How ironic, an authoritarian government launching a cryptocurrency. Having said that, it'll be interesting to see how the fact that "it's backed by oil" affects it
How does one actually claim a portion of that oil though? Its the same thing as a bond, which its feared they will default on. At the end of the day if they don't want to pay, then they don't pay.
There are probably a lot of in-between cases where a cryptocurrency can be used convert trust in a well respected 3rd party to trust in someone unknown.
For example to have an "account" at a national reserve bank, you basically need to be a bank. A reserve bank could promise to honour certain cryptocurrency transactions between registered banks. But the blockchain as a whole could serve include both reserve-compatible-account-ids and arbitrary users.
Whether that would be good for anything is another matter. In particular you need a well respected 3rd party who actually wants to back a cryptocurrency. That's not a big set intersection, and Venezuela is not in a position to make it larger.
That’s probably a simplistic view?
An ICO obviously introduces trust in a third party (the company issuing the ICO). Does that mean all ICOs defeat the purposes of crypto? To the degree that your view of crypto is that it is all about decentralized, quasi anonymous money transfer yes. To the degree that you consider the other benefits of crypto assets, no.
To add weight to the latter view point, I’d argue that Ethereum was the first ICO. Is the whole “purpose” of crypto negated with Ethereum? That’s a hard position to defend imho.
> “Venezuela will create a cryptocurrency,” backed by oil, gas, gold and diamond reserves, Maduro said
I am not sure if that’s even possible, it doesn’t make much sense. How do you link the currency to those reserves in a way that is any different to the current currency?
That being said, a crypto which is relatively stable could be very useful for countries with runaway inflation or other issues with the state. Both for local use and liquidity across global markets.
This has been done already by projects like Tether (USDT). There is currently some... discussion as to whether they really have the assets to back it 1:1, but it does stay about even with the dollar on exchanges. Some coins also offer "price-stable" options such as BitShares.
Technically it is totally possible to create a cryptocurrency that whose price is fixed relative to a basket of oil, gas and gold reserves... until the day comes the government decides that some baskets of fixed goods are more equal than other baskets.
I'm unclear on how you can fix the price of a cryptocurrency. Saying how much you'll buy something back for doesn't set the price people will pay to buy it, because the issuer isn't the only player making the market—people can buy it from each-other, rather than from you, and they can pay whatever they like when they do so.
Look at US treasury bonds: the US can adjust the interest rate on them, but it's the market (dealers holding auctions, etc.) that actually sets the price of them. If everything else is a bad investment (like during the 2007 recession), people will actually buy the likely-negative-yield treasury bonds at a premium, because they need to stick the money somewhere and everything else looks to have a worse NPV. As such, the market value of any security can exceed the value of its call option.
They can set the prices with a simple standing offer to buy and sell at a given rate.
If the Venezuelan government will sell anyone one oilcoin for a barrel of oil, nobody would buy one for more. If the Venezuelan government will buy an oilcoin for one barrel of oil from anyone, nobody would sell one for less.
They almost certainly won't be freely exchangeable to this degree, but there is no problem with price controls in theory.
If you want to fix the price of a currency between (for example) $0.95 and $1.05, you simply offer to sell to anyone at $1.05 and offer to buy from anyone at $0.95. As long as you don't go bankrupt, you can keep doing this and pretty much guarantee the price will never exceed that range even on other market, or people will simply arbitrage the excess away.
Tether tries to do it by holding the total market cap USD in its own reserve (whether or not they actually have it is up to discussion). It's a disaster waiting to happen.
> a crypto which is relatively stable could be very useful ...
It seems like there's a fairly tight correlation between the value of a cryptocurrency and the effort required to mine it. (Which is what you'd expect -- if the price of BTC rises, more people mine it, and the per-block difficulty increases, and if the price falls, fewer people mine it, and the difficulty falls.)
I wonder if we could create a more stable cryptocurrency by keeping the mining difficulty constant (or possibly tied to moore's law). It may be wildly "inflationary" in terms of the size of the monetary base, but it should be fairly stable in terms of real resources per unit of currency.
The contending decentralized consensus algorithm is called Proof of Stake, and it works by giving you lottery tickets based on how much wealth you already have.
PoS coin supplies should be avoided, as the production cost or input work is not worth the speculative asset produced.
XRP is a case study in how they've created artificial scarcity and can flood the market with sell orders from their reserves.
