Venezuelans Skeptical of Maduro's Latest Measures to Salvage Economy

https://www.wsj.com/articles/venezuelans-skeptical-of-maduros-latest-measures-to-salvage-economy-1534860108

by crypto-jeronimo • 8 years ago

45 56 8 years ago

wsj.com

neurotech1• 8 years ago

Non-Paywall: http://archive.is/R57av

prolikewh0a6• 8 years ago

PSUV really needs to replace Maduro with someone more competent.

alacombe3• 8 years ago

Why would you blame the head of the system rather than the underlying ideology ?

SllX2• 8 years ago

Regardless of which you blame, if you intend to change ideologies (not saying Venezuela will), then you take out the head of the current system.

prolikewh0a6• 8 years ago

What underlying ideology? Socialism? There's nothing that says socialism or some form of it can't work.

LarryDarrell• 8 years ago

The situation in Venezuela makes my heart hurt. Reading about how Hugo Chavez destroyed PDVSA through ignorance and incompetence is a real life example of how much damage a populist strongman can do.

alacombe3• 8 years ago

why "populist" ? I don't think the starving Venezuelans condone the system very much. Venezuelan policies are at foremost socialist.

misja111• 8 years ago

The support for Chavez was immense, in particular amongst the poor Venezuelans.

Findeton• 8 years ago

The problem is that many people believe government is the solution to everything. Surprisingly this is most true in latin-american countries where the government is not that strong. What I see when I visit those countries is that some sort of government is always there, but not the official one. Frontiers there are a wish list and the few that pay taxes get to pay it in the name of everyone else...

Carlton87• 8 years ago

Replace strongman with socialist and your statement makes much more sense.

SllX2• 8 years ago

A strongman socialist is still a strongman.

crocal• 8 years ago

Me too. I worked on some good projects there a few years ago and now this. Is there somewhere a “for dummies” analysis / explanation of the chain of events and decisions that led to the current situation in Venezuela? I can’t fathom how it is possible even in the most corrupt place in the world to reach such a sorry state.

jayess2• 8 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_policy_of_the_Hugo_Ch...

In short: price controls, nationalization, high taxation, corruption, Cuban economic influence (read socialism/marxism), economic malinvestment, overspending, debt, and then printing money...

scythe2• 8 years ago

The crucial mistake was the firing of tens of thousands of employees of the state oil company, PDVSA. Eviscerating the state oil business in an economy that depends on oil exports is, um, bad. With half of their employees replaced by Chavez yes-men, PDVSA made poor strategic decisions that left them with (almost) no new oil wells when the ones they had been using ran dry. To be specific, money that should have been used to dig new oil wells was diverted to poverty-reduction initiatives by the central government. Venezuela today has the world's largest proven oil reserves (thanks to recent offshore discoveries) and yet ranks low by exports.

natecham• 8 years ago

I this article did a good job of summarizing the collapse (from the formation of OPEC in the early 60's to the present) https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/07/16/how-venezuela-struck-it...

Essentially they believed the oil price surge of the 70s would continue and failed the diversify the economy. This allowed Chavez to come along and take over in the late 90's on a socialist platform with promises to restore the economy. Chavez ignorant to production of oil and fighting to stay in power, gutted the state run PDVSA and severely inhibited production by diverting profits to fund his social programs. Eventually production and profits dipped, with the government deciding to print more money to keep social programs running.

Zhenya• 8 years ago

Populism isn't the problem here. Socialist /fascist policies of govt control of the means of production and the removal of the profit motive is what you see at play.

jayess2• 8 years ago

Looking at Maduro and the clowns he surrounds himself with makes it clear that it's really just a bunch of idiots running things. Chavez was a died in the wool marxist, but the failure of that ideology (as it always does fail) has lead to a massive brain drain. Now the tenth-tier morons are in charge, nominally supporting socialism but really it's just a narco/klepto state.

woodandsteel• 8 years ago

I wonder what is going to happen over the next year or two. Will there be a coup or revolution to overthrow the government, a bloody civil war? Or perhaps Maduro will crack down and turn the country into a full-scale Stalinist dictatorship in order to prevent this from happening. It seems there will be some sort of radical change, the question is what.

A key question here is if the security forces will remain loyal to the government. I wonder how they are making out, like are they getting enough food, and do the leaders think the present regime can be sustained over the long term.

csomar2• 8 years ago

How come the society has yet to collapse if the salaries can't cover a few days of spending. I mean this reaches a critical point, as far as I see it: At some wage, the employee will bail out. Because it cost more to do the job (transportation/food) than the job pays.

Apparently, this is not the case. As the workers are still going for work. The equation is certainly bad (I have no doubt about that) but it has not reached a critical point where everything collapses (Examples could be Libya and Syria).

To see for yourself, go to Caracas on Google maps and turn traffic on. Try that on Damascus.

jose_zap2• 8 years ago

The one thing that I learned being a Venezuelan is that things can always get worse. It is easy to thing that there is a bottom for how bad things can go, but clearly that was just hopeful thinking.

The situation is a thousand times worse than when I left 6 years ago, an I would certainly consider what they are living now as a total collapse of society, yet I'm also sure that it could get even worse.

csomar2• 8 years ago

I’d say disintegrating but not collpased yet. The government is still sustaining itself. There is still Internet and cars driving around.

Yes, it can get way worse. The possible bottom is way deeper. I hope the US or UN intervene before that.

marcosdumay• 8 years ago

I don't understand Venezuela. Really. I've lived through the 10000% inflation times at Brazil, but that's still 2 orders of magnitude shorter than their, and looks like a completely different reality.

What I can say is that society collapse is not a binary thing. Near 1/3 of Venezuela's population already escaped the country, with more gone each day. I'd also bet crime is at huge levels, but there isn't any data I would trust.

I imagine that if you are far from a border there isn't much you can do except continuing going to work. It's not like one can just throw their arm up and say "I'm done with society, I won't take part in it anymore". I also imagine that a large part of their real economy nowadays runs on US Dollars, the rest probably runs on Peruvian Peso, Brazilian Real, and toilet paper.

Besides, until this week gasoline was almost free. So the one thing I would expect to find there is transit.

Venezuelans Skeptical of Maduro's Latest Measures to Salvage Economy

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