In this comment thread, Dr. Dawg takes exception to my shot at Hugo Chavez.
“Mass graves?” Come on.
Gentlemen, start your bulldozers!
Faced with an accelerating inflation rate and shortages of basic foods like beef, chicken and milk, President Hugo Chávez has threatened to jail grocery store owners and nationalize their businesses if they violate the country’s expanding price controls.
Food producers and economists say the measures announced late Thursday night, which include removing three zeroes from the denomination of Venezuela’s currency, are likely to backfire and generate even more acute shortages and higher prices for consumers. Inflation climbed to an annual rate of 18.4 percent a year in January, the highest in Latin America and far above the official target of 10 to 12 percent.
Mr. Chávez, whose leftist populism remains highly popular among Venezuela’s poor and working classes, seemed unfazed by criticism of his policies. Appearing live on national television, he called for the creation of “committees of social control,” essentially groups of his political supporters whose purpose would be to report on farmers, ranchers, supermarket owners and street vendors who circumvent the state’s effort to control food prices.
Now Dawg, you were saying?
Ahh socialism, we can all be poor and hungry together.
Remember Mugabe a few years ago when he chucked the white farmers out, the Left were applauding, everyone else was saying, the country will be begging in a few years, well look what happened.
If Bush got rid of term limits , can you imagine the uproar????
Jeezus Dr. Dawg, you actually live amongst us? Where did we go wrong?
daisy:
I have yet to see any connection made, other than by assertion, between the murder rate in Caracas and the regime of Hugo Chavez. When you read about who’s getting killed, it’s not the rich, other than well-heeled tourists. So again I ask (and this is for your benefit too, ET, since you asked who had raised this): where is the evidence (not assertion, not interpretation) that the murders in Caracas are politically inspired?
On April 11, more than one million people spilled into the Venezuelan capital to protest the government of Hugo Chavez. It was an unprecedented occurrence in Venezuela’s history, both because of the size of this spontaneous event, and the ruthless, brutal, and intentionally malignant attack that followed. At least 50 innocent civilians were gunned down by the Círculos Bolivarianos a militia controlled by President Chavez (the Chavez government has yet to release the final tally and the names of the victims).
Aw, not that nonsense again. Turns out, and hate to break it to you, that much of this shooting was carried out by the contrachavistas— half of those killed were demonstrating for Chavez. And during the subsequent short-lived coup, even more pro-Chavez people were shot.
ET:
I don’t understand your quibble about the literacy and infant mortality stats. I didn’t claim the highest and the lowest, respectively: I claimed “one of,” and we’re talking Latin America. Venezuela isn’t as good as Cuba in either respect, of course (97% and 6.22/1000), but it’s up there. “One of” is entirely justified. And, of course, the salient point is that the first increased and the second decreased under Chavez.
The wealth of Venezuela is primarily petrodollars. Much of that wealth is being spent upon social programs. Compare with Bolivia, which sits on the second-largest gas reserves in Latin America, the profits from which, until recently, simply flowed out of the country, leaving the inhabitants with the lowest per capita income in Latin America ($2,600 per annum).
Chavez the killer “In December 1999, the new constitution was approved. On December 15, after weeks of heavy rain, statewide mudslides claimed the lives of an estimated 30,000 people. Critics claim Chávez was distracted by the referendum and that the government ignored a civil defense report, calling for emergency measures, issued the day the floods struck.[31] The government rejected these claims.[31] Chávez personally led the relief effort afterwards.[32]”
…gee if I say something really airheaded and left winged, do I get my own blogstream on Kate’s site?
Oh, already have one…called “reader’s tips”.
*sigh*
There are, basically, two types of people – those who shudder at the phrase “committees of social control” and those who try to justify this type of fascism. It’s best to know how these malign loons think, and good to know their lunatic ideas have little currency in a modern society.
Dawg: If you believe Cuban statistics, you’ll believe anything.
ET: “Socialism doesn’t work; Chavez can’t afford to bleed the wealthy to maintain his power by largesse to the poor. Eventually the wealth disappears.”
“So, what’s going on? I think that Chavez is attacking the middle class – and that’s a serious problem. The middle class, of course, has no role in a socialist regime, but it’s vital in an industrial regime, which must be capitalist. I’d say that Chavez is folloiwng Marx’s Ten Steps to Communism….”