They could also just have a centralised service validating transactions. No need to mine, no need for stake. Not exactly a traditional cryptocurrency at that point, but in day-to-day use no different (and rather more attractive to political regimes like Maduro's.)
Also, Ethereum ERC20 tokens, which aren't cryptocurrencies per se, just numbers in a ledger whose updates get embedded within the cryptocurrency (ETH)'s blocks.
The difficulty is necessary for moderating consensus given more 'voters' (with their flops) joining the network.
I'm interested by your idea, but you would need to work by a different consensus model. Proof-of-stake would be interesting to investigate, since mining doesn't scale with computation power, rather holding of the currency.
At the end of the day crypto-currency is protected by the fact that it costs more to undo a transaction than the value of the transaction. Making an individual block easier just means that we have to wait for more blocks to be mined before we consider transactions to be safe. With you're idea there will be more blocks mined per hour, but the amount of electricity consumed per confirmed tx will remain constant.
However that'll kind of bring out the 'bigger blocks' solution except by having 100 blocks rather than 1 100-times larger block. Downsides will line up with big block downsides
I've been wondering if there could be a crypto currency based on time. For example, perhaps each person in the system could automatically given one new coin every day. Assuming there there was some way to validate new users coming into the system as real people.
There's a very large set of problems that would become solvable if digital identity could be done. Sadly, as of yet there's no solution in sight that doesn't require a third party.
I think the point is that it's a fiat currency but it's purely digital and and not paper cash, and transfers use a blockchain (?) instead of bankfiles. Unclear who controls the block chain though, I'd guess it's centralized.
And the government can seize money at any time, Tether style, by invalidating public coin addresses it seems dirty.
As a Venezuelan I say this is a bad joke. They ransacked the central bank reserves, they pillaged all the gold bars in the vaults, they indebted the oil industry and there is nothing left to give as guarantee for more money. They only want to try circumvent the shitty currency they destroyed with their bad policies.
I've never seen anyone, even the most die-hard leftist (a species headed to extinction by the way) support Maduro policies. Only some leftist parties giving oficial statements of support, but even than with the majority of their members, not supporting it, and going against the official statements.
So i dont know in what reality you are living on.. but im sure is not the same as mine.
HN has always been, a place of good and clear information, so please, lets keep it that way.
Do you have any evidence that majority of left parties members doesn’t support Venezuelan government despite the officials statements?
The truth is that every major left party in Brazil supports Maduro (PT, PSOL, PCB, PCdoB, PDT, …). Sure there are dissidents, but it’s a unpopular opinion on the left-wing.
For example, take a look on this post from the leftist congressman Jean Wyllys criticizing Maduro[1]. The vast majority of comments are from leftists backlashing him or trying to argue about why Maduro measures were good and necessary.
In the last couple years with the things going even more south in Venezuela, sure, there's been some dissidents in some of the leftist parties, but most of them still refuses to acknowledge that.
The second link gives me "page not found". The third one is a reddit that also points to a page that doesn't exist. The first one is an opinion article. I understand what you are saying, but as a brazilian left-wing myself, nobody respects PSOL, they are right-wing. And they don't support Venezuela. We do.
I problably sow what was in cache. Well parties in Brazil are not exact know for clear ideology. More like a union of people just trying to get elected.
Well, the only place I can see a clear set of ideas, and a litle of common goal its the PT ( workers party, if you are not from Brazil ).
The strange thing is, Brazilians is in most part conservative people, mainly in small citys, likely because the catholic background, but even so are problably the most unrepresented people in politics.
> The strange thing is, Brazilians is in most part conservative people, mainly in small citys, likely because the catholic background, but even so are problably the most unrepresented people in politics.
I think the so called "centrão" is very conservative with the "bullets, bovine and bible party" (Bancada BBB). The majority of the right wing (led by PSDB) is liberal and the left wing (led by the aforementioned PT - Worker Party) is progressist with a touch of liberal in the southeast and a lot conservative in the northeast.
Side note: nobody here is talking about the scandal happening in Honduras right now with the right wing government frauding the election and clashing with the population.
Actually PSOL is unclear wether they endorse or reject Maduro after the National Constituent Assembly. For a Maduro supporter like you, it means that PSOL reject him. But the fact that there is discussion about it means that there are supporters within the party. The main argument was to show that there are people who support Maduro, which parent commenters doesn't believe.
