My understanding (based on Kingfish, a 1995 made-for TV biopic starring John Goodman) is that Long got the nickname from a character on the Amos & Andy radio comedy.
But will you read your own words? I proposed for debate the issues, “Will Chavez’ policies help Venezuela achieve broadly shared prosperity?” and “Will they help Venezuela develop an economy that can sustain itself if the oil runs out, or if (highly unlikely) the price drops drastically?” Expressing skepticism I could understand, but you said, you “hope not”! Would you rather see the people of Venezuela remain poor than see a left-wing ideologue’s ideas validated? :mad:
Reread the OP. Chavez is trying to invest the oil revenue in lasting social goods that will produce benefits that will still be there when the oil is gone. A “welfare society” – the “Dutch disease” – is precisely what he’s trying to avoid.
According to Mr. Garcia Mendoza, who has no reason to love Chavez, his policies are stimulating enterprise.
Democracy. Even if we have to choose between democracy and capitalism.
According to a ‘Nation’ piece based on an interview with some pro-Chavez lackey, and another cite that reads like an english-language Venezuelan Pravda. (The old Pravda, not the new pretender to the throne!) Not exactly the horn 'o plenty of unbiased sources.
There doesn’t seem to be enough actual information to make a informed statement about how things are going now, but history teaches that nutty leftist leaders are teh sux for economies, not to mention civil rights. Chavez, talking the talk and building his own ‘revolutionary guard’, is plainly not treading on new ground.
Granted, the OP’s source may be biased, but Chavez really does look more like Huey Long than Fidel Castro. Infrastructure investment, money spent on education, money spent on health care. That sounds like the Kingfish, through and through. And Chavez seems to be organizing his voting machine in much the same way that Long organized his rural parishes.
And as for the land reform, didn’t Hawaii do something similar in the 70s?
Based on the cite in the OP, I’m seeing more investment in the economy than “manna from heaven.” Brutus, do you have a cite with another angle for us to consider?
Ultimately, I agree with BrainGlutton that we should value democracy even above capitalism. If Chavez’s experiment fails, i.e. if his reforms do not provide a tangible benefit to the majority of his countrymen, then the Venezuelans can vote him out of office. It is not for us to interfere or to try to pressure him out.
Now if Chavez at any point along the way ceases to be a (small-d) democrat, then it’s a different kettle of fish.
Why does anyone think that yet another statist attempt at industrial policy will work any better than it has in the past?
When government decides to ‘invest’ in building industries, it gets into the business of allocating resources, picking winners and losers, promoting some businesses over others, etc. Governments are fundamentally unable to do this with anything approaching market efficiency, for objective reasons having to do with lack of incentive and lack of information, even assuming the government stays scupulously honest and doesn’t turn into an exercise in crony featherbedding.
Yes, Venezuela’s economy has improved recently. But that was inevitable. Venezuela’s economy suffered a huge double-shock: a coup d’etat, followed by a general strike and sabotage of oil facilities. In the first half of 2002 Venezuela’s oil production dropped to almost zero. Now that it has recovered to almost pre-coup numbers, it’s no surprise that the economy would improve.
In a country with big oil revenue, the government may have enough raw resources to fake it for a while, spending money like crazy. It can, in essense, create a mini-boomlet through supply-side injections into the economy. 30% of Venezuela’s GDP comes from oil, and that will pay for a lot of stupidity. But it’s not sustainable. The longer Venezuela is run as a centrally-commanded economy, the worse will its structural deficits become. Its oil wealth may allow it to struggle along until the oil runs out, but if its free-market economy was larger it would do much, much better.
Here’s an example of Venezuelan government incompetence: Chavez unilaterally decided that it was bad for his country to participate in foreign exchange, and instituted exchange controls that have starved private industry of capital. This decision was a strong contributor to the collapse of the economy after Chavez took power.
And now this lovely populist hero is busy consolidating power, cracking down on dissenters, shutting down media outlets, and instituting new laws that can be used to arrest dissenters and put a chill on opposition.
