What is it with people that they support the theft of things from some in order to give it to others. That's slavery, no matter whether you think someone else deserves the fruits of of others' labor more or not.
It's a vile system no matter whether it's called socialism, democratic socialism, national socialism, communism, progressivism, liberalism, it's vile and heinous.
Clarifying the mechanism here - a sign that the ideology has changed is that the head of state changes.
The Head of State generally has a substantial power base in the system in order to hold their seat. If they are ousted, it is a sign their power base has waned and the system changed.
Not to presume of the future, but USSR, China, Cuba, Cambodia, North Korea, to a lesser extent Romania and now Venezuella pretty much all turned the same way.
How many time should an experiment be repeated to disprove an ideology ?
Capitalism isn't a theory. It's an emergent result of letting people own themselves, property, and the fruits of their own labor while also letting them trade their property and labor. Thus capitalism is freedom. To replace capitalism with any theory requires identifying which freedoms you mean to constrain or abandon altogether.
>It's an emergent result of letting people own themselves, property, and the fruits of their own labor while also letting them trade their property and labor.
I'm not sure what system you're talking about, but what you're describing is certainly not Capitalism or freedom. Capitalism does not give people the full fruits of their labor, it allows the owner to steal the surplus value off of the workers, creating inequality. Surplus value being the capital left once the equipment, wages, and bills have been paid, and without surplus value the business would not continue to exist. That's not exactly freedom. There's nothing in any radical left wing ideology that says you can't trade your personal property or labor, private property doesn't exist. I'm also not sure a system that requires homelessness and poverty is "freedom", or one that requires people who can't afford health insurance to purchase it or die. I'm not sure a system that puts 1 in 100 in prison based on racial profiling and petty crimes, and does nothing to help them, creating a large recidivism rate for the sole benefit of prison slave labor is called 'freedom'.
It is imperative that far left wing influences keep capitalism in check, or it will run away into pure corruption like it is now.
Capitalism gives people the full fruits of their labor except when they voluntarily decide to give the fruits of their labor to someone else, possibly in exchange for something. Why would anyone do this? Specialization and trade. Maybe they are more productive if they can work with other people. Maybe they need access to capital. Maybe they prefer having something liquid, like money, instead of fruits that they cannot do much with. Maybe they prefer to have a stable income in the short term instead of having an income that depends on their productivity and the desirability of their fruits for other people in the current market conditions. But in any case it has to be voluntary—otherwise, it is not capitalism.
I agree that the prisons are bad, but the system that puts people in prisons is the state, not capitalism. Be sure to blame the right ideology. Same for the homelessness and poverty—to some extent it is impossible to prevent them because of scarcity, but to a great extent they are due to rent controls, zoning laws, restrictions on trade, deadweight loss from taxes. Again, be sure to blame the right ideology.
>Capitalism gives people the full fruits of their labor except when they voluntarily decide to give the fruits of their labor to someone else
A lot of people don't have a choice otherwise, except homelessness and poverty. Not exactly a 'free' system. Runaway free market Capitalism creates this problem as it sends money to the very top leaving the rest to fight for a small portion of the pie. Working is not voluntary in USA unless you already have plenty of money, or are supported by someone with money.
>to some extent it is impossible to prevent them because of scarcity
There's no such thing as scarcity of pretty much anything in USA. We have 18.9 million vacant homes, with 3.5 million homeless [1]. We throw away 150,000 tons of food every single day [2]. There's no scarcity there, it's just capitalism at work.
I'm putting the blame on the correct ideology. None of this would happen under a sane system with checks and balances. What you're seeing right now is _raw capitalism_ at work.
> A lot of people don't have a choice otherwise, except homelessness and poverty. Not exactly a 'free' system.
Right. The system we are in is not a free system and those are indeed problems with this system.
> Runaway free market Capitalism creates this problem as it sends money to the very top leaving the rest to fight for a small portion of the pie.
Crony capitalism creates this problem, not free market capitalism. Crony capitalism is an opposite of a free market.
> Working is not voluntary in USA unless you already have plenty of money, or are supported by someone with money.
It is voluntary. It is unfortunately necessary too, in many cases, but again, the United States are only weakly capitalist.
> There's no such thing as scarcity of pretty much anything in USA.
The United States’ GDP per capita is $59,501. That’s scarcity.
> We have 18.9 million vacant homes, with 3.5 million homeless [1].