One was a girl, used to be afiliated to the PCdoB (brazilian communist party), wich I wold never comment about politics around, because she was not a very controled person.
Another was a guy I work with now. His parents were militnats of the Workers Party. Guy go visit Cuba every now and then, and sing the praises of Fidel Castro e Maduro every week or so... Its true, people in Brazil are now less leftist that they used to be. I think the last events, with all the corruption scnadals throwed a lot of people to a more moderated left, but you still find a lot o hardcore leftists, expecialy online.
Of course you will find them, and its clear by now that social networks give voice to the radical minorities that scream the most.
But your comment make it look like, you cant even walk in Brazil, without finding a leftist in every corner, supporting Maduro policies.
That was i were addressing about. I generally dont bother to comment this type of comments here on HN, but i thought that in your parent comment, you were overreacting. And mind you that this for many, its their first experience to this sort of information. And giving information here tend to be more scientifically focused, more based on samples, and carefully elaborated, what you say in this forum weights much more than in other places that are already used to hiperboles.
Particularly i find good when different points of view can coexist in a democratic society.. communists, anarchists, conservatives, etc..
For me the problem is actually when there are too many of them (whatever the ideology is), believing in the same thing, because there is only one point of view.. no more dialog, or a dialetical relationship with the social status quo.
The social network mirror that says we are becoming radicals and more polarized is wrong, i dont buy it, because its not really reproduced in other environments.
> But your comment make it look like, you cant even walk in Brazil, without finding a leftist in every corner, supporting Maduro policies.
90% of Brazilians don't really have a political position. Most of them just follow the media. And the national media goes from liberal left to liberal/conservative right all the time.
But if you look at the 10% of brazilians that are politically engaged, 90% of it will be left wing. 10% of it will be libertarians/free market zealots.
Even most people on the radical far left view Venezuela as a cautionary tale. I'm not saying Maduro apologists don't exist but even in ideological groups predisposed to support socialist governments they are pretty rare these days.
Trying to glue the legacy of Venezuela to Corbyn is silly. I am well aware of Corbyn's admiration of Hugo Chavez defying American intervention in Venezuela.
If the various papers in England want to keep up that theme, they should explore Conservative ties to Saudi Arabia and Pinochet's regime.
It's not trying to glue the legacy to Corbyn. It's noting that Corbyn refuses to unequivocally condemn Venezuela and clearly has sympathy even now.
All Corbyn has to do is make a statement like "Yes, I supported Chavez but unfortunately his regime wrecked the Venezuelan Economy and his successor has become a dictator".
End of story. He doesn't and he won't. It is apologising for them when you say 'there is blame on both sides'.
The original poster said that people on left having a lot of sympathy for Venezuela and continuing to support the current regime was rare and not seeing it as a cautionary tale. It's not. A few minutes of searching find various examples around the world. There are considerably more.
Here is another bit of support for them getting upset with Corbyn for not providing more support for Maduro.
> It is apologising for them when you say 'there is blame on both sides'.
Blaming the Venezuelan government and left wing groups for all of the recent violence is too general. In this case there really is blame on both sides.
I was recently reading
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/07/venezuela-maduro-helicopt... , which condemns the Maduro government, wealthy right wing Venezuelans, and outside corporations who really wish Maduro would hurry up and leave so they can start trading in Venezuelans mineral and fossil fuel wealth.
The Conservative papers are totally trying to glue, at least in the minds of UK voters, Venezuela to Corbyn! I remember headlines like 'Corbyn's future plan for the UK: VENEZUELA'
There is no "apologism" in the link you posted, which is actually pretty balanced. If anything, it shows how Corbyn's position on Venezuela has evolved. He does not support or apologise for Maduro.
> The former British Labour Party Mayor of London Ken Livingston
Actually Ken Livingstone won the mayoralty as independent; the Labour candidate was Frank Dobson, Livingstone had previously been expelled from the Labour Party. The Party only endorsed him for his second mandate, revoking his expulsion by popular demand. He is currently suspended from the party again, thanks to one of those silly media storms only political hacks care about.
> Even most people on the radical far left view Venezuela as a cautionary tale
No, "we" not. Maduro/Venezuela is a teather of war the same way NK, Syria, Ukraine and Brazil are. Keep it up with the revolution, Maduro! Lula is coming back in Brazil to help you.
For sure we are here :)
Latin America must set itself free of American imperialism and deal with them in more equally terms. Viva la Revolucion Bolivariana!
