Letter: Venezuela is about freedom, not socialism
The tragedy that is now occurring in Venezuela is not between “socialism” and “capitalism,” as Donald Trump and Mike Pence would have you believe.
It is, as usual, between the imposition of authoritarianism and something like a real desire for freedom. The combatants are not fighting over the lessons found in some dry economic textbook. Anyone who frames it differently is telling a lie.
We should beware of them.
Scott Newton, Jasper
And what makes YOU, Mr. Newton, the almighty truth-sayer over/above all others? Can’t people see things differently, with differing opinions, etc, without “telling a lie?” Dem radical-leftists (socialists of the Sanders, AOC, and Omar, et al, kind) come a whole lot closer to “telling a lie” (lies) about all sorts of issues than Trump and Pence do about Venezuela. It’s not hard to recognize the right and wrong of what’s going on down there – and only “telling a lie” would claim otherwise.
And what gives YOU, Mr.Green, the right to decide what’s right and what’s wrong “down there?” I’m afraid you’ve missed my point entirely.
Wow Scott, normally you research your subjects before posting but you totally missed it on this one. Chavez promised in 2007 not to seize property and assets of the wealthy. In 2009 he did just that seizing massive amounts of property and giving it to the poor. His reason? To become less reliant on foreign food imports and more self sufficient. Unfortunately for him the rich had already begun to move their liquid assests out of Venezuela. When the poor received their new lands, they didn’t have the cash to invest in equipment, seed and irrigation to grow crops.
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106620230
by 2018 more than 3 million people had left Venezuela. Venezuelan Community Abroad. A New Method of Exile, a 2014 study by Thomas Paez, Mercedes Vivas and Juan Rafael Pulido of the Central University of Venezuela, reported that “over 90 percent of Venezuela’s more than 1.5 million emigrants were college graduates; 40 percent had a master’s degree, and 12 percent had doctorates or post-doctorate degrees. Chavez wanted to spread the wealth around to the poor making all things equal in Venezuela. (sounds like socialism to me.) So the wealthy and educated fled because they didn’t want to lose all of their assets, even though many lost their homes and land by seizure.
Chavez seized thousands of businesses and froze access to the US Dollar which prevented business from buying imported parts and goods to sell. Once the dollar was frozen and inflation took off there was no stopping it. So the riches country in South America attempted to embrace socialism and instead got crushed by the flight of the wealthy and well educated.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/07/16/world/americas/venezuela-shortages.html
The people are litteraly starving and Maduro is blocking food relief from entering the country to help. Why? Because he is propped up by the Cubans, Chinese and Iranians and they won’t let Venezuela fail because it hurts their regimes. Capitalism worked in Venezuela for decades and now socialism is failing.
Daryl Hensley, Jasper IN
Daryl,
I think you’ve missed my point. I did not intend to invite some kind of academic discussion about the relative merits of socialism/capitalism in the social economic development of Venezuela since 1998 with Chavez and the Fifth Republic Movement. My point is this: Venezuela is now an authoritarianism state. Like all authoritarian/dictatorial states of the right or of the left, it seeks to crush its opposition and crush it thoroughly. I can guarantee, though, that the Nicaraguan people who are starving and homeless right now would accept aid from Columbia, Brazil, Guyana, Cuba, Nicaragua, Russia, the U.S., or Mars for that matter. They would not first ask whether this aid comes from a socialist or a capitalist country.
Daryl, I can’t imagine your having a problem agreeing with this simple proposition.
Scott
Though I agree with your premise, the solution can only be a switch away from a dictatorship back to a democracy. Sure people want their liberty back. Of course liberty is never free. Now the world must deal with those migrating out of Venezuela without their assets and becoming a tax burden on those who accept them. That is exactly what Maduro wants.
Sorry I missed you point. 🙂
Daryl Hensley
Daryl,
In my dotage, I’ve come to believe that the switch must be away from dictatorship/authoritarianism to something that looks, smells, or feels like freedom. I’m afraid that “democracy,” as we know it, is not exportable. Some of the most brutal regimes on the face of earth parade themselves as democracies.
Freedom is harder to define, but you know it when you’ve got it.
Cheers.
Scott
The world is a tax burden on me.
I hear a lot of talk about Venezuela being a socialist country and look what happen to it. I think most folks do not realize that the United States is a mix of economic capitalism and socialism (see Social Security, Medicare, Workman’s Comp, etc.) and has been that ways of many years. One might as well call Valenzuela a dictatorship, period. If you really want to see what real economic socialism looks like, research places where I used to live like Sweden, Denmark, The Netherlands, Germany, etc.
I do not know what the answer is for Venezuela is, but it is sad to see a wealthy county, like it is, starving its own people, based on the greed of a few.
Dan, I’m with you on this. If you’ve been starved, evicted, and had your civil liberties ground into the dust, do you really care if your oppressor is a right wing dictator or a left wing dictator? To ask the question is to answer it. I’m afraid Venezuela, for the most part, will have to solve this problem itself. The specter of an American.military invasion of a South American country is still so raw it would prompt an anit- U.S. uprising.
Unfortunately, socialism is still a hangover term from the fifties used by certain politicians to strike fear of the red terror into the hearts of the untutored. Expect to hear it invoked a lot during the next two years. It sounds cruel, but my expectation is that the term will not be fully understood until at least a generation or two of the current population has died off.
Human nature will not allow a society to prosper if it allows people who can contribute to survive without contributing. Social programs currently in place already do that , and they are rife with abuse. Totalitarianism is brought about by the need to force the producers to support the unproductive. Socialism is therefore an incumbrence to freedom. Capitalism is freedom.
Greg,
Are you including Medicare and Social Security among the social programs to which you refer?
Wow. “Capitalism is Freedom.” That’s about as close to ” Work Sets You Free” as I can imagine.
Doubt that you could be elected dog catcher on that slogan.