have to pay a fortune in interest if they can't generate GDP/commodity revenue to offset the debt.
Inflation usually results when a country like Venezuela has to rely on imports without a balance of trade.

Price increases are more a balance of trade issue in an ideal socialist system which has resources and produces GDP.

Will the Price of MEAT go UP or DOWN, now that New York City is banning meat in schools on Mondays?

saraacarter.com...

Mayor DeBlasio says that there will be less gas in the air, due to less meat consumption too!

a reply to: pexx421

Best post of the thread and you only get one star from me.

I'm so sick of hearing we have free-markets. All we have is price fixing in the corporation's favor.

originally posted by: ChaoticOrder

originally posted by: pexx421

Yeah I’m going to have to disagree. Venezuela under Chavez was doing quite well for the people until the us started their economic destabilizing and coup attempts. It was at one point the most rapidly improving nation in South America.

Venezuela was oil rich, once that oil ran out things quickly changed. The precise problem in Venezuela is hyper-inflation, the government printed far too much money far too quickly and now people are wheeling around carts full of notes. That is exactly what happens when government spending gets out of control. The simple fact is you have to pay for socialism some how and money doesn't come from nothing without any side effects.

China has had the greatest economic growth of the last decade, far greater than anywhere else in the world, and they are far from the ideologies you espouse.

Yeah and they achieved that growth by embracing extreme industrialism and by shifting to a more capitalistic economy instead of sticking to their fundamentalist communist system, which allowed them to conduct in free trade with the rest of the world. When they were living under heavy communism they had literally tens of millions of people die from poverty and violence. Also they are still far from perfect, they are one of the most authoritarian governments on Earth.

First off, Venezuela’s oil didn’t “run out”. We engaged with Saudi to fix prices low, specifically to try to destroy the economies of Russia, Iran, and Venezuela. Then we refused to buy their oil (we are the only ones set up to refine their oil), and we cut them off from the world markets. This is an exact example of my statement that there is no free market. We use the market as a weapon and a tool to keep all other peoples subservient. It’s a weapon in our economic war on the globe and upon our own people.

And China didn’t shift their market. They’ve always had a market, just as every “socialist” country has always had a market. And they didn’t shift it the way we demand, they did it their own way, and doing so they saved their economy, and the us economy as well, as we would have collapsed had they not greatly expanded govt spending on infrastructure and social projects, which i doubt you had in mind with your “free market” explanation.

Now Russia under gorbechev was exactly what we demanded in a free market. And what happened? Their country collapsed under massive privatization under the neoliberal plan, there were bread lines, poverty and starvation while oligarchs and robber barons took everything.

Double post

I guess, let me put it this way. Those corporations that y’all seem to venerate. That you say need freedom from regulation, as this is how you describe “free market” (sounds like unfettered corporate tyranny to me). They assassinate labor leaders in other nations. They instigate coups of democratically elected governments in other nations who want to raise minimum wage. They assassinate professors and economists of other nations who disagree with their model. They instigate wars for profits. They destroy environments in other nations causing cancer and sickness for indigenous populations. They manipulate elections in all nations. They have child labor and sweat shops in other nations. They force legislation here making us buy their products. They force legislation here stealing our money when their model fails. They force legislation here making us spend way more on drugs then they should cost. They force legislation here keeping our prisons full and turning them into profitable labor camps for corporations.

And these are the people you believe need to be, deserve to be unregulated? These are the folk you think will provide and safeguard a healthy productive and happy future for the workers, if we’d all just wise up and free them from any oversight and regulation? This idea is not only extremely naive and unrealistic, it’s also the product of extensive manipulation, advanced psy ops, indoctrination and manufactured consent at its best. It’s the frog begging for the water to be heated up some more.

a reply to: ChaoticOrder

trust me

Never.

So... you didn't even try to refute the article, nor did you look into the second piece I posted. Precisely the kind of extremely shallow scaremongering I expected, who knew?

Have a capital day!

originally posted by: pexx421

originally posted by: ChaoticOrder

originally posted by: pexx421

Yeah I’m going to have to disagree. Venezuela under Chavez was doing quite well for the people until the us started their economic destabilizing and coup attempts. It was at one point the most rapidly improving nation in South America.