This is a sign of a hail-mary thrown by an utterly bankrupt (morally and politically) government. I see it as, Maduro is very desperate and the end of him is near. Thought 2017 would be the end of him but sometimes the inevitable takes time.
Among other things Venezuela is a narco-state both its elite and military engage is lot of narco smuggling and money laundering. This could be a mechanism for them to hide or transfer wealth out, I am only guessing. I do concur that people should stay away from this.
> an utterly bankrupt (morally and politically) government
How so? My understanding is that they just won regional elections praised by international observers as free and transparent[0].
Interestingly, western governments/media & opposition claims of fraud (without evidence) directly contradict the findings of the delegation from the Latin American Council of Electoral Experts (CEELA). From the article cited:
The CEELA delegation was comprised of 1300 international observers, including former Colombian Electoral Court President Guillermo Reyes, ex-president of the Honduran Supreme Electoral Court, Augusto Aguilar, and former Peruvian electoral magistrate Gastón Soto.
According to the body’s report, the vote was held under conditions of “total normality” and the right to a secret ballot was “guaranteed”.
I also find this interesting:
For its part, CEELA has reported that it has yet to receive any formal denunciations from the opposition, which has issued its fraud allegations via the media.
President Maduro has requested a 100 percent audit of Sunday’s elections, a call that was subsequently echoed by the [opposition].
I could not find a single article about these findings that aren't from a leftist leaning website.
If you search "ceela venezuela vote" on Google, the only articles that come up are from teleSUR (a mouthpiece of the Venezuelan government) and Venezuela analysis (another rabidly left organization, the one you cited).
Do you have any fairly impartial news sources you'd care to cite?
Of course, this could all be a plot of the evil Imperialist western capitalist powers to strangle the last peoples' stronghold. /s
I am quite familiar. However, your argument holds no merit.
Even with the term "banana republic" there was an economic endgame in sight (e.g. cheaper fruit).
This current Venezuela farce has absolutely no redeeming qualities unless you're a member of the ruling elite (of Venezuela).
By your reasoning, every economic and/or political collapse in Central/South America can be blamed on the history of United States intervention, absolving the government of all accountability.
I wasn't really making an argument, just alluding to the fact that western governments/media have a history of undermining/overthrowing democratic left wing leaders in the region, so mocking the idea as you did was disingenuous.
That said, I think it's possible the revolution has deteriorated since the death of Chavez and that corruption is indeed rife. I'm just wary given the history of propaganda.
I also think its possible that the administration still has popular support in spite of its real problems, given the violent right-wing nature of the opposition and the apparent lack of credible evidence suggesting otherwise.
> the violent right-wing nature of the opposition and the apparent lack of credible evidence suggesting otherwise.
People in Venezuela have lost 19 pounds on average in the past couple of years. Take a look at the exchange rates. What is the profit for "right-wing" groups?
How do you know that a country lost weight? They didn't show how they got these numbers, just said it as an IMF forecast. This is plain simple manipulation. It is a shame that my first comment got so many downvotes.
So things you don't agree with can be dismissed out of hand as propaganda?
What argument would you want to hear that would make you decide that Venezuela is a hideously mismanaged dictatorship? They can't keep up production of oil, which is their (95%) only source of foreign reserves.
Even you grant revolutionaries the benefit of the doubt, when in history has there been a succession to a good second leader? George Washington pulled it off by intentionally giving away his power early and setting a strong precedent of short Presidencies that end before dictatorship crept in.
Do you mean the fake organization started by Hugo Chavez to legitimize elections in socialist states? The one that doesn't have a website or an organizational charter and gets its funding from Venezuela?
Central banks of a sovereign nation don't have reserves. That's a 'gold standard' mentality.
The value of a nation's currency is determined by how difficult it is to get vs how much you need to get it. And that is determined by the nation's spending and taxing policies - including the ability to enforce that taxation by force if necessary.
The Bolivar needs to fully float on the international markets like the Egyptian Pound. And then the government needs to start taxing people in Bolivars while not issuing as many by spending.
It doesn't matter than nobody wants to hold Bolivars. It matters that they need to get them to stay out of jail.
It's sad that I know enough about cryptocurrency speculation to know that if they really launch this currency, there will be a willing crowd of non-Venezuelan investors likely to pour millions or even billions of USD equivalents into this. (That's assuming Maduro is informed enough to only guarantee a price floor for the currency and leave open room for upward price appreciation via speculation...)