I just mentioned rent controls. I agree that this is bad, but it’s got nothing to do with capitalism.
> None of this would happen under a sane system with checks and balances.
Agreed. We might disagree about which system this is though.
> What you're seeing right now is _raw capitalism_ at work.
Either we’re not using the same definition of capitalism or it isn’t. I am anarcho-capitalist. Raw capitalism looks like not having a state, or at the very least having only a minimal state. What I’m seeing is Donald Trump imposing tariffs on solar panels, washing machines, and imports of steel and aluminum. Raw capitalism this is anything but.
Capitalism is not compatible with forced labor. It may be compatible with slavery if you define slavery in a way that includes consensual labor. Systems that are partly capitalist may be compatible with forced labor, but in this case the part that allows the forced labor is not the capitalist part of the system and the blame should rest on the system not being capitalist enough.
For example, Resolution No. 9855 in Venezuela allows the government to force workers to move from their current jobs to work in farm fields or elsewhere in the agricultural sector for periods of 60 days. That is forced labor. But it is not to be blamed on capitalism; in fact, it would have been prevented by capitalism.
Nonsense. Capitalism coexisted with the literal buying and selling of humans as property.
If you want to redefine those systems as not real capitalism, you should also redefine all of the "communist" systems as not real communism because they were nowhere close to the textbook definition of communism. Textbook communism is stateless, while all of those examples had a state.
My definition isn't (see above). But nothing is perfect. It's hard not to trade even with the enemy, whatever their practices might be. What are the alternatives that don't even lead to slavery? Communism certainly does, but capitalism does not (even if we do some trade with nations that use slave labor).
EDIT: And I should add that capitalism, along with Enlightenment values, has been the biggest force for freedom and prosperity yet.
There's little-s socialism and big-s socialism. Social democracies like Sweden, etc., have social welfare systems bankrolled by an underlying market economy. A company in Sweden may pay high taxes, but it doesn't have to worry about being nationalized, price controls, or central planning: https://www.economist.com/special-report/2012/10/13/the-new-.... Capital will put up with high taxes. It won't put up with those other things. And without capital generating surplus to bankroll social welfare programs, your system collapses.
Social Democracy != Socialism. Socialism moves to take full ownership of the means of production, and Social Democracy only places regulations on business that are often demolished years down the line and workers get screwed at the benefit of the few.
Every system has failed throughout history, so there's no reason a Capitalistic system cannot fail as well, and we see the global collapse of Capitalism happening right now in front of us.
> Capital will put up with high taxes. It won't put up with those other things. And without capital generating surplus to bankroll social welfare programs, your system collapses.
Using "capital" here to mean "private capital" is confusing at best, considering we are discussing socialism in general -- where the _entire point_ is that capital tends to be owned publicly -- and the Nordics in particular, where a massive amount of capital is public.
See the cold war era for a quick rundown of US interference with socialist governments.
I'm saying... when the US instigates and funds a civil war in country X, you can't then say X's government lost power because of their economic policies.
Clock's been ticking for a long while now on Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland. When will you give up waiting for these socialist states to collapse?
That's all fine and dandy, but then so many Americans turn around and call universal healthcare socialism, never mind that it's implemented in pretty much every West European Country that are decidedly non-socialist according to your criterion.
You can't use "socialism" to mean "Venezuela, and only Venezuela (well, maybe Cuba)" and then "anything that gives more power to the US federal government". Choose one. (I'm not saying you do, but so many people do.)
The problem is that when people debate whether socialist countries are bound to fail, everybody has their own definition of socialism.
From what I've seen, many people who believe the "danger" of socialism are also quite convinced that the US is in the danger of slipping into socialism. Why that doesn't happen in Sweden is left as exercise.
The states you mention are not socialist. They all rank high on the Economic Freedom of the World Index and on the Index of Economic Freedom. It is not even clear that they can be called social democracies.
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.
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...
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.
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.
The firing wasn’t the issue. It was a controversial move but it is not what caused the ongoing collapse. The exchange rates being in their favour is how the govt paid for the social programs. Now that the rate is not in their favour and oil prices have crashed... now it makes it difficult to pay for your debt.
The US smelled blood and decided to help speed up the inevitable by adding sanctions. This increased the cost of their debt. Maduro is attempting to avoid further economic harm with the petro coin.