Venezuela was oil rich, once that oil ran out things quickly changed. The precise problem in Venezuela is hyper-inflation, the government printed far too much money far too quickly and now people are wheeling around carts full of notes. That is exactly what happens when government spending gets out of control. The simple fact is you have to pay for socialism some how and money doesn't come from nothing without any side effects.

China has had the greatest economic growth of the last decade, far greater than anywhere else in the world, and they are far from the ideologies you espouse.

Yeah and they achieved that growth by embracing extreme industrialism and by shifting to a more capitalistic economy instead of sticking to their fundamentalist communist system, which allowed them to conduct in free trade with the rest of the world. When they were living under heavy communism they had literally tens of millions of people die from poverty and violence. Also they are still far from perfect, they are one of the most authoritarian governments on Earth.

First off, Venezuela’s oil didn’t “run out”. We engaged with Saudi to fix prices low, specifically to try to destroy the economies of Russia, Iran, and Venezuela. Then we refused to buy their oil (we are the only ones set up to refine their oil), and we cut them off from the world markets. This is an exact example of my statement that there is no free market. We use the market as a weapon and a tool to keep all other peoples subservient. It’s a weapon in our economic war on the globe and upon our own people.

And China didn’t shift their market. They’ve always had a market, just as every “socialist” country has always had a market. And they didn’t shift it the way we demand, they did it their own way, and doing so they saved their economy, and the us economy as well, as we would have collapsed had they not greatly expanded govt spending on infrastructure and social projects, which i doubt you had in mind with your “free market” explanation.

Now Russia under gorbechev was exactly what we demanded in a free market. And what happened? Their country collapsed under massive privatization under the neoliberal plan, there were bread lines, poverty and starvation while oligarchs and robber barons took everything.

Let me add, this is not all we did to intentionally destroy their economy. We also stole all their money that was held in our banks, to the tune of some 30 billion. Then we point at their country and say “look how socialism fails!” All the whole holding all their money hostage, and then complaining that it’s their fault their people have trouble affording food and necessities (which we also sanction them from having).

originally posted by: PublicOpinion
a reply to: ChaoticOrder

trust me

Never.

So... you didn't even try to refute the article, nor did you look into the second piece I posted. Precisely the kind of extremely shallow scaremongering I expected, who knew?

There was nothing to refute, the entire thing is just complaining about rising costs and how we should blame inflation, and one sentence about how capitalism causes inflation without any deeper explanation what so ever. That article is conveying the precise misconception I wrote this thread to debunk, that's why I found it so ironic. This mindless blame of capitalism for rising prices is far too prevalent, when in fact the vast majority of inflation is caused by the creation of new money by the government. And yes I did read the second article as I'm a fan of the Mises Institute, as you can see I posted several articles from them near the top of this page. I think you'll find the Institute isn't exactly a platform for socialism. If you read the article more closely you may find it's being somewhat critical of "Social Democracy". Here are the concluding paragraphs from the article:

In particular, they “equalized” the opportunities for a high school and university education, by offering the respective services not only free of charge but by literally paying large groups of students to take advantage of them. This not only increased the demand for educators, teachers, and social scientists, whose payment naturally had to come from taxes. It also amounted, somewhat ironically for a socialist party which argued that equalizing educational opportunities would imply an income transfer from the rich to the poor, in effect to a subsidy paid to the more intelligent at the expense of a complementary income reduction for the less intelligent, and, to the extent that there are higher numbers of intelligent people among the middle and upper social classes than among the lower, a subsidy to the haves paid by the have-nots.

As a result of this process of politicalization led by increased numbers of tax-paid educators gaining influence over increased numbers of students, there emerged (as could be predicted) a change in the mentality of the people. It was increasingly considered completely normal to satisfy all sorts of demands through political means, and to claim all sorts of alleged rights against other supposedly better-situated people and their property; and for a whole generation of people raised during this period, it became less and less natural to think of improving one’s lot by productive effort or by contracting. Thus, when the actual economic crisis, necessitated by the redistributionist policy, arose, the people were less equipped than ever to overcome it, because over time the same policy had weakened precisely those skills and talents which were now most urgently required.

