Venezuela news

[Martin Hash]

There's still plenty of Leftist narrative that Venezuela's problems are all caused by the U.S. I never used Venezuela as an example of Socialist failure because that immediately led to an argument I didn't want to have. Similarly, bringing up the Soviet Union or China just goes ballistic. There's no rational debate along the Capitalism/Socialism divide. The only tactic that seems to work is to say, "in the arena of Identity Politics, I'm an OWG so I side with The Patriarchy." They seem to accept that because being an OWG is the worst thing ever. I'm essentially admitting I'm a Nazi, so anything else I have to say is moot, including further endless circular reasoning.

[Speaker to Animals]

It cuts both ways. Bring up one of the epic faures of capitalism and you get the "that's not real capitalism" response.

Still, capitalism doesn't result in starvation and genocide, so I guess they still have going for them the low bar of reduced expectations.

[SuburbanFarmer]

I had the same experience with Zero Hedge.
They've been predicting and Economic Collapse just after the collapse of 08.

The problem is - if you play by normal rules - we should have collapsed....it's just that the Feds keep finding new ways to keep the ship from sinking.....There's way to much money in the system....no one denies there's huge fucking bubbles...those bubbles will collapse someday.

Yeah, I was very sure we'd have a 2015 or 2016 bust, along the 7 year standard economic cycle.

The bubbles will collapse, but are you really helping anyone out by coming out with an article once a month saying, it's about to all fall apart ?

Broken Clock Strategy I guess.

We did. That’s when they kicked off QE4. This is why our deficit is exploding.

[SuburbanFarmer]

It cuts both ways. Bring up one of the epic faures of capitalism and you get the "that's not real capitalism" response.

Still, capitalism doesn't result in starvation and genocide, so I guess they still have going for them the low bar of reduced expectations.

Doesn’t result in genocide? I thought we were being genocided right now by capitalist oligarchs?

Also: Africa.

[pineapplemike]

Is the military industrial complex a result of capitalism? There's been plenty of death and destruction over the decades in the name of capitalism, notably to stop the spread of communism, yes? Atleast based on my very basic knowledge of it. I need to continue reading The Lawless State (1976), I posted about it in the what are you reading thread

[Martin Hash]

I argue "liberty." People know me as the Liberty guy. Socialism and liberty (Jeffersonian version, not Marxist) don't mix. Capitalism works with liberty, as does Democracy, but both are huge threats to liberty if they are exploited. Today's love affair with Socialism by our youth is a result of Capitalism's excesses.

[The Conservative]

Excellent podcast on how Venezuela screwed up their economy, from a journalist that was covering the collapse.

https://www.acast.com/warcollege/venezu ... oplay=true

It's called Socialism... what part of that don't you understand?

[SuburbanFarmer]

Excellent podcast on how Venezuela screwed up their economy, from a journalist that was covering the collapse.

https://www.acast.com/warcollege/venezu ... oplay=true

It's called Socialism... what part of that don't you understand?

Great analysis. That’s why we value your input buddy.

[The Conservative]

Excellent podcast on how Venezuela screwed up their economy, from a journalist that was covering the collapse.

https://www.acast.com/warcollege/venezu ... oplay=true

It's called Socialism... what part of that don't you understand?

Great analysis. That’s why we value your input buddy.

Tell me how I am wrong?

[pineapplemike]

Not that I agree with socialism but these dudes (even nukedog!) had some better insight than just blanketly calling it socialism. Seems like human error and lack of foresight may share a large burden of the responsibility

I remember back when I used to follow zerohedge years ago an article was written about how Venezuela leveraged all their gold to some bank like Goldman Sachs years and years ago before even Chavez or whatever. I think chavez was trying to get it back because they had basically took it straight up after Venezuela couldn't pay a loan. Or rather they had loaned their gold but they straight up took it. Either way Venezuela doesn't have gold and whoever offshored their gold is objectively retarded.

Yeah, once the oil price started falling off from $100/barrel, they were left high and dry. Over-dependence on a single resource.

Maduro and Chavez are populist retards, and leveraged all of their gold for loans, to prop up the system. Now they're completely broke.

This is exactly where the US is headed.

Worse yet, they set it up to not only rely on oil, but they put their own cronies in that knew nothing about the oil business, and then topped it off by not reinvesting the oil money into the oil business (maintenance/exploration/development), so now their oil infrastructure is aging/insufficient and when the prices dropped they aren't drilling new wells.

They shot themselves in the foot, and now are trying to blame everyone else even while their hand still has the smoking gun in it.