A corrupt government that ran its economy into the ground backing a cryptocurrency. What could possibly go wrong?
OTOH, if someone with centuries of banking experience were to launch a well managed cryptocurrency, that could be pretty useful (Switzerland I am looking at you).
I would like to see a digital currency whose money supply is linked to the number of users in the system. As more users enter the system, generate proportionally more coins and vice versa. Something like this might work as a stable store of value.
>A corrupt government that ran its economy into the ground backing a cryptocurrency. What could possibly go wrong?
Fortunately, as has been proven by recent experience, fraud, hacking, or serious error in the area of cryptocurrencies or the blockchain in general is simply impossible.
Venezuela seems like a solid case for a privately-financed coup (Equatorial Guinea and Zimbabwe are there too, but in EG this was already tried and failed for stupid reasons). I don't know who they'd put in power (is there a viable opposition still?), but really anyone would be better. It's not an inherently poor country, but horribly misgoverned, and it's sad to see people suffering for decades as a result.
Because ousting democratically-elected leaders and replacing them with right-wing dictators have been SO successful at making things better for the people of South America in the past, right?
They do well for themselves, don't they? Dictatorships are also quite stable for people living under them compared to the chaos right now in Libya, Syria, and Iraq. Policies of regime change without changing the basis of the economy just leads to power vacuums which leads to nothing good but bloodshed, and most often a dictator worse than before.
However, some defense contractors get good contracts through interventionism, and that keeps the US economy going, right?
selectodude was referring to the GDP of the US, not the national budget. I was referring to the way that foreign influence is exerted is felt in nearly every industry: finance, the petrodollar, contractors who make deals selling weapons and surveillance around the world...
Deposing a dictator causes chaos. That doesn't mean that installing a dictator is healthy. Quite the opposite, really: installing a dictator is setting up the house of cards that will fall later.
Government must have the consent of it's people or in the long run it will never work. Foreign intervention leads to malcontent, corruption and decay; real change must come from within the country and grow organically among the people.
Equatorial Guinea (and NK, and some others) are cases where I think a 6.5 Creedmoor round delivered by a foreign agent would produce positive results -- whatever local replacement emerged would be better (or repeat until it is).
"The date of the invasion is now a national holiday in Grenada, called Thanksgiving Day, which commemorates the freeing, after the invasion, of several political prisoners, who were subsequently elected into office."
How can it be backed? Unless they are not allowing any mining, and merely having a currency that can be traded like a cryptocurrency. If you can mine, it would be worth something, and who would be backing that with oil? It'd be like giving away free oil.
Given that there are US sanctions against Venezuela, this would be an interesting case to see if digital currencies can really succeed despite the established banking system. After all, people say that necessity is the mother of invention!
It may be a sign of desperation, but desperation can lead people to do sensible things (and unsensible ones). A commodity-backed currency is not a bad idea (US dollar used to be backed by gold, for example), but only if they stick to it.
These guys are thieves and charlatans, so I expect they will devalue this currency as well when it suits them.
What would be the difference with that crypto stuff and just emitting some oil backed EFT ? They happen just to be either all idiots at the top of that government, which I hardly doubt; or they are just trying to hide their CCC rating to the ignorants and buzz riders.
What an embaracment that government is. This is exaclty what everybody predicted when the socialsits took over. Systematically plunder and destroy every resource to keep up the payouts to the poor and the elites.
Now they are reduced to third-rate schemes in the hope somebody gives them some money.
Remember a couple of years ago whem tons of leftist, including sanders, krugman and stigliz all talked about how create these developments were? Finally somebody that would look out for 'the people'.
117 comments
[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 163 ms ] threadFor example to have an "account" at a national reserve bank, you basically need to be a bank. A reserve bank could promise to honour certain cryptocurrency transactions between registered banks. But the blockchain as a whole could serve include both reserve-compatible-account-ids and arbitrary users.
Whether that would be good for anything is another matter. In particular you need a well respected 3rd party who actually wants to back a cryptocurrency. That's not a big set intersection, and Venezuela is not in a position to make it larger.
I don't know how Venezuela expects anyone to take this seriously after they defaulted on their bond payments in November.
Ah, we have their assurance. Alright then.
I am not sure if that’s even possible, it doesn’t make much sense. How do you link the currency to those reserves in a way that is any different to the current currency?