ET, with respect, you don’t understand even the basics of marxism. (This isn’t an insult. You’re obviously intelligent and we all have areas of ignorance.) There’s an annotated “Communist Manifesto” put out by Haymarket Press. I recommend it highly.
p.s. I have vowed to stay away from here; I was wasting too much time. But I wrote this in a weak moment on a rare afternoon off.
So Dawg, when’s Prince Hugo signing onto Kyoto? Lets see him reduce his CO2 to -6% 1990 levels… then we’ll see how free Health Care is.
Dawg and other leftards don’t realize that they are living in or beside capitalist countries with excellent standards of living which don’t require stupidity like supreme leaders, economic planning, and we’re all free to march in the streets.
Capitalism time and time again = high standards of living without requiring public muzzling or supreme leader Princes. Live it.
rebarbarian:
Those statistics (*cough*) were from the CIA Factbook.
Look Dawg,
I had some respect for your ability to reason, but no longer.
From the time Chavez took power, the murder rate increased 300%. Now, you can say that’s all gang related. And I suppose I might agree that some of it probably is. However, the fact is that Chavez has 2 million armed and trained gorillas in his own personal militia – with the leaders reporting directly to him.
This militia is responsible for a significant number of deaths, and that is a reported fact. Now, since this is a totalitarian regime, not all the reports are forthcoming. Nor is that to be expected, when Chavez controls the media, either through the state, or through intimidation.
The only examples of this type of secret and personal militia being mounted in history are all from communist or fascist regimes. And every single one is responsible for large numbers of innocent civilians and political opponents being murdered.
Chavez would not have this personal militia if he didn’t intend to use it to intimidate, not just the opposition, but the population in general.
To assume that a proportion of Venezuelas murders are not political is disingenuous, to say the least.
Now, I will ask you again, do you support mass-murder in order to bring forth Chavez’s “Socialism for the 21st century?”
And stop dodging the question.
Thanks for the workout–but you could use somewhat better-informed contrachavistas.
Shriek!!! You and your commie-pinko-socialist 50 dollar words. My redneck brain can’t aborb them.
Dawg,
Your continued avoidance has answered the question for all to see.
I’m retiring from this thread.
daisy:
This militia is responsible for a significant number of deaths, and that is a reported fact. Now, since this is a totalitarian regime, not all the reports are forthcoming. Nor is that to be expected, when Chavez controls the media, either through the state, or through intimidation.
I know you keep saying this, although now we’re talking “a proportion of Venezuela’s murders,” but where is the damned evidence? I keep asking for it, and then you have the nerve to accuse me of dodging the question?
Do I support mass-murder? Well, gee, no, I don’t. Now it’s your turn: who are the victims in Caracas? Rich people?
And, for good measure: would gun control be a solution here?
Exile, as the former leader of the Polish Communist Party, Leszek Kolakowski, said:
“All of Marx’s important prophecies turned out to be false.
1) Under capitalism, the rate of profit has failed to decline, even while more and more capital has been accumulated over the centuries.
2) The working class has not fallen into greater and greater misery. Wages have risen substantially above the subsistence level. The industrial nations have seen a dramatic rise in the standard of living of the average worker. The middle class has not disappeared, but has expanded. As Paul Samuelson concludes, ‘The immiserization of the working class… simply never took place. As a prophet, Marx was colossally unlucky and his sytem colassaly useless.’
3) There is little evidence of increased concentration of industries in advanced capitalistic societies.
4) Socialist utopian societies have not flourished, nor has the proletarian revolution inevitably occurred.
5) Despite the business cycle and even the occasional Great Depression, capitalism seems to be flourishing as never before.”
— The Making of Modern Economics, by Mark Skousen
In any event, in today’s world a checker at the grocery store very well might have an index mutual fund like the S&P 500 in his or her retirement portfolio — almost everyone is a capitalist, and the distinctions between capital and labor no longer apply.
If in fact the world was following a Marxist model, then capitalism would have to run its course and finally turn into a socialist utopia after this course was completed. Inasmuch as this would mean that socialism would evolve in some kind of future Star Trek universe when we have satellites around the moons of Jupiter, perhaps we could just idly wait to see if it actually happened.
However, Marx went on to say that Communism could be forced through by virtue of revolution, and this is of course absurd and will never be permitted.
Anyway, this is all passe and as far as Chavez goes, if I were him, I would have trouble sleeping nights because I would realize that the CIA was closely scrutinizing all my activities.