From The Economist:
When will we learn that that central control and ‘planned economies’ simply fail? They’ve never worked, and never will. I remember when all the statists were pointing at Japan, and claiming that Japan proved that a strong centrally-controlled industrial policy was more efficient than the ‘chaos’ of the market. Until Japan crashed, that is. The USSR used to be held up as another grand model of how much better central planning was - until it collapsed. China as well, but then China began instituting market reforms, and its economy improved dramatically. And so it goes.
Well, I would have included some anti-Chavez analyses if I had known of any. The National Review article is not available on-line – but at least I told you all about it. As for the article linked in the OP – The Nation is an openly political magazine, under no obligation to be “fair and balanced” – yet it often is more so than the mainstream media. The author took the trouble to interview some anti-Chavez figures, and give them a chance to tell their side of the story, and include it in the article.
As for civil rights – when Chavez tried to stage a coup in 1992 he did prison time for it. But the leaders of the abortive 2002 coup against Chavez are still free.
I think Sam Stone adressed this already, and I don´t have much more to add about it, exept that I know first hand what is to live under this variety (albeit not quite so extreme so far, thankfully) of leftism right now and it´s an impending disaster. This people seem bent on leveling everyone to the lowest common denominator, they thrive on the rethoric of bringing the upper classes down instead of rising the lower classes up. They love statism, god forbid that free enterprise brushes they perfect ideals of what a state should be run like, and they rather see the people paying more for second class services provided by state enterprises populated with buro-zombies than allow private ventures to lower prices and create employment. I feel like pulling my hairs sometimes when people defend their right to be ripped off by the state like this.
An example, a few months ago the leftist now in goverment went full ahead to endorse the syndicate of the state water company to bring down all private providers, they called for a referendum shouting how capitalist pirates were ripping us all off, how the state water company slack-asses… ooops!, I mean, water was a national asset that we should defend at all cost, the multinational company is gonna get you!, thirst you to death, BOO!!! yadda, yadda. Well, they got their votes, off they went the private companies. Now they just found out that the state doesn´t have the money to pay for the requiered infrastructure and prices will need to be rised to fill the gap, or international loans will be needed or the infrastructure won´t be possible to finance. :rolleyes:
Yes sir, they just see it now, no way they were pandering to the masses to prop them up as their champions even if the people ends up throughly shafted in the end; but hey!, they have they nice little state enterprise so it´s all good!.
I don’t think this is so simple, I can find examples of free enterprise not improving a bad situation in Latin America:
http://www.hrw.org/children/labor/elsalvador/
Or OTOH, staying in El Salvador, I can say that the dissolution of the Telco monopoly of the government was a success.
But here I do part with many who think it has to be only black and white regarding statist attempts at industrial policy: it depends on the item at hand.
Ale: I cannot comment much on the silliness of the new Uruguayan government with the water item, in other Latin American nations privatization of water turned into truly an appalling thing specially for the needy. Before a right winger complains, the situation in Uruguay sounds to me like the private accounts for social security situation in the USA: the government will have to get into even more debt to make the change work in the very long run (if ever); I would say water is one item that, if not under the control of the government, it should be at least partially controlled by government.
As for Chavez:
I do think criticism is deserved in the changes he is now trying to make to the judiciary and the press, but after what the press did to him (During and after the coup, the private press and TV in Venezuela were like Pravda, it just so happens that the target was Chavez and his supporters (the majority of the people)) and taking into account the results of the last referendum: overwhelmingly in his favor, I am mildly in favor of Chavez and only because he is democratically elected.
As for policies to follow:
For all the ones wondering why leftists governments in Latin America try again and again populist solutions: you have to take into account that for several generations countries have already tried the free enterprise approved way and many are still under development. I do think there are other reasons why this is so, but it is silly to condemn governments for trying something different. When the guys with the money just forget to give some for the common good, they should not be surprised if the people elect presidents that will put into effect items that will be unpleasant to the well to do.