Revealingly enough, when the socialist-liberal government was ousted in 1982, mainly because of its obviously miserable economic performance, it was still the prevalent opinion that the crisis should be resolved not by eliminating the causes, i.e., the swollen minimum provisions for nonproducers or noncontractors, but rather by another redistributive measure: by forcibly equalizing the available work — time for employed and unemployed people.

Social Democracy

a reply to: pexx421

And these are the people you believe need to be, deserve to be unregulated?

No one said anything about deregulation, you're overlaying your conception of my beliefs onto my actual beliefs. Obviously you need regulations, I said stream lined regulation in my opening post for a reason. Another way to ensure constantly rising prices is to have ever increasing regulations which give businesses more costs. If the point of regulations is to save people money by stopping businesses from screwing people over, you also have to realize an overzealous application of regulations will also screw people over. Contrary to what now seems like popular opinion, corporations aren't the spawn of the devil, they are run by real people, our neighbors and our family.

What if one day you want to start a business, would you want to face endless regulations? I agree to some extent that monopolies should have a higher degree of oversight, but folks on the left seem mighty biased in when and how those monopolies should be regulated. If we're talking about Google or Facebook heaving more oversight to ensure they aren't unfairly censoring people, nope we cannot do that because they are private businesses and shouldn't have any regulations determine how transparent they have to be. Suddenly the rights of a massive corporations matter when it's convenient for silencing a point of view you don't like.

a reply to: ChaoticOrder

You’ve cherry picked the points you respond to, and ignored the real points that I made. You didn’t address the Venezuela or China phenomenon, nor the actual horrible things that the very corporations here do in other nations. You didn’t address the fact that no market is remotely close to free, nor that under our current capitalism our economy is only still functioning due to the actions of a communist country. Whatever.

originally posted by: pexx421
a reply to: ChaoticOrder

You didn’t address the Venezuela or China phenomenon, nor the actual horrible things that the very corporations here do in other nations.

Unless I was dreaming, I explained to you that China suffered massively under full communism and has only benefited by embracing extreme industrialism and free trade with the rest of the world. And Venezuela is suffering from hyper-inflation and running out of oil, and despite what you try to claim the situation is nothing like what happened in Libya or Syria where rebels and ISIS forces attempted to take down the government with help from the western world. I've written extensively on how Trump has helped reverse the situation in Syria by siding with the Assad regime and Russian forces, ISIS are all but removed from Syria and Iraq now.

Many years ago I was like you, I saw the U.S. as the core of all world problems, and to some extent I was justified in those beliefs, but I now also realize how much the U.S. has done for the world and when the President isn't completely evil it can be a great force for good. Ironically I think Trump is the least callous President in a long time, despite how he may come off he has a heart, unlike the previous robots who have been in power. I don't doubt socialists believe they are fighting for the greater good, but they don't seem to realize it's a case where good intentions can very easily pave the path to hell.

You didn’t address the fact that no market is remotely close to free

Like I said, some degree of socialism is often a good thing. Obviously it's not a binary choice, there are different degrees of economic freedom, in fact Wikipedia has a list of countries by economic freedom. Switzerland and Hong Kong are both consistently ranked in the top 5 nations with the most economic freedom, they both have very low taxes and minimal regulations, yet their economies are very strong and average standards of living are high.

Switzerland is one of the most developed countries in the world, with the highest nominal wealth per adult and the eighth-highest per capita gross domestic product according to the IMF.[14][15] Switzerland ranks at or near the top globally in several metrics of national performance, including government transparency, civil liberties, quality of life, economic competitiveness and human development. Zürich, Geneva and Basel have all three been ranked among the top ten cities in the world in terms of quality of life, with the first ranked second globally, according to Mercer in 2018.[16]
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Switzerland has a stable, prosperous and high-tech economy and enjoys great wealth, being ranked as the wealthiest country in the world per capita in multiple rankings. In 2011 it was ranked as the wealthiest country in the world in per capita terms (with "wealth" being defined to include both financial and non-financial assets), while the 2013 Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report showed that Switzerland was the country with the highest average wealth per adult in 2013.[80][81][82] It has the world's nineteenth largest economy by nominal GDP and the thirty-sixth largest by purchasing power parity. It is the twentieth largest exporter, despite its small size.
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Switzerland has an overwhelmingly private sector economy and low tax rates by Western World standards; overall taxation is one of the smallest of developed countries. Switzerland is a relatively easy place to do business, currently ranking 20th of 189 countries in the Ease of Doing Business Index.
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In 2012, life expectancy at birth was 80.4 years for men and 84.7 years for women[173] — the highest in the world.[174][175]