That being said, a crypto which is relatively stable could be very useful for countries with runaway inflation or other issues with the state. Both for local use and liquidity across global markets.
Look at US treasury bonds: the US can adjust the interest rate on them, but it's the market (dealers holding auctions, etc.) that actually sets the price of them. If everything else is a bad investment (like during the 2007 recession), people will actually buy the likely-negative-yield treasury bonds at a premium, because they need to stick the money somewhere and everything else looks to have a worse NPV. As such, the market value of any security can exceed the value of its call option.
Sounds like a blast from the past.
If the Venezuelan government will sell anyone one oilcoin for a barrel of oil, nobody would buy one for more. If the Venezuelan government will buy an oilcoin for one barrel of oil from anyone, nobody would sell one for less.
They almost certainly won't be freely exchangeable to this degree, but there is no problem with price controls in theory.
It seems like there's a fairly tight correlation between the value of a cryptocurrency and the effort required to mine it. (Which is what you'd expect -- if the price of BTC rises, more people mine it, and the per-block difficulty increases, and if the price falls, fewer people mine it, and the difficulty falls.)
I wonder if we could create a more stable cryptocurrency by keeping the mining difficulty constant (or possibly tied to moore's law). It may be wildly "inflationary" in terms of the size of the monetary base, but it should be fairly stable in terms of real resources per unit of currency.
PoS coin supplies should be avoided, as the production cost or input work is not worth the speculative asset produced.
XRP is a case study in how they've created artificial scarcity and can flood the market with sell orders from their reserves.
https://www.coindesk.com/ripple-jed-mccaleb-settle-suit-over...
I'm interested by your idea, but you would need to work by a different consensus model. Proof-of-stake would be interesting to investigate, since mining doesn't scale with computation power, rather holding of the currency.
Has mining cost matched? Or is mining cost a ceiling for trading price
And the government can seize money at any time, Tether style, by invalidating public coin addresses it seems dirty.
Stay away from this.
I've never seen anyone, even the most die-hard leftist (a species headed to extinction by the way) support Maduro policies. Only some leftist parties giving oficial statements of support, but even than with the majority of their members, not supporting it, and going against the official statements.
So i dont know in what reality you are living on.. but im sure is not the same as mine.
HN has always been, a place of good and clear information, so please, lets keep it that way.
The truth is that every major left party in Brazil supports Maduro (PT, PSOL, PCB, PCdoB, PDT, …). Sure there are dissidents, but it’s a unpopular opinion on the left-wing.
For example, take a look on this post from the leftist congressman Jean Wyllys criticizing Maduro[1]. The vast majority of comments are from leftists backlashing him or trying to argue about why Maduro measures were good and necessary.
1: https://facebook.com/jean.wyllys/posts/978205575560783
http://www.psol50.org.br/blog/2017/07/31/secretaria-de-relac...
https://www.reddit.com/r/brasil/comments/6qw61v/secretaria_d...
In the last couple years with the things going even more south in Venezuela, sure, there's been some dissidents in some of the leftist parties, but most of them still refuses to acknowledge that.
The strange thing is, Brazilians is in most part conservative people, mainly in small citys, likely because the catholic background, but even so are problably the most unrepresented people in politics.
I think the so called "centrão" is very conservative with the "bullets, bovine and bible party" (Bancada BBB). The majority of the right wing (led by PSDB) is liberal and the left wing (led by the aforementioned PT - Worker Party) is progressist with a touch of liberal in the southeast and a lot conservative in the northeast.
Side note: nobody here is talking about the scandal happening in Honduras right now with the right wing government frauding the election and clashing with the population.
Actually PSOL is unclear wether they endorse or reject Maduro after the National Constituent Assembly. For a Maduro supporter like you, it means that PSOL reject him. But the fact that there is discussion about it means that there are supporters within the party. The main argument was to show that there are people who support Maduro, which parent commenters doesn't believe.
One was a girl, used to be afiliated to the PCdoB (brazilian communist party), wich I wold never comment about politics around, because she was not a very controled person.
Another was a guy I work with now. His parents were militnats of the Workers Party. Guy go visit Cuba every now and then, and sing the praises of Fidel Castro e Maduro every week or so... Its true, people in Brazil are now less leftist that they used to be. I think the last events, with all the corruption scnadals throwed a lot of people to a more moderated left, but you still find a lot o hardcore leftists, expecialy online.
