US Politics Mega-Blog - Page 119

On December 31 2018 03:28 GoTuNk! wrote:


All fair points. Why are you so obsessed about "wealth inequality" ? Seriously who cares, you can run a country into the ground and eliminate wealth inequality. Look at poverty, gdp per capita, literacy, life expectancy, government debt etc, things that matter. Look at them together, don't nit pick statistics, all places have flaws.
Singapore was a barren rock that went from 3rd world to 1st world countries in a few generations despite no natural resources, that's why it's worth bringing up. Hong Kong in a example of a country running on pure economical freedom. Compare both countries to to Venezuela Argentina or Colombia.

On December 31 2018 03:59 GreenHorizons wrote:
It amazes me that the US could try to assassinate/remove a democratically elected leader and actively undermine their governance and people chalk that up as "bad governance".

On December 31 2018 07:05 iamthedave wrote:


Venezuala was badly run besides that.

On December 31 2018 07:05 iamthedave wrote:


Venezuala was badly run besides that.

On December 31 2018 07:21 GoTuNk! wrote:


badly run is an understatement, almost as blatant as saying it had nothing to do with "socialism"

On December 31 2018 08:38 iamthedave wrote:


It didn't, and I'm willing to bet you can't back up your own claim if pushed to do so. Socialism is not responsible for Hugo Chavez being a political neophyte and failing to set up sustainable systems in his country. That's Hugo Chavez being a well-meaning amateur making amateurish mistakes. It's entirely possible that if you'd had far more capable political leaders in Venezuala's position that the country would still be doing great. As it is, at least the people had a few good years as opposed to the none they'd had leading up to Chavez's reign.

On December 31 2018 09:17 IgnE wrote:
There are a lot of poorly run capitalist countries.

On December 31 2018 09:30 GreenHorizons wrote:


Fair point. But I think the contention is that Chavez was uniquely bad so that an adequate leader (Obama would fill this for most people of the position I believe he's holding), would have done some specific things differently.

I'm curious what they are and what kind of leader he's imagining would have led Venezuela to prosper more and more specifically if it involves bowing to the US/west and/or capitalism.

GoTunk will probably say the Bush was a better leader than Chavez, certainly thinks Trump is, iamdave is blaming Chavez from a different angle where I'm curious whether he ranks Chavez as a better leader than those two as well as if Obama ran the US better.

On December 31 2018 10:42 GoTuNk! wrote:


You cannot compare Obama to Chavez, Obama was a moderate leftist who believed in a capitalist economy with a welfare state, Chavez was a full blown socialist. You can neither compare the US to Venezuela, the US has a system of check and balances (senate and legislative branch, the constitution, traditions and ultimately an armed and indepent population) that would never allow a president to take full control of everything and reign for 12 YEARS (not more because he died) and then hand pick his succesor.

It's not a matter of better or worse leader, full blown statism always end up in failure at the cost of famine and death. At some point you would expect reasonable people say "huh many countries have been ruined and millions of dead is enough trying, maybe we should not do that anymore".

If a country requires a "great leader" to work, it's system is already broken.

On December 31 2018 11:01 GreenHorizons wrote:


In some cases I can imagine us being able to productively exchange perspectives but I doubt this is one of them. As I remember you're supportive of what the US did where you live which makes us further apart than simply you being a Trump supporter.

On December 31 2018 07:21 GoTuNk! wrote:


badly run is an understatement, almost as blatant as saying it had nothing to do with "socialism"

On December 31 2018 08:43 GreenHorizons wrote:


Can you help me understand specifically what he did wrong in your view (*EDIT: should have done instead?), and how that compares to say the US or the UK which presumably you believe were run better by a recent leader (though I'm not sure how you feel about the current ones comparatively)?

His primary contemporary in the US would be Bush for a comparison.

On December 31 2018 18:50 iamthedave wrote:


The same thing most states do: Invest in the future.

Chavez spent his country's wealth on enriching the lives of the poor, installling and funding socialist programs and so on and so forth. These are undeniably good things. The problem is that he didn't invest in structure. The all-important oil industry was taken away from corrupt fucks - which is good - and given to people who didn't know what they were doing - this is bad - and those people weren't then properly trained on how to manage it - this is terrible - and so when the prices dipped, as they're wont to do, Venezuala crashed and burned. Their production of their main cash source and most important resource fell because of that lack of investment in structure.