Switzerland
Economy of Switzerland

The territory has the largest number of skyscrapers in the world, most surrounding Victoria Harbour.[27] Hong Kong ranks seventh on the UN Human Development Index, and has the sixth-longest life expectancy in the world.[28]
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Hong Kong has a capitalist mixed service economy, characterised by low taxation, minimal government market intervention, and an established international financial market.[179] It is the world's 35th-largest economy, with a nominal GDP of approximately HK$2.82 trillion (US$360 billion).[12] Hong Kong's economy has ranked at the top of the Heritage Foundation's economic freedom index since 1995[180][181] and it has one of the highest per capita incomes in the world, but the territory has a relatively high level of income disparity.[13] The Hong Kong Stock Exchange is the seventh-largest in the world, with a market capitalisation of HK$30.4 trillion (US$3.87 trillion) as of December 2018.[182]
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As one of the world's leading international financial centres, Hong Kong's service-oriented economy is characterized by its low taxation, almost free port trade and well established international financial market.[11] Its currency, called the Hong Kong dollar, is legally issued by three major international commercial banks,[12] and pegged to the US dollar.[13][14] Interest rates are determined by the individual banks in Hong Kong to ensure they are market driven.[15] There is no officially recognised central banking system, although the Hong Kong Monetary Authority functions as a financial regulatory authority.[16][17]

Hong Kong
Economy of Hong Kong

Socialism is when the government owns the means of production btw

Derp

originally posted by: toysforadults
Socialism is when the government owns the means of production btw

I'd say that's more of a trait of communism but it depends how extensive the control over production is.

a reply to: ChaoticOrder

Sorry but you are way off. China succeeded by embracing massive public projects. And our economy would have collapsed if they hadn’t. And again, Venezuela never ran out of oil. They suffered an intentionally fabricated economic downturn intended to destroy their economy, and oust their govt, imposed by us. Which is exactly what happened in Libya and Syria. And you have the order of events backwards. The western world decided they had to go, and then it worked to create the situation whereby that would come to fruition.

And I also disagree about trump having a heart. Who has he helped? Any person with a heart, in his shoes, could dramatically help billions, not in a meager way but in a life changing way. Trump is a self worshipping buffoon and con man, who plays off the hate, frustration and disillusionment of the people, legitimate as it is, for his own self aggrandizement, with no care or even understanding of if it will benefit the people he bamboozles or not.

a reply to: pexx421

China succeeded by embracing massive public projects.

No, they became the worlds industrial manufacturer and as a result have large areas with unsafe levels of air pollution. Hong Kong is still technically a part of China but they chose to embrace free market capitalism instead of communism, and it paid off for them massively.

And again, Venezuela never ran out of oil.

Sorry it's been a few months since I looked into this issue, you're right they didn't run out of oil, the price of oil collapsed and since their government was so reliant on the revenue collected from oil profits it could no longer afford to fund a lot of the social programs it was pouring money into. The Venezuela government then decided to create the money from nothing if it couldn't get it any other way, and this led to massive levels of inflation. All of this happened years before Trump got into office but is still ongoing, and the sanctions only started to occur after the crises occurred and Venezuelan leaders ignored advice from the world and made the problem worse. If they really are suffering how can you support Maduro refusing aid from nations that want to help? Of course they'd blame it all on the U.S., but I prefer to believe experts and facts over one of the most corrupt governments on Earth.