But your comment make it look like, you cant even walk in Brazil, without finding a leftist in every corner, supporting Maduro policies.
That was i were addressing about. I generally dont bother to comment this type of comments here on HN, but i thought that in your parent comment, you were overreacting. And mind you that this for many, its their first experience to this sort of information. And giving information here tend to be more scientifically focused, more based on samples, and carefully elaborated, what you say in this forum weights much more than in other places that are already used to hiperboles.
Particularly i find good when different points of view can coexist in a democratic society.. communists, anarchists, conservatives, etc..
For me the problem is actually when there are too many of them (whatever the ideology is), believing in the same thing, because there is only one point of view.. no more dialog, or a dialetical relationship with the social status quo.
The social network mirror that says we are becoming radicals and more polarized is wrong, i dont buy it, because its not really reproduced in other environments.
90% of Brazilians don't really have a political position. Most of them just follow the media. And the national media goes from liberal left to liberal/conservative right all the time.
But if you look at the 10% of brazilians that are politically engaged, 90% of it will be left wing. 10% of it will be libertarians/free market zealots.
Communism may have lost the economic batle, byt they sure won the cultural one.
Did it? Communist China says otherwise.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/08/11...
The former British Labour Party Mayor of London Ken Livingston said the problem in Venezuela was that not enough rich people were murdered:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/aug/03/ken-livings...
An important Australian Trade Union pledged support for Maduro in August this year:
http://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/world-economy/austral...
(updated due to the comment below - thanks for that!)
In Australia there is a group called the Australian - Venezuelan solidarity network:
http://www.venezuelasolidarity.org/
The Lord Mayor's a completely different, ceremonial role. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Mayor_of_London
Trying to glue the legacy of Venezuela to Corbyn is silly. I am well aware of Corbyn's admiration of Hugo Chavez defying American intervention in Venezuela.
If the various papers in England want to keep up that theme, they should explore Conservative ties to Saudi Arabia and Pinochet's regime.
All Corbyn has to do is make a statement like "Yes, I supported Chavez but unfortunately his regime wrecked the Venezuelan Economy and his successor has become a dictator".
End of story. He doesn't and he won't. It is apologising for them when you say 'there is blame on both sides'.
The original poster said that people on left having a lot of sympathy for Venezuela and continuing to support the current regime was rare and not seeing it as a cautionary tale. It's not. A few minutes of searching find various examples around the world. There are considerably more.
Here is another bit of support for them getting upset with Corbyn for not providing more support for Maduro.
http://www.socialist.net/corbyn-ignore-the-hypocrites-and-sa...
Blaming the Venezuelan government and left wing groups for all of the recent violence is too general. In this case there really is blame on both sides.
I was recently reading https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/07/venezuela-maduro-helicopt... , which condemns the Maduro government, wealthy right wing Venezuelans, and outside corporations who really wish Maduro would hurry up and leave so they can start trading in Venezuelans mineral and fossil fuel wealth.
The Conservative papers are totally trying to glue, at least in the minds of UK voters, Venezuela to Corbyn! I remember headlines like 'Corbyn's future plan for the UK: VENEZUELA'
There is no "apologism" in the link you posted, which is actually pretty balanced. If anything, it shows how Corbyn's position on Venezuela has evolved. He does not support or apologise for Maduro.
> The former British Labour Party Mayor of London Ken Livingston
Actually Ken Livingstone won the mayoralty as independent; the Labour candidate was Frank Dobson, Livingstone had previously been expelled from the Labour Party. The Party only endorsed him for his second mandate, revoking his expulsion by popular demand. He is currently suspended from the party again, thanks to one of those silly media storms only political hacks care about.
No, "we" not. Maduro/Venezuela is a teather of war the same way NK, Syria, Ukraine and Brazil are. Keep it up with the revolution, Maduro! Lula is coming back in Brazil to help you.
How so? My understanding is that they just won regional elections praised by international observers as free and transparent[0].
Interestingly, western governments/media & opposition claims of fraud (without evidence) directly contradict the findings of the delegation from the Latin American Council of Electoral Experts (CEELA). From the article cited:
The CEELA delegation was comprised of 1300 international observers, including former Colombian Electoral Court President Guillermo Reyes, ex-president of the Honduran Supreme Electoral Court, Augusto Aguilar, and former Peruvian electoral magistrate Gastón Soto.