>The firing wasn’t the issue. It was a controversial move but it is not what caused the ongoing collapse. The exchange rates being in their favour is how the govt paid for the social programs. Now that the rate is not in their favour and oil prices have crashed... now it makes it difficult to pay for your debt.
The "exchange rates" never could have made the government's pilfering of PDVSA revenues sustainable. Any properly-run business would save money for the possibility of a change in commodity prices. PDVSA under Chavez did not.
Exchange rates did not cause the collapse of Venezuela. Hugo Chavez's decision to ignore economic reality and substitute his own is what caused the collapse of Venezuela. No other oil-based economy got hit as hard as Venezuela by the oil price collapse because they maintained sustainable business practices.
>The US smelled blood and decided to help speed up the inevitable by adding sanctions
This is a joke, right? The US did not even sanction Venezuelan businesses, only the officials involved in looting the oil industry revenues. From Wiki:
>On March 9, 2015, the United States President, Barack Obama, signed and issued a presidential order declaring Venezuela a "threat to its national security" and ordered sanctions against seven Venezuelan officials. Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro denounced the sanctions as an attempt to topple his socialist government. Washington said that the sanctions targeted individuals who were involved in the violation of Venezuelans' human rights, saying that "we are deeply concerned by the Venezuelan government's efforts to escalate intimidation of its political opponents".
The notion that US sanctions played any role in the collapse of Venezuela is an utter fantasy promulgated by the Venezuelan government and perpetuated by credulous Western champagne socialists.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 121 ms ] threadWhat is it with people that they support the theft of things from some in order to give it to others. That's slavery, no matter whether you think someone else deserves the fruits of of others' labor more or not.
It's a vile system no matter whether it's called socialism, democratic socialism, national socialism, communism, progressivism, liberalism, it's vile and heinous.
The Head of State generally has a substantial power base in the system in order to hold their seat. If they are ousted, it is a sign their power base has waned and the system changed.
How many time should an experiment be repeated to disprove an ideology ?
Also, you can take Cuba out of your list as it's doing very well in fact.
I'm not sure what system you're talking about, but what you're describing is certainly not Capitalism or freedom. Capitalism does not give people the full fruits of their labor, it allows the owner to steal the surplus value off of the workers, creating inequality. Surplus value being the capital left once the equipment, wages, and bills have been paid, and without surplus value the business would not continue to exist. That's not exactly freedom. There's nothing in any radical left wing ideology that says you can't trade your personal property or labor, private property doesn't exist. I'm also not sure a system that requires homelessness and poverty is "freedom", or one that requires people who can't afford health insurance to purchase it or die. I'm not sure a system that puts 1 in 100 in prison based on racial profiling and petty crimes, and does nothing to help them, creating a large recidivism rate for the sole benefit of prison slave labor is called 'freedom'.
It is imperative that far left wing influences keep capitalism in check, or it will run away into pure corruption like it is now.
I agree that the prisons are bad, but the system that puts people in prisons is the state, not capitalism. Be sure to blame the right ideology. Same for the homelessness and poverty—to some extent it is impossible to prevent them because of scarcity, but to a great extent they are due to rent controls, zoning laws, restrictions on trade, deadweight loss from taxes. Again, be sure to blame the right ideology.
A lot of people don't have a choice otherwise, except homelessness and poverty. Not exactly a 'free' system. Runaway free market Capitalism creates this problem as it sends money to the very top leaving the rest to fight for a small portion of the pie. Working is not voluntary in USA unless you already have plenty of money, or are supported by someone with money.
>to some extent it is impossible to prevent them because of scarcity
There's no such thing as scarcity of pretty much anything in USA. We have 18.9 million vacant homes, with 3.5 million homeless [1]. We throw away 150,000 tons of food every single day [2]. There's no scarcity there, it's just capitalism at work.
I'm putting the blame on the correct ideology. None of this would happen under a sane system with checks and balances. What you're seeing right now is _raw capitalism_ at work.
[1] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-skip-bronson/post_733...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/18/american...
Right. The system we are in is not a free system and those are indeed problems with this system.
> Runaway free market Capitalism creates this problem as it sends money to the very top leaving the rest to fight for a small portion of the pie.
Crony capitalism creates this problem, not free market capitalism. Crony capitalism is an opposite of a free market.
> Working is not voluntary in USA unless you already have plenty of money, or are supported by someone with money.
It is voluntary. It is unfortunately necessary too, in many cases, but again, the United States are only weakly capitalist.