You can't spend, random numbers, 150 billion on social programs and then prepare your country to make 50 billion a year. It doesn't work.

Chavez should have spent more time rebuilding Venezuala's economy, stamping out corruption (he did almost nothing on that front; bribery was common in the government during the golden years), training up the people who'd have to carry the nation on their shoulders once the downturn came. He probably shouldn't have gone quite as all in as he did on setting up the programs he did, either, and should have been more gradual with implementing them to make sure the economy could handle it. As it was he acted like nothing was wrong even as the oil prices were falling, and didn't adapt. See 150 billion needed while being able to make 50 billion. The shortfall wasn't at that level, but that's why it all crashed and burned.

I'm not even sure if this would be practical in Venezuala's case, but Chavez definitely needed to look at divesifying the economy as well, so Venezuala wasn't totally reliant on oil. Either way, he didn't try.

It's possible none of that would have helped due to the sanctions and pressure they were going to be put under due to being a Socialist state, but it might, and would at least have avoided the country falling into absolute poverty like it has now.

As for comparisons to the US and UK, I don't know if it's fair to ask the question. Our systems have been largely unchanged for - in my country's case - centuries. It's robust because it's been tweaked and refined over that period of time. Venezuala essentially etch-a-sketched and Chavez tried to build an entirely new country. I don't blame him for failing, it was a mammoth task, but it was one he wasn't suited to complete. Chavez should have been the visionary at the elbow of a competent boring civil servant, someone who could put into practical reality Chavez's fever dreams of a Socialist paradise. The highs might not have been quite as high, but they'd have made a much better, much more lasting nation.

Diversified economies are why the UK and US are both more robust than Venezuala. I don't know if that's something you can credit a specific leader with though. If your nation lives on only one thing, you're at the mercy of that one thing.

A good leader, I think, is one who can see past a golden period to what will come after and be ready for that. Chavez wasn't, and Venezuala couldn't survive that lack of foresight.

On January 01 2019 00:02 GreenHorizons wrote:


I'm sorry but that sounds silly.

"Should have diversified" doesn't really make sense. How or what industries was he to build to supplement the oil industry over the time he was there?

The social programs were absolutely necessary for people to build those industries. It's how you do that.

"Stomp out corruption" sounds absolutely laughable when you call the US a robust system with Trump at it's helm. It's also not like the US economy diversified over 10 years like your suggesting some miracle leader (who's slightly above average) could have accomplished.

All that's without consideration for the wealthiest most powerful country in the world rallying their allies to intentionally sabotage Venezauela's economy and their government.

I do appreciate the explanation but I don't find it at all convincing. My conclusion is that Chavez did better than most US leaders (particularly if bombing, slaughtering, enslaving innocent people counts against the US presidents) and most leaders in general.

I mean South Korea still has slave islands where they traffic disabled people to and they can't escape. The idea that Chavez was going to do more than he did to stomp out the corruption (largely sponsored and supported by the US btw) seems completely unrealistic and an effort to place a much higher expectation on Chavez than pretty much any other leaders.

On January 01 2019 01:42 iamthedave wrote:


If by 'expectation' you mean 'do the basic things required for the system to survive' then yeah I suppose I am putting higher expectation on Chavez.

The people around Chavez made off with billions from the Venezualan economy and Maduro's doing the same thing. Corruption should have been one of Chavez's number one targets, since he already knew how devastating it could be; that's literally what created the circumstances for his own election.

I appreciate that it is extremely hard to stop. But Chavez didn't even try. You can't give him a pass for that. He not only should have known better - since that's how he got into power in the first place - but he had a free pass from the Venezualan people to actually do it, which most leaders don't have. In the US, attempting to sanction drug companies sees them rally legions of loyal brand supporters to harass congress, Chavez could have just said "that guy's an arsehole, get him!" and the people would have gone along with it. He had the power to at least make an attempt, and didn't, and so he left the dry rot in place to slowly destroy his country.

There's no excusing that. He doesn't even get naivety as a pass, because he knew full well that this was a serious problem from the prior administration.

