This quote comes from the Venezuelan melt down thread, and I think it’s worth of its own debate. The basis for it is as follows:
As far as Venezuela is concerned, I fail to see how the magic of capitalism would make things any better than the evils of socialism. As I said in that thread, capitalism would inevitably lead to foreign ownership of the oil (or what ever natural resource is available).
Why do I think that? Because this is about capitalism, and the problem with capitalism is that it requires–gasp–capital. So where is there the most capital? Certainly not in Venezuela.
Once the oil is owned by foreign companies, the revenue is also owned by foreign companies. Leaving only the lowest paid jobs held locally. A pattern we see time and again.
What follows is a population too poor to afford food and medicine, which although they are readily available, are left out of reach–leading to starvation and poor medical care.
This quote comes from the Venezuelan melt down thread, and I think it’s worth of its own debate. The basis for it is as follows:
As far as Venezuela is concerned, I fail to see how the magic of capitalism would make things any better than the evils of socialism. As I said in that thread, capitalism would inevitably lead to foreign ownership of the oil (or what ever natural resource is available).
Why do I think that? Because this is about capitalism, and the problem with capitalism is that it requires–gasp–capital. So where is there the most capital? Certainly not in Venezuela.
Once the oil is owned by foreign companies, the revenue is also owned by foreign companies. Leaving only the lowest paid jobs held locally. A pattern we see time and again.
What follows is a population too poor to afford food and medicine, which although they are readily available, are left out of reach–leading to starvation and poor medical care.
Fail. All industry requires capital, unless you think the Venezuelans are going to be extracting the oil by hand. The difference between capitalism and communism is whether the government sells the rights to extract oil to those who have the means to do so, or whether they steal the means of extraction from their rightful owners and do it themselves.
As a general rule, leftest dictators tend to be more into the whole mass political action thing and the social and economic change thing. With a rightwing dictator, as long as you shut up about politics and how evil the government is, you can generally lead your life. With a leftwing dictator, you have to worry about stuff like nationalization and large scale economic reforms and “committees to protect the revolution”, and things like that. It’s much harder to just go about your life.
The question here isn’t capitalism vs. socialism, it’s democracy vs. authoritarianism. I’d rather a social democrat over a capitalist autocrat, or a democratic capitalist over a socialist dictator. The choice of economic system isn’t that important; so long as the proper democratic checks and balances are in place, matters will work out eventually.
I recall when I was in St. Lucia I was amazed that this tiny island with gorgeous and expensive resorts did nothing to help the locals (total population 170,000). Driving from the airport to the resort I was amazed at how destitute the locals were (literally living in corrugated metal shacks not much bigger than an outhouse and looked likely to fall over with nothing more than a good push). The resorts brought in small fortunes in money but nearly none of it goes to the local economy and I doubt it would take much to lift these people up some.
As for why prefer capitalist over socialist it is my opinion that a socialist state has corruption much more deeply embedded in the system. You cannot get more by doing more or having a bright idea, you can only get more by screwing other people over. Capitalism has corruption as well to be sure but nowhere near those levels.
Corruption I believe to be at the root of most failed economies. Till you solve that problem no economic policy will help you much no matter how enlightened.
I think I have to take that back. I graphed out the three items, like so:
Economic freedom is the X-axis with righter being more free, the Y-axis is the percentile of arable land. The color is based on the UN’s “under-five mortality rate” with blue being good, red being bad, and green in-between. There may be an ever-so-slight link between arable land and mortality, but not enough to be worth considering. Overwhelmingly, it’s economic freedom that determines infant mortality.
Note that since data clustered towards 0 arable land and towards 0 infant mortality, I took the logarithm of the number to compute the graph so that there would be a more noticeable gradient. I can supply source and tabular data if anyone wants it.
Presuming Capitalism to mean economic freedom (which is a defining characteristic), you’re definitely better off. It could be argued that modern day China, for example, is becoming a Capitalist tyranny. I’d still rather not be living in a country that is tyrannical, but if tyranny is a given I’d still rather be in the Capitalist tyranny.
Although Sage Rat hasn’t been back to clarify things, I take his quote to imply that when choosing a dictator, he’d rather one that takes power an immediately sells all the oil rights in a free market system (ie to the highest bidder).
Where as the alternative in this scenario is a left-wing dictator that takes power and immediately nationalizes the oil rights.
