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SOS Venezuela

Discussion in 'Watford' started by aberdeenhornet, Dec 1, 2016.

  1. aberdeenhornet

    aberdeenhornet Well-Known Member

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    Heaven help Venezuela and all my family, friends and even enemies living there. The end game of this regime is starting as the country moves into hyper inflation and massive currency devaluation. Just all be grateful that we live in democracies with enough wealth creation and sharing to feed ourselves. The end result of cuban style administration leading to a very unhappy hungry Christmas for literally millions. The Chavista responsibility for the Colombian plane crash as well. This is another week where my hatred for far left corrupt regimes is leading to extreme blood pressure issues....
     
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  2. andytoprankin

    andytoprankin Well-Known Member

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    I'm sorry that it makes you feel that way, aberdeen, genuinely. I have to say my knowledge of Venezuelan politics isn't vaguely close to your own so I can't begin to comment on what you know more about. But I would say that the Cuban poverty was largely driven by the almost total devastation the US embargo from the early sixties to now has done. That's why people starved. You talk about wealth creation and sharing, but it's the lack of sharing by 'wealth creators' that leads to starving - across the world.

    BTW, I'm not trying to increase your blood pressure! As a means of defusing it I would like to point out that my crazy iPad autocorrect changed the last sentence to "tits the lack of..." <laugh> <ok>
     
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  3. yorkshirehornet

    yorkshirehornet Well-Known Member

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    I was going to post this elsewhere but seems appropriate here and now:

     
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  4. colognehornet

    colognehornet Well-Known Member

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    Help !!!!!!!!! We need someone on the left who knows something about Venezuala. All I know is that the capital is crackers (sorry Caracas). They've never played in the World Cup either. But seriously, as Andy said, you can't live on America's doorstep, be ideologically opposed to them and expect the economy to do well. Maybe one day Simon Bolivar's dream will come true and we will see a united South America.
     
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  5. aberdeenhornet

    aberdeenhornet Well-Known Member

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    Add in that Penaranda is a Venezuelan and we had their national keeper on loan last year. It's not the US that destroys South American economies but the "c" word... "corruption". It doesn't matter if you're left, right or centrist, economies where corruption is rife are self destructing. The current situation has been brought about by the most corrupt government in the countries history and they are experts at it. Chavez came in on a populist vote promising to right all the historical wrongs and then in a similar fashion to Castro he proceeded to amass an immense personal fortune abusing his power. Wherever there is currency control and priviliged access to preferential exchange rates massive gains are made by corrupt individuals and they initially believe they are harming nobody. Theres never been so true a saying as "power corrupts". Simon Bolivar with British support liberated the South American colonies and created the Gran Colombia but even he was in some degree motivated by power. It's quite scary the number of my friends who remain in Venezuela who have zero expertise in Petroleum are or have been employed in PDVSA just because they are members of the PSUV (United Socialist Party of Venezuela). If you fill your businesses (wealth creation devices) with party lackies instead of qualified personnel you can easily predict where it will end. Venezuela one of the richest countries in the world with one of the poorest populations. Very happy if somebody has a solution to build a meritocratic anf just society and don't care what label it carries, (left right, communist, socialist, fascist) all are just labels the way they are bandied about down there.....
     
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  6. yorkshirehornet

    yorkshirehornet Well-Known Member

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    Pretty good analysis Aberdeen....

    Left right or centre, totalitarian power almost always corrupts...
     
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  7. colognehornet

    colognehornet Well-Known Member

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    Corruption is rife everywhere Aberdeen - look at FIFA. It doesn't much matter whether we have called a state Communist, Fascist, Liberal, Democratic, Paternalistic or whatever, they are just labels - the problem is that they have become, more or less, unconscious worshippers of the state (whatever its label). The 'state' has become their religion, and everything else is sacrificed to that one aim. All genuine authority comes from the people, from the base of the triangle. I don't normally like quoting from others - but here is an extract from 'Christ stopped at Eboli', from Carlo Levi. Which expresses what I believe better than I can do it myself:

    'This reversal of the concept of political life, which is gradually and unconsiously ripening among us, is implicit in the peasant civilization. And it is the only path which will lead us out of the vicious circle of Fascism and anti Fascism. The name of this way out is autonomy. The state can only be a group of autonomies, an organic federation. The unit or cell through which the workers can take part in the complex life of the nation must be the autonomous or self governing rural or urban community. But the autonomy or self government of the community cannot exist without the autonomy of the factory, the school, and the city, of every form of social life'. 'This is the only system which can do away with the unbridgeable gulf between the individual and the state. The individual is not a separate unit, but a link, a meeting place of relationships of every kind. This concept of relationship, without which the individual has not life, is at the same time the basis of the state'.

    The problem is that men like Castro identified themselves as the revolutionary elite - which in turn became the fundament of the state. They ended up as 'worshippers of the state', and from that moment on it didn't matter what the label was. What Carlo Levi describes is, in contrast, completed Marxism - as far away from Cuba, Venezuala or the USSR as Venus is from Mars.
     
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  8. aberdeenhornet

    aberdeenhornet Well-Known Member

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    I agree on your last point and much of what you quote makes sense. The real issue I have though with these "ideals" is that they work at very low levels/population units and particularly well when the products of production are only those needed to sustain the local community with little or no interaction with other units. The state as it is is to me a necessary evil to provide structure and rules to allow an interfunctional society to work.The problem with Cuba, Venezuela and USSR is that they promised from Marxism which got the populist support and then delivered a perverse form of capitalism where individuals within the state took over the capitalist means of production for their own enrichment.
    I still fail to see any easy option, the base is education and that takes time, then encouragement to take personal responsibility for your own actions and wealth. This is alien to the Venezuelans particularly who believe they have a right to the petroleum and Gold under their feet, ignorant of the cost of production!
    We'll never agree on the fundamental building blocks needed for society but I'm pretty sure we have the same human/planetary objectives... freedom, fairness, health and opportunity for all to enjoy what is a wonderful planet and if we're priviliged the ability to watch or listen to a great football team battling for our pleasure.
    The crisis of last week is over until the next one, an effective currency devaluation of about 40% means imported goods are unobtainable for the vast majority of people in a country where the local means of production has been destroyed by government policy (business competitiveness wiped out domestically due to historical subsidized imports and price controls, subsidies not sustainable under declining oil revenues, massive Chinese debt far higher than any collaboration debt incurred to the west)
     
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