The exploitation of other people by people?
I don’t know if the mechanic is correct but the result is not too far off. left wing dictatorships are less prone to collapse so they are less desirable.
I think we should just be honest and admit that we are not talking about socialism v. capitalism and admit we are talking about communism v. anarchy.
Hold on a second, I need to verify what I was told by Mexicans. I was under the impression that early education was free, but then parents had to pay for later years–which meant a lot of parents couldn’t afford to. Off to the interweb…
Wow, turns out Mexico has UHC, and a kick ass version at that! Makes me wonder if the Mexicans I knew were really Guatemalans.
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And they are…
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Well, it largely depends on you define “driven by ideology”, but if Anti-Communism is an ideology then many apply. Also if you consider Fascism an ideology (or other ethnic-purity types). I’d even consider some of the “cult of personality” right-wing types driven by ideology to the extent that “I am a God on Earth” is an ideology.
The thing is, many (if not most) dictators don’t fall into a clean “capitalist” or “socialist” camp - they are often oligarchs mixed with state possession of some valuable industries.
Trujillo?
This, in the end, is perhaps a fair assessment. Many of the most brutal and repressive regimes do succeed in laying strong infrastructure and the groundwork for economic growth after they are deposed. Whether this means I’d rather live under Trujillo in the DR or under Castro in Cuba is an interesting question, as far as it goes, but has very little relevance when debating the degree of socialistic policy’s usefulness in a democratic society.
It sure does come with a lot of conditions before you’ll consider it “real capitalism.”
What did you switch from socialist tyrant to communist tyrant?
For sure. I don’t prefer a right-wing dictatorship to a left-wing dictatorship, or the opposite. I think they suck equally.
Although to be fair, it depends on who’s talking. Not the same people will suffer under right-wing dictatorships as under left-wing dictatorships. In my particular case I’m currently in academia, so I’ll think I’ll go with left-wing dictatorship. (Well, not the Pol Pot kind. :eek:)
Another factor is international relations. The Soviet Union isn’t around to send aid to left-wing dictatorships anymore and China isn’t picking up the slack. The big dogs nowadays are all capitalists. So you’re probably better off living in a capitalist right-wing dictatorship and hoping your Supreme Leader has a “strategic alliance” with the United States.
Yeah, this is basically my point, though in a broader sense: Right-wing tyrants are much more likely to ease up, be chased out by democrats, or just erode their authority until the regme croaks.
Huh? How did you get a lot of conditions in what I wrote or quoted? There are a few requirements and they were successfully achieved by many countries.
You can admit that you came up with a terrible example, it’s not the end of the world.
This thread wasn’t meant to be anti-capitalism as much as it was a rebuttal to a thread that was distinctly anti-socialism. A thread that lead to the quote I posted in the OP, which in and of itself is rather anti-socialism. I was merely presenting the question of “why?” Why choose a capitalist coup over a socialist coup?
And I feel it is an extremely valuable question considering how things are going in the world. Chavez saw a country rich with oil, but the people were all dirt poor. So he took power, nationalized the oil industry, and spread the wealth.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the globe you have Iraq. A country with massive amounts of oil (the good stuff) and a population that was dirt poor, that was eventually conquered by why might be the first capitalist dictator (the US).
So what happens to their oil? Who owns it? Who should benefit from its sale? The skeptic in me is as critical of capitalism as I am of socialism. So when there is a capitalist and expect as much shitty fallout as when there is a socialist coup. The oil rights will be sold off to the various major oil companies, the land will be destroyed, and the money will leave the country.
In the end, the people of Iraq could end up just like the people of Venezuela. As we’ve said, what is the difference between not being able to afford food, and food not being available to purchase? In both cases you starve and die.
But then, if you look north, there is a weird middle ground. The tar sands of Alberta a extracted by foreign companies, and sold in a capitalist market place. In between that, the provincial government taxes them as much as they can. The tax revenue is then used for–gasp–socialist policies. Public education, public health care, roads, highways, police, and a stable judicial system.
How about we consider the case of Chile? It seems relevant to this thread, because it came under the control of a socialist/communist government under Allende, then a right-wing dictatorship under Pinochet.
Forgetting about human rights abuses for a minute (both leaders committed them), let’s just look at economic performance, and how the average person was affected by the different economic systems.
When Allende came to power, he started a program of industry nationalization and collectivization of large farms, and he started massive public works projects and free health care for all, paid for through higher taxes on the rich. He created universal education, free milk programs for all children, and promised full employment through public works or through hiring the unemployed in the now-nationalized industries. In addition, his finance minister adopted an expansionary monetary policy as economic stimulus. How did that work out?
In the very short term, growth exploded. GDP rose 8.6% in his first year, unemployment dropped to 3.6%. It was about that time that lefties around the world started hailing Allende as the next great savior of the socialist revolution.
Then the crap hit the fan. That expansionary monetary policy caused inflation to spike - to 140%. GDP began to decline - by over 5% per year for the next two years. The Allende government responded to inflation by declaring war on ‘profiteers’ and announcing price ceilings on a host of goods. The result was massive shortages of food and other staple goods, and the rise of a black market. Allende then tried to mitigate inflation by forcing wage increases, which of course just made all the problems worse. But it also put the screws to business, who could no longer afford to hire people and remain competitive. As a result, even the unions turned against Allende.
The next act in the play was capital and human resource flight, as the people Allende kept shaking down to pay for his messes decided to leave the country or send their money out of the country. Things got so bad in Chile that the Allende government had to start seizing personal transportation vehicle to keep goods moving (a series of transportation strikes were crippling the movement of goods).