Yoop said: “I will make a prediction: Within the next three months Chavez will announce the move to *develope a nuke*, to protect Venezuela from the evil empire. Note this somewhere for future reference”
No doubt Chavez is the type of contrary ideologue to do it and Bush and people like Bush (who basically run US security without the help of congress)dearly hope that some fucktard commie starts a nuke program on the north American continent so they can make a definitive modern statement about which “power” is dominent in North America….Casto had a sainted escape due only to forst time “jitters” of the US in dealing with Nuke threats close to home…those that come after him will be dealing with certain preemptive agression towards nukes.
This would be a very moronic thing to for a latin commie leader to even joke about out loud with the way the US has gone “armed camp” on global a-holes.
None the less I’d love to see Chavez shoot his mouth off about entertaining a WMD program 😉
dawg – so what if the stats are from the CIA factbook? It’s a valid source of stats
exile – show me that I don’t understand marxism; don’t just state it. Prove it.
Marx specifically outlined the middle class as an attribute of capitalism. Since capitalism was to disappear as we moved beyond it to the glories of socialism and communism, so would the middle class – but its continued existence and even increase in size led to quite the debates and arguments (Berstein, Renner, Wright and Marcuse, Braverman).
How about this, to describe Chavez
“The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class”.
Hmmm.
The problem is, “of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production”..etc, etc.
Seems to me that Chavez is Working By The Book (Communist Manifesto).
As for the robustness of an economy being defined by infant mortality – that’s a legitimate value, as is the literacy percentage. But there are other stats to explore. The per capita GDP of Venezuala is 6,900; that of Peru – with that lower literacy and higher infant mortality, is close, at 6,400. Inflation is pretty bad there, akin to countries in war zones (Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan). Why is that? And a major problem they have to deal with is their reliance on one product – oil.
The CIA Factbook has it all.
ET:
C’mon, try to keep up. Rebarbarian was accusing me of using Cuban stats re literacy and infant mortality rates. I quoted those stats from the CIA Factbook.
Dawg; so from now on CIA facts are indisputable?
What’s the point of a 97% literacy rate (which I seriously doubt anyway) if you can only read what the government tells you? Cuba is a colourful dump, but a dump just the same.
Good question, though: if it is such a great place, why not go live there, Dawg? Help out the folks in a gesture of solidarity. What good are you doing them trolling around here, you decadent dillitante boogie? 🙂
Rebarbarian: I haven’t had that much difficulty with raw data from the CIA Factbook, but stop shifting the goalposts, dang it!
Kathy: Hey, I’m the one who was trolled here. Stop blaming the victim! 🙂
This is a terrific site outlining the on-going human rights abuses and various levels of political persecution current under the regime of Uncle Hugo – http://infovenezuela.org/cap5_en_7.htm
All the things happening in Venezuala are highly predictable to those who have seen it before. Back in the days when I used to have time to while away spending evenings in political arguments, I used to know some very ernest leftist types who would periodically go to S. America and try to better the lot of poor peasants. Back then the primary things holding back the peasantry, in their opinion, were the residue of colonialism and Amerikan imperialism. At the time I couldn’t pick apart their arguments as I would have to agree that the small scale efforts they were making were making people’s lives better. I had a gut feeling that there was something missing and it only occurred to me a few years ago. The missing link: socialism doesn’t scale very well.
Socialism may be fine in small self-selected groups of people, but once one gets beyond a few hundred people, socialism simply breaks. It’s like trying to use a bubble sort algorithm to quickly sort sets of a few million elements. When dealing with large numbers of people, free markets are the only type of system that is able to scale efficiently in dealing with populations of a few thousand to billions.
I really wish I had thought of this argument 30 years ago.
OK, OK, dawg…I’m trying to keep up (pant, pant) ..I’m only a tiny daschund; I know you’re a glorious Great Dane..I’m trying..trying..But that’s it for tonight. Cheers.
Same here, ET. It’s off to my mat I go. 🙂
Next year “Venezuela Burning”?
In your recent poll about Suzuki’s hypothetecal destruction of the Canadian economy, I agonized over whether to choose Zimbabwe or Venezuela. Now I see that they are the same choice.
I like Maggie Thatchers definition of poor….
“Ten years ago, the rich people did not have VCR’s. Now the poor people have them. So what is a poor person? Someone who is getting rich slower.”
