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Venezuela is a mess due to terrible policies

“Why is Venezuela a country in turmoil?” asks Adam Parsons, writing for Sky, whereupon he talks about monetary policy, the price of oil, hyperinflation, increases in the minimum wage.

I suppose this all came about due to rip tides or adverse alignment of stars or maybe even ‘bad luck‘.

For an article that asks the question ‘why’, for some reason Mr. Parsons makes no attempt to suggest what could be motiving and informing President Maduro’s actions, a man whose day job is running Venezuela, but who also happens to be president of something else too.

‘Strangely’ nowhere in this article does the word ‘socialist’ or ‘socialism’ appear. Go figure.

19 comments to Venezuela is a mess due to terrible policies

  • madrocketsci

    “Who is John Galt?”

    Nice Heinlein quote.

  • bobby b

    “‘Strangely’ nowhere in this article does the word ‘socialist’ or ‘socialism’ appear. Go figure.”

    It’s only fair, as this wasn’t “true” socialism. After all, if it was, it would have worked.

    😛

  • Nicholas (Unlicensed Joker) Gray

    It’s even worse than that. The government was hoping to profit by capitalizing on the vast oil wealth, but the price went down! It’s not Socialism- it’s those darned Capitalizers seeking profit$!

  • lucklucky

    Strange? it is Marxist journalism, don’t expect them to put Socialism in bad light. It was journalism like this that helped make the second major party in Britain a Social Supremacist and Anti-Semite party.

    Below is the farse repeating itself, the Marxists wanting to control the BBC an already leftist organization using violence of state to live from others people money.
    It fits that the BBC goes to guillotine, they helped create Corbyn.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/08/22/jeremy-corbyn-call-bbc-declare-social-class-presenters-journalists/

  • Eric

    Bah. Who puts a bus driver in charge of a country?

  • Roué le Jour

    I look forward to all BBC staff who attended a private school being obliged to wear a straw boater while on camera for easy recognition. In the case of those affecting a working class accent it should be nailed on.

  • NickM

    jim jones,
    Well, bugger me. Corbyn is even more vile and stupid than I thought. He ought to be cursed with all the curses in the Boof of Deuteronomy and torn apart by she-bears. And that is for starters.

  • pete

    Better to avoid mentioning socialism to avoid accusations of socialistophobia.

    Our media only uses candour when right wing people are to blame for anything.

  • Ian

    I’ve been following this “great socialist experiment” for some years now, highlights of which include the attempt to prevent long queues at food shops by banning queuing, the government’s advice that “rabbits are not pets” (i.e., eat them), the sad stories of people selling their babies because they can’t feed them, and most recently the rise in prostitution amongst the ranks of doctors and lawyers to enable them to buy basic necessities. Apparently, due to the exchange rate — getting better every day, with inflation at a million per cent — it’s now a wonderful time to visit Venezuela, but I wonder how long before we start hearing reports of cannibalism, which is after all the end result of all these great socialist experiments of the past.

  • Alisa

    A question so dumb, it can only be asked by an intellectual.

  • Sam Duncan

    “‘Strangely’ nowhere in this article does the word ‘socialist’ or ‘socialism’ appear. Go figure.”

    To be fair to Sky, their story this morning does at least mention Maduro “plung[ing] the country into further economic crisis”, although not what he’s done or why he did it. And their “Venezuela’s economic crisis: What you need to know” piece does, amazingly, mention that he’s a socialist, albeit in the context of him “battling to end the economic turmoil”. Last night the BBC just said an economic crisis was “unfolding”, as if it was some kind of natural phenomenon.

    “the BBC goes to guillotine”

    Bloody hell. The only people obsessed with “class” in this country are the socialists. I would, honestly, be completely unable to respond to that question if I worked for the BBC. I quite simply do not know the answer. Never have. Can’t say it keeps me awake at night, either.

  • lucklucky

    Well the first Robespierres end being murdered by next Robespierres…

    The monocultural journalism essentially with a Marxist culture oulook of BBC and others is what made possible that Corbyn is the leader 2nd British party. Following revolutionary history they will end up in Gulag because then Corbyn want to put there his own people. BBC are Useful Idiots.

  • Fraser Orr

    Venzeuela invited some of the largest oil companies in the world to come invest in the Orinoco basin to build the complex infrastructure necessary to recover the billions of barrels of oil located there. After the companies had invested all the money and built the infrastructure, the Venezuelan government kicked the oil companies out, and stole all their infrastructure.

    Does anybody here think that that fact might SOMEHOW relate to the lack of foreign investment in Venezuela? Does anybody think that this might give even Venezuelan entrepreneurs pause before taking on the risk of starting a new business?

    It sounds to me like it isn’t so much that Venezuela is Socialist, more that it is a Kleptocracy. Though, it might well be argued that the two words are practically synonymous, the former only polishing the latter with a patina of faux morality and fake fairness.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2017/05/07/how-venezuela-ruined-its-oil-industry/#77391fb07399

  • Mike Marsh

    The Spectator podcast this morning had some dingbat University type blethering about the causes, including “falling oil prices” and “poor governance”. The other guest told it straight – “socialist policies” – which sent her off into a spin, huffing that other socialist experiments have been very successful.

    Perhaps the Spectator has these “balanced” opinions on the show just so we can see how ludicrous they are.

  • Mr Ed

    On BBC Radio 4’s ‘flagship’ Today programme on 22.08.18, in the first hour (from 6 am), there was the business news slot (the politics comes later when the statists are more likely to be awake). An interview with an analyst on Venezuela passed with him slipping in the word ‘socialist’ in relation to Venezuela, almost in passing but it was there. What made it conspicuous was the rarity of the word being used in a negative context.

    I remind our readers that in 1980s Portugal, the Venezuelan Bolivar was one of the many currencies quoted in the Bureaux de Change, the reason being that many Portuguese worked in then prosperous Venezuela as ‘guest workers’, and sent or brought their remittances back home. My Colombian Spanish teacher in the mid-1990s told us that Colombians (in general) resented Venezuelans as they were the ‘rich tourists’ in Colombia’s resorts, who sneered at the poor Colombians. Wind forward 20 years, and the Venezuelans are eating their zoo animals.

  • NickM

    I wonder if they’ll eat the hippo? They didn’t in Paris in 1870 for various reasons. They did eat pretty much everything else.

  • this wasn’t “true” socialism. After all, if it was, it would have worked.(bobby b, August 23, 2018 at 2:19 am)

    Such a pity that true soclalists never recognise untrue socialism until after all their attempts to deny its failure have failed as utterly as the untrue socialism itself.

  • Paul Marks

    What Venezuela did was the indirect road to socialism – instead of nationalising everything at once, the government imposed impossible regulations (including price controls – whilst the same government was busy printing money and thus creating hyperinflation) which make it impossible for private business enterprises to survive.

    Then when the private business enterprises collapse, due to the government price controls and other regulations, the government announces it “has to” take them over – so the socialist objective of the control of the control of “the means of production, distribution and exchange” is “achieved”.

    Now I just explained why Venezuela is a socialist mess in two paragraphs – why can not the “mainstream media” do this? The answer, as Perry hints and the comments by various people openly state, is that the “mainstream media” does not WANT to admit that the mess in Venezuela (the starvation, the mass fleeing of the country….) is the result of SOCIALISM.