BTW, Colombia’s civil war is heating up, on account of the gold rush there.
That’s another thing for which Uribe loses points IMO – having as solid a mandate/powerbase as he had, for as long as he had, I would’ve hoped he would’ve done something to make peace with the FARC and end it. Happened in El Salvador, happened in Nicaragua, why not Colombia?
Yes he has. Almost two decades of SuperHugo have built an economic system in Venezuela – electricity, mass education, healthcare and land and property rights for the masses, a system that although still corrupt is not as corrupt as previous elite rule and offers infinitely more opportunity to the average Venezuelan – that the Venezuelan people will demand at the very least a similar system in future.
And SuperHugo’s political opponents know this. After the Super One was first elected He was so popular that his opponents knew they’d be crushed in any election, so they decided to subvert democracy by not running any candidates against Him and when he was elected unopposed called Him a dictator. In the last election however they put up a candidate (Manuel Rosales) to run aganist Him (who lost in a SuperHugo landslide by US standards) and, crucially, the only way Rosales could run against Him was to attack Him from His left flank.
Thus, Rosales’ main policy, mi negra :
or my crude. Basically a payment card that guaranteed every venezuelan person/family a monthly chunk of Venezuela’s oil wealth. An actual cash bribe. Notice the smiling person they use in the advert isn’t exactly the sort of person who benefitted from the government when Rosales’ paymasters, Venezuela’s richest families, have perviously held power. And whatever happens in future this shows SuperHugo’s main achievement. He’s completely changed the face of Venezuelan politics from what it was to the woman on the election poster. There’ll be attempts tol turn it back to the way it was but the only way to really do that is to turn the country back into an actual dictatorship.
:eek: Why, that’s un-Am- . . . un-Venez- . . . It’s Alaskan.
It was sold as still giving Venezuela’s wealth to the people but giving it directly instead of via a big government bureaucratic machine. Seriously.
Wouldn’t. You’d still have the bureaucracy necessary to run the state oil industry, plus a new (much smaller) one to cut and mail the checks.
That post automatically posted itself. Weird. It’s worth noting that the massive cash bribe by Cjhavez’ opponents wasn’t actually reported in the western press during the election. there was no US headline that said “SuperHugo still wins despite massive cash bribe by opponents.” If His opponents do try the dictatorship route in the future to regain control of the oil money it’ll be interesting to see how much coverage the liberal media gives it. I wonder if the future dictator will be as well-known to Americans as the name of the Venezuelan leader who started making US oil companies pay a fair price for their oil.
Yeas, but that’s how the policy was sold during the election.
Hong Kong had rather a head start on capitalism, compared to the rest of China. British trade entrepot of the Far East for decades, it was.
Rather weak tea compared to a Stalinist approach, and the difference shows in the results.
Eh? Of course infrastructure like the interstate highways has a demand-stimulus effect. Every gas station and fast-food place off every exit is an instance, and only a trivial one compared with the real ones.
Command economies work, all right, like rats a-fighting – for a limited range of purposes, such as heavy capital formation. In 1924 Stalin took control of a backward, agrarian country, marginally industrialized by the onset of WWI and that little industry devastated by that war and the Russian Civil War, and – by methods which were bloody, brutal, repressive, wasteful, but effective – by 1939 had turned it into an industrial power capable of going head-to-head with Hitler’s Germany; and Germany had always been at the leading edge of the Industrial Revolution. No way could that have happened, if Russia had had a free-market system during that period.
OTOH, central economic planning, lacking the constant corrective feedback of competitive market performance, is spectacularly inept at any kind of fine-tuning. Moreover, it does not encourage innovation very well. No state planner would ever have thought of something like the Sony Walkman, or the Pet Rock, or fabric softener. (Whether that is an argument for or against Stalinism is open to debate.)
Also, if the government carrying out the planning is an unaccountable one, then in its hubris it is capable of astonishing economic blunders of which even sympathizers the whole world over can only ask, "What were you thinking?!" Such as Stalin’s collectivization of agriculture or China’s Great Leap Forward. Or, worse, the current intractable status quo in North Korea.
From Economics Explained, by Robert Heilbroner and Lester Thurow:
If the hardcore Stalinist approach is what matters, why is North Korea poor and not industrialised?
You seem to understand how prices send signals of relative scarcity. I know you realise the utility of that when it comes to consumption goods and raw resources*. Yet that also applies to capital goods. Why is a free market more efficient when it comes to allocating consumption goods but not capital goods? If it’s more efficient at allocating capital goods, why state intervention?
I also see that you didn’t address Taiwan.
Demand-stimulus of gas stations and fast-food places: In order to establish that an intervention has a demand-stimulus effect, you have to show that there is more aggregate demand than there would otherwise be without the intervention. If it weren’t for the interstate highway, people would still drive from state to state using non-highway roads and would need gas stations and fast-food places.
More generally, do you think the State should stimulate aggregate demand even when there is no chance of a liquidity trap? If so, when do you think the State should stop stimulating aggregate demand, if ever? What is the purpose of aggregate demand stimulation, exactly?
Sorry for the double post.
“by 1939 had turned it into an industrial power capable of going head-to-head with Hitler’s Germany”
Just wanted to add that this is quite true but not evidence that Stalinism is any good at industrialisation generally. It is evidence that national defense is a public good (non-excludable, non-rival) which is undersupplied by the private sector and where there should be gov’t intervention. But this does not show that for non-public goods, Stalinism (more generally, central planning) is superior to the free market. Even Milton Friedman could agree with State intervention to develop industrial capacity for national defense.
Hugo Chavez’s government is based on personalism. His charisma, his image, and his popularity among the poor and lower middle-class keeps his government in (elected) power. He has not built a strong party apparatus that may survive him. Is there any Venezuelan politician that has any constituency within Chavismo other than Chavez. He doesn’t have a partner, a Raul Castro or Evita Peron that can carry his banner.
What about the United Socialist Party? It was formed by merger of 11 existing parties, presumably it has a lot of people in it who were fighting the good fight long before Chavez took office. Why should they stop when he goes?
That’s rather missing the point. When you have an immensely effective, wildly popular leader such as Chavez, large political networks and clear lines of succession become wholly irrelevant.
Once again, I believe that Putin provides a perfect comparison here. I remember when he was about to time out as the Russian President, and many people were leveling the same criticisms against him. What happened? Nothing. He picked a hitherto-unknown Medvedev as his successor, Medvedev ran on a platform that consisted entirely of promising to continue “Putin’s plan,” and the people elected him in a landslide. Done and done.
I have little doubt that the same will happen here. Once comrade Chavez determines that it is prudent to do so, he will tell his people whom to vote for, and vote they will. I have no worries on this front.
Wildly popular, huh?
Chavez fails to regain lost popularity
So only 39% of Venezuelans want him back in office next year, and that to you is ‘wild popularity’?
It is by U.S. standards.
:dubious: Succession by dedazo is a most shameful Mexican tradition, and I was in hopes that after they killed and buried it, it should not be copied abroad.
Bumping this thread because they found another tumor. (And Hugo’s still getting all his tests and stuff done in Havana – aren’t Venezuelan oncologists good enough? Serious question, anybody know?)
Damned running dog capitalist are most likely to blame.
-XT
Don’t knock 'em, the Capitalist Running Dog is considered a glamorous breed at Westminster.