According to the body’s report, the vote was held under conditions of “total normality” and the right to a secret ballot was “guaranteed”.
I also find this interesting:
For its part, CEELA has reported that it has yet to receive any formal denunciations from the opposition, which has issued its fraud allegations via the media.
President Maduro has requested a 100 percent audit of Sunday’s elections, a call that was subsequently echoed by the [opposition].
[0] https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/13442
If you search "ceela venezuela vote" on Google, the only articles that come up are from teleSUR (a mouthpiece of the Venezuelan government) and Venezuela analysis (another rabidly left organization, the one you cited).
Do you have any fairly impartial news sources you'd care to cite?
Of course, this could all be a plot of the evil Imperialist western capitalist powers to strangle the last peoples' stronghold. /s
From your sarcasm I take it you're unaware of the history of leftist governments in Central and South America?
Even with the term "banana republic" there was an economic endgame in sight (e.g. cheaper fruit).
This current Venezuela farce has absolutely no redeeming qualities unless you're a member of the ruling elite (of Venezuela).
By your reasoning, every economic and/or political collapse in Central/South America can be blamed on the history of United States intervention, absolving the government of all accountability.
That said, I think it's possible the revolution has deteriorated since the death of Chavez and that corruption is indeed rife. I'm just wary given the history of propaganda.
I also think its possible that the administration still has popular support in spite of its real problems, given the violent right-wing nature of the opposition and the apparent lack of credible evidence suggesting otherwise.
> the violent right-wing nature of the opposition and the apparent lack of credible evidence suggesting otherwise.
People in Venezuela have lost 19 pounds on average in the past couple of years. Take a look at the exchange rates. What is the profit for "right-wing" groups?
Looks like the US need some left wing rule. But yeah this is fake news. Don't lie to pretend you have a point kiddo.
https://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/2172028...
The last time I checked, the Economist is a fairly neutral news organization.
Although el gordo Maduro hasn't had too much trouble finding rice and beans, by the look of things.
How do you know that a country lost weight? They didn't show how they got these numbers, just said it as an IMF forecast. This is plain simple manipulation. It is a shame that my first comment got so many downvotes.
If you distrust all news sources that disagree with your point of view, I don't know what else to say.
This study was conducted by Venezuelan universities.
What argument would you want to hear that would make you decide that Venezuela is a hideously mismanaged dictatorship? They can't keep up production of oil, which is their (95%) only source of foreign reserves.
You seem to discredit research done by native institutions and distrust mainstream media.
I hear Victoria falls is really nice. And you can prove all the propoganda wrong. Good luck. Bring some hard currency.
People in Caracas will jack you for a biscuit and 10 (amercian) bucks.
Yes, a Bolivarian paradise. Have fun at Victoria falls.
Btw, I'm more chino than gringo. Just so you know.
Do you mean the fake organization started by Hugo Chavez to legitimize elections in socialist states? The one that doesn't have a website or an organizational charter and gets its funding from Venezuela?
FOH.
The value of a nation's currency is determined by how difficult it is to get vs how much you need to get it. And that is determined by the nation's spending and taxing policies - including the ability to enforce that taxation by force if necessary.
The Bolivar needs to fully float on the international markets like the Egyptian Pound. And then the government needs to start taxing people in Bolivars while not issuing as many by spending.
It doesn't matter than nobody wants to hold Bolivars. It matters that they need to get them to stay out of jail.
OTOH, if someone with centuries of banking experience were to launch a well managed cryptocurrency, that could be pretty useful (Switzerland I am looking at you).
I would like to see a digital currency whose money supply is linked to the number of users in the system. As more users enter the system, generate proportionally more coins and vice versa. Something like this might work as a stable store of value.
Fortunately, as has been proven by recent experience, fraud, hacking, or serious error in the area of cryptocurrencies or the blockchain in general is simply impossible.
However, some defense contractors get good contracts through interventionism, and that keeps the US economy going, right?
"The date of the invasion is now a national holiday in Grenada, called Thanksgiving Day, which commemorates the freeing, after the invasion, of several political prisoners, who were subsequently elected into office."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Grenada
These guys are thieves and charlatans, so I expect they will devalue this currency as well when it suits them.
Now they are reduced to third-rate schemes in the hope somebody gives them some money.
Remember a couple of years ago whem tons of leftist, including sanders, krugman and stigliz all talked about how create these developments were? Finally somebody that would look out for 'the people'.