So we have capitalist dictator vs socialist dictator. What I’m curious is why the capitalist one is so heavily preferred. Ultimately we’d all rather no dictator, I think that goes without saying.
I just fail to see why Sage Rat thinks the capitalist dictator would produce a population without starvation. As I said, the oil rights (and revenues) would be owned by foreign companies.
Farming and land rights are also owned by foreign companies. Who pay the peasants a small wage to harvest the crops, that are all shipped overseas where they are most profitable.
Starvation and food scarcity can occur under a capitalist system just as likely as it can under a socialist.
So my preference for a country of relatively poor labourers is to have a socialist dictator that nationalizes the oil wealth. When your country grows enough to establish a modest middle class, move towards a more capitalist system.
Look at Japan. Their court system has no jury, the police beat suspects into a confession, the mass media has no recourse to get information from the government nor the police. They have a virtual single-party government, with the PM a known figurehead for the ruling oligarchy.
It has the potential to be a democratic state but frankly no one cares enough because they don’t need to. With decent economic prosperity, the people simply don’t care. They could have no right to free speech, no right to religious freedom, etc. and the majority would be perfectly happy because they’re fed and they get to buy 3G cellphones. So far as the world matters for the majority, financial security and health are more important than civil liberties.
Also known as Singapore, South Korea under Park Chung Hee and Taiwan under Chiang Kai Chek. Perhaps someone will know this: How democratic and civil liberties-protecting was Hong Kong in the 50s to 70s?
#5 is inaccurate, and this… list leaves out something: capitalist evil tyrants probably won’t care if something other than #2 kills you. Like their cronies, for example.
Nationalization =/= Theft. Well, usually. Sometimes the means of production are stolen from their rightful owners, and sometimes they are purchased at a price at least as fair as the one the owners bribed/strong-armed the old regime to accept.
So the argument is that given the choice between a capitalist and socialist tyrant, it is best to pick the capitalist because at least they won’t screw up the economic market and cause shortages of health care, food and transportation?
I don’t buy it. Socialists at least try to invest in the working, poor and middle classes. Autocratic right wing governments do not. They have no interest in ensuring health care, nutrition, education, transportation, etc. to anyone outside their inner circle. I’d rather live under Chavez than Pinochet if I were poor. At least under Chavez the government tries to give you education, health care, nutrition, etc. Pinochet wouldn’t give a shit.
As far as socialism leading to tyranny, most nations in central & south america are now left leaning. Aside from Venezuela and Cuba most are fairly democratic and free, and even Venezuela is more of a middle of the road government wrt freedoms, and is more free than most of the right wing military dictatorships in the area back in the 1980s.
Want a purely capitalist country? Look at Equitorial Guinea. Basically one guy and his buddies own everything, sell it to the West, and don’t waste a cent of it on social services for the people who happen to live there. It’s one of the richest countries in Africa, and 90% of the population lives under a dollar a day in some of the most wretched conditions anywhere.
Until shit goes wrong. It’s a sad fact that many people will gladly choose their material wealth when it’s somebody else who has to pay the price. When it’s not you who is getting jailed and beaten it’s pretty easy to be happy with your new washing machine. 3G cellphones are cheap when bought with someone else’s blood.
But the real scary stuff is not necessarily what is happening, but what could happen. History shows us that when power is that concentrated, eventually someone really bad will get in power and that’s how the worst things this planet has ever seen happen. The current East Asian prosperity dictatorships have only been in their current form for a couple decades. Unlike democracy’s proven track record, we have no idea how it is going to work out.
I also wouldn’t characterize Japan as happy. According to most world happiness surveys, they are nowhere near the top. It turns out that spending your childhood in cram schools and your adulthood working until midnight in order to buy geegaws is not particularly fulfilling.
As has been pointed out in many threads, capitalism is not a political system. It is an economic model that requires a stable government which does not attempt to control market forces.
It’s existence is based on the inflow of personal capital and expertise which places the risk of failure on the investor. If a government interferes to the point that the risk outweighs any potential profit then investment ceases and the economy implodes under the money/intellectual vacuum.
Chavez has declared himself the final arbiter of other people’s money and efforts. The natural outcome of that is an outflow of the tools needed to create jobs and wealth.
Only in the sense that Chavez isn’t very good at running an economy. Under a more competent administrator, there’s no reason things couldn’t be just dandy in Venezeula.