Economists have stated that shortages and high inflation in Venezuela began before sanctions were directed towards the country.[197] The Wall Street Journal says that economists place the blame for Venezuela's economy shrinking by half on "Maduro's policies, including widespread nationalizations, out-of-control spending that sparked inflation, price controls that led to shortages, and widespread graft and mismanagement."[198] The Venezuelan government has stated that the United States is responsible for its economic collapse.[198]
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Inflation rate in 2014 reached 69%[96] and was the highest in the world.[97][98] The rate then increased to 181% in 2015,[99] 800% in 2016,[71][100] 4,000% in 2017[101] and 2,295,981% in February 2019.[102]
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Oil was discovered in the early 20th century, and today, Venezuela has the world's largest known oil reserves and has been one of the world's leading exporters of oil. Previously, the country was an underdeveloped exporter of agricultural commodities such as coffee and cocoa, but oil quickly came to dominate exports and government revenues. The 1980s oil glut led to an external debt crisis and a long-running economic crisis. Inflation peaked at 100% in 1996 and poverty rates rose to 66% in 1995[12] as (by 1998) per capita GDP fell to the same level as 1963, down a third from its 1978 peak.[13] The recovery of oil prices in the early 2000s gave Venezuela oil funds not seen since the 1980s.[14] The Venezuelan government under Hugo Chávez then established populist social welfare policies that initially boosted the Venezuelan economy and increased social spending, temporarily[15] reducing economic inequality and poverty in the early years of the regime.[19] However, such populist policies[20] later became inadequate, causing the nation's collapse as their excesses—including a uniquely extreme fossil fuel subsidy[21]—are widely blamed for destabilizing the nation's economy. The destabilized economy led to a crisis in Bolivarian Venezuela, resulting in hyperinflation, an economic depression,[22] shortages of basic goods[23] and drastic increases in unemployment,[24] poverty,[25] disease, child mortality, malnutrition and crime.
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The election in 1973 of Carlos Andrés Pérez coincided with an oil crisis, in which Venezuela's income exploded as oil prices soared; oil industries were nationalized in 1976. This led to massive increases in public spending, but also increases in external debts, which continued into the 1980s when the collapse of oil prices during the 1980s crippled the Venezuelan economy. As the government started to devalue the currency in February 1983 to face its financial obligations, Venezuelans' real standards of living fell dramatically. A number of failed economic policies and increasing corruption in government led to rising poverty and crime, worsening social indicators, and increased political instability.[66]
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Venezuela devalued its currency in February 2013 due to the rising shortages in the country,[80][109] which included those of milk, flour, and other necessities. This led to an increase in malnutrition, especially among children.[110][111] Venezuela's economy had become strongly dependent on the exportation of oil with Crude accounting for 86% of exports,[112] and a high price per barrel to support social programs. Beginning in 2014 the price of oil plummeted from over $100/bbl to $40/bbl a year and a half later, this placed great pressure on the Venezuelan economy, which was no longer able to afford vast social programs.
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In early 2013, Venezuela devalued its currency due to growing shortages in the country.[246][247][248] The shortages included, and still include, necessities such as toilet paper, milk, and flour.[249] Fears rose so high due to the toilet paper shortage that the government occupied a toilet paper factory, and continued further plans to nationalize other industrial aspects like food distribution.[250][251] Venezuela's bond ratings have also decreased multiple times in 2013 due to decisions by the president Nicolás Maduro. One of his decisions was to force stores and their warehouses to sell all of their products, which led to even more shortages in the future.[252] In 2016, consumer prices in Venezuela increased 800% and the economy declined by 18.6%, entering an economic depression.[253][254]
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Corruption in Venezuela is high by world standards and was so for much of the 20th century. The discovery of oil had worsened political corruption,[226] and by the late 1970s, Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonso's description of oil as "the Devil's excrement" had become a common expression in Venezuela.[227] Venezuela has been ranked one of the most corrupt countries on the Corruption Perceptions Index since the survey started in 1995. The 2010 ranking placed Venezuela at number 164, out of 178 ranked countries in government transparency.[228] By 2016, the rank had increased to 166 out of 178.[229] Similarly, the World Justice Project ranked Venezuela 99th out of 99 countries surveyed in its 2014 Rule of Law Index.[230]

Venezuela
Crisis in Venezuela

And you have the order of events backwards. The western world decided they had to go, and then it worked to create the situation whereby that would come to fruition.

Once again Venezuela is a completely different situation, I'm not arguing Assad or Gaddafi weren't targeted by the western world, in fact I've written many threads on the Libya and Syrian conflicts going to back to 2011, where I point out how the MSM is manipulating us to support the rebels while ignoring their crimes and overlooking the evidence suggesting they carried out chemical attacks to drum up international support. The reasons behind the conflicts are complex and multi-faceted and not just "Gaddafi was a socialist so they took him out", if they targeted leaders simply for being socialist we'd see a lot more failing regimes.