What every Marxist dictator forgets is that he has to have a few capitalists around to keep to coffers topped up. Even Lorne Calvert has figured this one out.
Well, let’s make it a party. Since we’ve got Schnauzers, Dachshunds, and Great Dane’s, I see your dog, and raise you one Keeshond – my dog Spook: tinyurl.com/2cm3an – Spook & I have a lot in common, and I have a lot of respect for critters that have better fur than I do, hirsute though I may be.
read all.
dr dwag or something like that.
why you puting dr on front?
you are (after reading all the comments) plain and simple f…d nut.
Kate:
Your combox signal-to-noise ratio hasn’t improved, I see.
S/N has been doing fine, except when some people come here and use non-words like combox.
Language evolves.
Yes, it does, and when combox enters the dictionaries, we will be able to conclude that natural selection favours said mutation of letters being elevated to the status of a word. In the interim, its meaning is not well defined, and is not commonly understood by non-practitioners of the so-called “hip” jargon, ergo it lowers the S/N ratio of the general conversation. Since we’re off topic, I’ll spare you a more general explanation of polite social behaviour, and leave it at that.
Hands up any blog-frequenter who has never heard the word “combox” before, referring to a blog’s comments section.
No? Didn’t think so.
Out of deference to Kate, I’ll cease being OT, and will avoid referring to the pompous prattery of my OT interlocutor.
Dawg:
I am from a former socialist country. We had exactly the list of problems that Venezuela is facing. Shortage of food and everything, black market, crime spiraling out of control, you name it. It is so familiar. The solution was the reforms. Everybody is getting richer in the country today, there is surplus of goods and business is booming. If you still have doubts, you really should move to Venezuela – we don’t want socialists in Canada. At least I don’t – never again.
Aaron:
Venezuela has the fastest growing economy in South America. Go figure, eh? Must be in spite of socialism.
Incidentally, Vitty, I meant “prescriptivism.” “Prattery” isn’t even a word, fer cryin’ out loud.
Vitty? Do you ever see me renaming you, sir? Of course prattery isn’t a word, but since we were already off topic, I chose to be polite about it and not mention it. Really, you are the height of rudeness.
Must be in spite of socialism.
Heh, this is the second time I’ve noticed a leftard be accidentally right.
Typical of a tyrant maybe someone should indeed consiter putting a bullet between that swaggering jerks eyes
hyperinflation is like acceleration due to gravity.
it will have its way. there are things one can do if you understand its true nature, simply pulling rank, issuing an edict that it will ‘stop’ DOESNT CUT IT.
rescinding economic fundamentals like supply and demand curves you may as well attempt to rescind the laws of gravity.
The facts just keep, er, bulldozing on, leaving the regulars sputtering in their wake. Now inflation is mentioned–another product of socialism, 17% or so a year, right?
But no squawking when, under the old system, it was many times that. How does 70% a year grab you?
h/t to Robert for that one, by the way: more at his place.
Hmm. My arguments, based on facts, which I cite here with sources, versus the Right’s arguments:
foamy-mouthed moonbat
born again commie fanatic
decadent left
leftard
useful idiot
bitch
airheaded and left winged
malign loon
commie-pinko-socialist
f…d nut [sic]
I win.
I win.
Competition only works in the leftard world if they are their own judge.
Venezuela has the fastest growing economy in South America. Go figure, eh? Must be in spite of socialism.
Indeed. Funny what throwing around a lot of windfall resource-sector profits on various ad-hoc initiatives can apparently do, eh? But looking closer, this is “growth” built on quicksand.
The quicksand would appear to be some way off.
But I take your point, Dudley. The endless flow of petrodollars allows much to be done for both poor Venezuelans and for surrounding countries without worrying about the invisible hand of the marketplace.
Man, you’ve used both FAIR and ZMag as sources, founts of credibility that they are? Come on, you can do better than that.
But anyway: clearly the influx of petrodollars isn’t doing such a good job of keeping The Invisible Hand of economic reality at bay – as the story Kate originally posted shows.
FAIR isn’t a bad reference–no apologies for using it. The ZMag one was just to back up the statement about the sheer size of Venezuela’s oil reserves. Is that claim in error?
In any case, we shall soon see how long these food “shortages” go on (this isn’t about shortages, but about hoarding).
The Mercal supermarkets are still a going concern, and Chavez is making some effort to be a little less ham-handed at present on the issue of pricing.