And I do prefer that they are elected and also voted out of office, rather than the people or the military taking over by force.
It is interesting how, on paper, many of Chavez’ projects sound so interesting and it actually seems that they may help develop Venezuela as a nation, but being someone that actually lives here in Venezuela I can assure you that they do not serve as a good model for developing countries. You may find that officialist party members and government supporters might tell you very good things about the land reforms, educational projects and the several ‘missions’, as they are called, that are being held nationwide, but this, as I see it, are all useless.
Those popular markets, land reforms, educational missions, etc. are only available as long as you are a supporter of president Chavez. That appears to be the only catch in all of Chavez’ policies nationwide. As has been said before, Chavez’ is mainly buying the people using the nations resources.
What currently concerns me the most are the laws the officialist party wants to pass, the project of univerty laws (proyecto de ley de universidades). This is something that’s being going on for the pas years wich all started with the 1011 decret. This decret intented to control high school and elementary school education, if you recall, it is because of these decret that in 2001 the marches started and the opposition first started taking the streets. Now in 2005 the officialist party is proposing a new project concerning the Universities of the nation, this ‘new’ model that is being proposed is alarmingly alike the cuban model for higher education.
This new project pretends to control absolutely everything concerning higher education, and when I say everything, I mean everything. It would control what is teached, where is teached, who teaches it, how he/she teaches it, when it is teached, etc. (I’m currently trying to find an online transcript of this decret, I will post the link as soon as I get it, sorry).
The new law would vanish the current higer education authorities, without exception, and would leave the administration of every high education institution (private or not) within the hands of a government authority. This authority can actually choose how every university will manage their funds as they see fit for the ‘people’. Not only this, but the new authority would also be able to eliminate careers that they do not see fit for the good of the nation (the criteria for judging wheter a career is good or not is still unclear, and I’m sure will NEVER be clear). Ok… so the government chooses wich careers are alloud to be kept, there goes your freedom to choose what to study!! yay…
But this is not all, you only cannot choose what to study, because the government will tell you according what they think the needs of the country are… but also, they will tell you where to study!! there goes you’re freedom to choose where to study. Not only this… but as it turns out, on a plus side, universities cannot turn down anyone on their education… whic aparently is not such a bad thing, right? Well, it wouldn’t be a bad thing if by this they meant that they can give equal opportunities of study to everyone (which they don’t of course), this actually means that universities must accept everyone, without exception, disregarding how they did on they’re admission tests, high school grade, or even if they actually graduated high school!! (Am I the only seeing how wrong this is?) In case I am, please someone tell me: how in the world is anyone who has not graduated from high school where he/she is supposed to get the necessary tools to even have a chance to comprehend what they will be teached at any given university supossed even have a chance at having a succesfull higher education?. And this is not considering the fact that high school education and elementary schools are worse every day, specially non private school. And i’m not even going to talk about about how the new law specifies that universities cannot descriminate in any way, racial, religion, size, weight, hair color, or anything. Funny thing that the only thing NOT mentioned is political ideology.
These attempts to massify education are just means the government is trying to use to control absolutely everything, for it absolute power that it wants.
Are Chavez’ policies in Venezuela a good model for developing countries? Hell no.
Sorry for the gramatical horrors, I’m not the best typer and english is not my strongest language.
Certain groups like it because it seems to offer a stability. Regardless of economic outcomes, it enables some groups to consistantly win the game, and allows them to continue doing so indefinitely. The key word here is their descrption of “chaos”. They hate the fact that they can’t always win.
Which doesn’t really say anything about free enterprise. What it says is that many families find that their children are capable of a substantial contribution to the family income. Which, despite the unpopularity in modern times, is essentially what children have been doing for eons.
But they oiften did it under authortarian governments (just as they do statism under authortarian governments) who constantly meddle and favor one side. The Us (and other western economies) are bad enough - but the Latin American ones are horrendous about it.