The Allende experiment was ended by a military coup staged by Augustus Pinochet, but it was clear that the Chilean economy at this time was in complete meltdown. Pinochet was a bastard, but the coup probably saved Chile from becoming another Cuba or Vietnam, with a per-capita GDP a fraction of its neighbors’.
So what happened under Pinochet? Again, let’s forget his human rights abuses (and there were many, but they aren’t relevant in terms of the economic state of the country).
Augusto Pinochet was a bastard. He killed, tortured, or exiled hundreds to thousands of people in Chile - mainly the Marxist revolutionaries who still fought for revolution. He also inherited an economy in complete shambles. GDP was collapsing, deficits were huge, many of the best and brightest Chileans had fled the country. Production in all the nationalized industries was way down.
Pinochet brought in a bunch of free-market economists from the University of Chicago, including Milton Friedman. He asked their advice on how to get the Chilean economy working again. They told him to privatize the nationalized industries, cut the government budget, allow market forces to control the price of labor and the price of goods, deregulate to make it easier to form businesses, lower taxes on investment, and adopt a tighter money supply.
At first, this hurt the poor. Social services were cut, wages declined, and it took a while for inflation to come down and supply and demand and investment and credit to start up again. But it did. Within a year, the Chilean economy was growing again. That growth increased. Foreign investment flooded in. Business investment increased. The standard of living of the average Chilean began to go up.
Pinochet ruled Chile until 1988, and allowed it to transition into a democracy. Its per-capita GDP is now about $10,000. Compare that to its neighbors (Bolivia: $1700, Peru: $4300, Argentina: $7700).
It seems clear to me that the average Chilean was much better off under Pinochet than under Allende. Had Allende managed to continue his ‘revolution’, I have no doubt that Chile would have wound up like Cuba.
And the Allende Government’s results have frightening parallels to Chavez’s policies in Venezuela. And Venezuela is following almost exactly the same spiral of decline, somewhat softened by its oil wealth, but that just means it’s declining at a slower rate. Now we’re seeing inflation spikes there, nationalization of business, Chavez responding to inflation by announcing price caps, subsequent shortages, government takeovers of food distribution, capital flight… It’s like watching history repeat itself.
The last president of Chile was a socialist.
As Michelle Bachelet, the recent socialist President of Chile. demonstrated, this is a silly point.
I do agree that many items being nationalized will not work as good as the ones controlled privately, but I think it is better that Venezuelans find this for themselves and not thanks to misguided help from foreign powers.
As well, Allende had to cope with the disapproval of America. America was so wildly popular and beloved in Central and South America, a government that set out without America’s approval was at a severe disadvantage. Hell, Allende was so bereft and heartbroken, he shot himself in the head! Seven times!
One several occassions, the emotional burden of this disapproval has proved unbearable, the regime collapses and a makeshit government of military origin has to be hurriedly thrown together in order to avert total chaos.
But Sam’s analysis of the history of the Allende/Pinochet years has the advantage of simplicity. That cannot be denied. No getting around that.
And yours has the advantage of being fictional in the areas where it’s not completely devoid of any content. Allende’s suicide was witnessed by seven people, including supporters of his. His family has never disputed that he committed suicide. There is no evidence that he was murdered.
It was Castro who claimed that Allende died in battle with the Junta. No other accounts corroborate that. No autopsy says he was shot seven times. The Allende ‘murder’ seems likely to me to be a fiction created by his followers to turn him into a martyr.
As for America’s relationship with the Allende government… Yes, America reacted and boycotted some trade. But the amounts in question were clearly not great enough to cause the meltdown that occurred, and had absolutely nothing to do with the destruction of agriculture and industry that Allende’s rapid nationalization caused. And besides, the American reaction was somewhat balanced by an influx of aid from Cuba and the Soviet Union. What hurt more was a sudden decline in foreign investment - the inevitable result of the rapid increase in risk of nationalization of any business that fell into the sights of the Allende regime.
Yeah, and the current one, Sebastián Piñera, leads a center-right coalition that won on a platform of ‘change’ - that change being market liberalization. And the socialists that followed Pinochet were not Marxist revolutionaries like Allende, and maintained the free market that Pinochet set up.
I think they did find it out for themselves. They elected a center-right government, and the entire country just about went on strike against Allende’s ‘revolution’.
Do I detect conservative timeline trouble again?
The point was that if we had been following the old conservative ways that that difference would be meaningless and a coup **would **had been set up even before the next elections in Chile and in any country that dared to vote for a socialist in recent days.
After the more moderate socialists took power, we could say that they did ok just by seeing the levels Chile has reached recently, still, not all was good and that is why the socialists lost the last elections, but what is important is this:
The recent peaceful change of the government of Chile this year demonstrates how misleading those advocating coups before the people decide for themselves are.
It is really shameful to see many right wingers still trying to give redemption to the makers of the violent coups of the past and today.
I guess you missed the part where I called Pinochet a bastard. And that I prefaced my comments with the disclaimer that I was limiting my comments to economic conditions, and putting aside human rights issues for the sake of the argument.
Sorry for the ‘timeline’ trouble - I was answering thinking you had commented on Chile, and not Venezuela. Slip of the brain. My bad.
That sounds to me like the old argument of dictators making the trains run on time, so lets concentrate just on that.
I take all of Latin America into account, when you mentioned that very shameful support of the coup plotters in Honduras you are supporting the current bastards.