> There's no such thing as scarcity of pretty much anything in USA.
The United States’ GDP per capita is $59,501. That’s scarcity.
> We have 18.9 million vacant homes, with 3.5 million homeless [1].
I just mentioned rent controls. I agree that this is bad, but it’s got nothing to do with capitalism.
> None of this would happen under a sane system with checks and balances.
Agreed. We might disagree about which system this is though.
> What you're seeing right now is _raw capitalism_ at work.
Either we’re not using the same definition of capitalism or it isn’t. I am anarcho-capitalist. Raw capitalism looks like not having a state, or at the very least having only a minimal state. What I’m seeing is Donald Trump imposing tariffs on solar panels, washing machines, and imports of steel and aluminum. Raw capitalism this is anything but.
Capitalism is absolutely compatible with slavery. If you eat seafood, you almost certainly have eaten food harvested by a slave.
Not to mention the numerous historical examples.
For example, Resolution No. 9855 in Venezuela allows the government to force workers to move from their current jobs to work in farm fields or elsewhere in the agricultural sector for periods of 60 days. That is forced labor. But it is not to be blamed on capitalism; in fact, it would have been prevented by capitalism.
If you want to redefine those systems as not real capitalism, you should also redefine all of the "communist" systems as not real communism because they were nowhere close to the textbook definition of communism. Textbook communism is stateless, while all of those examples had a state.
EDIT: And I should add that capitalism, along with Enlightenment values, has been the biggest force for freedom and prosperity yet.
Every system has failed throughout history, so there's no reason a Capitalistic system cannot fail as well, and we see the global collapse of Capitalism happening right now in front of us.
Using "capital" here to mean "private capital" is confusing at best, considering we are discussing socialism in general -- where the _entire point_ is that capital tends to be owned publicly -- and the Nordics in particular, where a massive amount of capital is public.
https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2018/08/19/nordic-gover...
See the cold war era for a quick rundown of US interference with socialist governments.
I'm saying... when the US instigates and funds a civil war in country X, you can't then say X's government lost power because of their economic policies.
A socialist country is one in which the means of production aren't privately owned. If most private businesses are illegal, that's socialism.
The Nordic countries aren't even attempting to ban private businesses, or claiming that as their goal.
The track record for countries that call themselves socialist is pretty grim, on the other hand.
You can't use "socialism" to mean "Venezuela, and only Venezuela (well, maybe Cuba)" and then "anything that gives more power to the US federal government". Choose one. (I'm not saying you do, but so many people do.)
From what I've seen, many people who believe the "danger" of socialism are also quite convinced that the US is in the danger of slipping into socialism. Why that doesn't happen in Sweden is left as exercise.
By that account Venezuela was certainly not a socialist country.
Under what definition are these socialist states?
In short: price controls, nationalization, high taxation, corruption, Cuban economic influence (read socialism/marxism), economic malinvestment, overspending, debt, and then printing money...
The US smelled blood and decided to help speed up the inevitable by adding sanctions. This increased the cost of their debt. Maduro is attempting to avoid further economic harm with the petro coin.
The "exchange rates" never could have made the government's pilfering of PDVSA revenues sustainable. Any properly-run business would save money for the possibility of a change in commodity prices. PDVSA under Chavez did not.
Exchange rates did not cause the collapse of Venezuela. Hugo Chavez's decision to ignore economic reality and substitute his own is what caused the collapse of Venezuela. No other oil-based economy got hit as hard as Venezuela by the oil price collapse because they maintained sustainable business practices.
>The US smelled blood and decided to help speed up the inevitable by adding sanctions
This is a joke, right? The US did not even sanction Venezuelan businesses, only the officials involved in looting the oil industry revenues. From Wiki:
>On March 9, 2015, the United States President, Barack Obama, signed and issued a presidential order declaring Venezuela a "threat to its national security" and ordered sanctions against seven Venezuelan officials. Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro denounced the sanctions as an attempt to topple his socialist government. Washington said that the sanctions targeted individuals who were involved in the violation of Venezuelans' human rights, saying that "we are deeply concerned by the Venezuelan government's efforts to escalate intimidation of its political opponents".
The notion that US sanctions played any role in the collapse of Venezuela is an utter fantasy promulgated by the Venezuelan government and perpetuated by credulous Western champagne socialists.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yes, it can get way worse. The possible bottom is way deeper. I hope the US or UN intervene before that.
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.