And yeah, economically the US is a robust system. Trump's at the helm and it hasn't gone down in flames yet. That's the dictionary definition of robust right there. Your political system is so ironclad that even with Trump at the helm, the actual structure of it is almost untouched. The character is shifting unpleasantly, but the structure remains. That's impressive. What do you think would have happened if Trump got in charge in Venezuala?

As for diversification... well I'm not a world leader. All I can tell you is the butcher's bill of Chavez's mistakes, the things he needed to do and didn't. Venezuala's always been a victim of the oil markets, maybe the nation literally has no way to diversify. But again, Chavez didn't invest in any attempt to find a way to do it. I followed Venezuala closesly because i really wanted it to succeed, but the warning signs were there years before he died. Chavez's eye was never on the future, and now the country doesn't have one.

On January 01 2019 02:09 GreenHorizons wrote:


He fights the single most powerful corrupt group in the country and wins, invests in social programs dramatically increasing literacy and reducing abject poverty giving people the most basic tools necessary to fight corruption and diversify their economy, roots out rent seeking land owners, and refuses to bow to corrupt international pressure that targets the people of his country in an effort to replace leadership with western corporate puppets and you see no effort to fight corruption or develop the country.

Meanwhile the corrupt western interests intentionally sabotaging the country are viewed as remarkably robust, despite Trump. Rather than seeing how their "robustness" is a product of corrupt white nationalist policy (though often with a liberal mask) quite succinctly represented by Trump.

Chavez did more to fight corruption in his tenure than the US has in the last 50 years hands down.

"Chavez eyes were never on the future" and "I followed Venezuela closely" doesn't compute at all.


Same as seeing stuff like this

Trump increases pressure on Venezuela with sanctions on gold

and concluding that Venezuela is at fault. Like what's the justification for even doing that besides capitalist corruption sanctioned and championed by the biggest, most corrupt, and powerful capitalist nation?

On January 01 2019 04:25 iamthedave wrote:


Chavez did nothing to curb corruption in his own government. How can you not see the ways in which this is self-defeating? Everything you just described is true... and a band aid. He shuffled out the old corrupt guys while nesting a new bunch of corrupt fuckheads, all while building the infrastructure to allow them to take total, unchallenged power. That isn't really combating corruption is it? He knew about these guys. He knew, GH, and he chose to do nothing. That is a choice Hugo Chavez made. He made a choice you condemn people for regularly, and you are giving him a pass because he happened to be a Socialist. Give him the credit he deserves, but don't act as if he's a blameless saint in all of this. He fucked up, and he had every reason to know what was coming from that particular fuck up.

So no, I stand by the statement that he did nothing to combat corruption. Clearing out the people without targeting the structure isn't combating corruption. It's emptying offices so you can fill them yourself.

As you yourself love to point out, governments tend towards massive corruption. Again, Chavez knew this firsthand and he did nothing to stop it. This was a known issue for years before it all came crashing down. There was no transparency, the Supreme Court was full of yes-men, and they were used to protect the guys leeching the Venezualan economy of life.

I don't blame Chavez for things outside of his control, such as the US putting pressure on Venezuala. I'm not sure why you're acting like this is news to me. I'm well aware that he was enemy number one. We're not discussing those factors because it's outside his control and he can't be blamed for that. He can be blamed for tolerating rampant corruption among his allies in the government and not learning from the mistakes of the past, and sowing the seeds for Venezuala's utter and total collapse.

On January 01 2019 04:33 GreenHorizons wrote:


I feel like you're actually unaware of how influential western capitalists were in the corruption within his own government. Much of the stolen money was taken to be spent and laundered in the west. How capitalist interests constantly fought for control of the government through all sorts of means, many continue today. Including but not limited to hoarding and smuggling goods to western allied countries where the corruption is welcomed and exploited.

By your own admission he kicked the shit out of corruption. Including domestic corruption that represented interests in the oil industry and beyond.

His rooting out of corruption is quite literally what pisses off the corrupted corporate interests that infiltrated every level of government. The other reason I keep mentioning that he was fighting off an international corrupted capitalist coalition is because you don't seem to be respecting it's influence on internal corruption and why your characterization seems terribly unreasonable.

EDIT: Keep in mind this is in the context where Russians threatened the entirety of the US electoral system with some shitty memes.