# What's happening to Venezuela? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 20, 2016, 11:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-happening-to-venezuela/757883 "2016-06-20T11:52:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Fotheringay-Phipps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d9b06d/32.png) [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2016, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-happening-to-venezuela/757883/21 "2016-06-21T19:08:32Z")
> [@andros](#): > > While there are undoubtedly people who hold to this worldview, I absolutely disagree that it is representative of a “socialist/communist” mentality. OK. > [@](#): > > That’s fine. The problem comes when we turn it around and \*automatically \*assume the wealthy to be wealth creators, or that their wealth is automatically proportional to the value they provide to society. This is clearly not the case. I’m with you there, especially when it comes to people like hedge fund managers and CEOs and the like. But that’s not what we’re discussing here, in the case of Venezuela. ---
**Author:** ![Grey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b782af/32.png) [@Grey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grey)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2016, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-happening-to-venezuela/757883/22 "2016-06-21T19:21:53Z")
To be fair, people with more than their “fair” share in Venezuela tended to be drug cartels, or the corrupt elite. For a poverty stricken population watching power and money concentrate, the allure of a socialist dictator isn’t hard to see. ---
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2016, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-happening-to-venezuela/757883/23 "2016-06-21T19:33:04Z")
So what do you all think should be done to improve things, and what do you think _is_ going to happen? ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2016, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-happening-to-venezuela/757883/24 "2016-06-21T19:45:07Z")
> [@levdrakon](#): > > So what do you all think should be done to improve things, and what do you think _is_ going to happen? Should be done by who? The US? Nada. The World™? Nada. The people of Venezuela? I think they are on the brink of revolution, so I’m guessing they already know what to do at this point. It won’t get better quickly. They need to basically hang the current bunch of dirty bastards from the telephone poles, a la Mussolini. After that…gods know. They are in a deep hole, so deep that I don’t know how they would get out of it at this point, especially with oil still at less than $60 a barrel and not looking like it’s going to shoot up anytime soon and with their water issues. What COULD be done is we (the international community) could send short term aid to the country to alleviate or at least mitigate the humanitarian crisis, I suppose. ---
**Author:** ![Grey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b782af/32.png) [@Grey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grey)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2016, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-happening-to-venezuela/757883/25 "2016-06-21T19:53:50Z")
I’d guess a military dictatorship and then an immediate application to rejoin the IMF and secure funding. Meanwhile the OAS is likely to get hit up for emergency food and medical aid. ---
**Author:** ![harmonicamoon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/65b543/32.png) [@harmonicamoon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/harmonicamoon)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2016, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-happening-to-venezuela/757883/26 "2016-06-21T20:17:29Z")
Lots of finger pointing as to the cause of the problems. But the bottom line is, people are in great need of food. I hope the international community brings boat loads of food to these people. ---
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2016, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-happening-to-venezuela/757883/27 "2016-06-21T20:22:25Z")
> [@harmonicamoon](#): > > Lots of finger pointing as to the cause of the problems. > > But the bottom line is, people are in great need of food. I hope the international community brings boat loads of food to these people. Isn’t part of the problem people taking subsidized low-priced food and selling it over the border? Will it do much good to deliver food if it all gets resold in other countries? ---
**Author:** ![Flyer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/flyer/32/7298_2.png) [@Flyer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flyer)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2016, 5:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-happening-to-venezuela/757883/28 "2016-06-22T05:45:03Z")
I knew things were bad, but I didn’t realize how bad. > [@](#): > > With delivery trucks under constant attack, the nation’s food is now transported under armed guard. Soldiers stand watch over bakeries. The police fire rubber bullets at desperate mobs storming grocery stores, pharmacies and butcher shops. A 4-year-old girl was shot to death as street gangs fought over food. > > A staggering 87 percent of Venezuelans say they do not have money to buy enough food, the most recent assessment of living standards by Simón Bolívar University found. > > About 72 percent of monthly wages are being spent just to buy food, according to the Center for Documentation and Social Analysis, a research group associated with the Venezuelan Teachers Federation. [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/20/world/americas/venezuelans-ransack-stores-as-hunger-stalks-crumbling-nation.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/20/world/americas/venezuelans-ransack-stores-as-hunger-stalks-crumbling-nation.html) ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2016, 6:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-happening-to-venezuela/757883/29 "2016-06-22T06:19:24Z")
> [@harmonicamoon](#): > > Lots of finger pointing as to the cause of the problems. > > But the bottom line is, people are in great need of food. I hope the international community brings boat loads of food to these people. Food shortage is just a symptom of the socialist disease. The international community needs to bring regime change, food, and medicine. Otherwise Venezuela is going to suffer immensely. All in the name of equality. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2016, 10:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-happening-to-venezuela/757883/30 "2016-06-22T10:10:26Z")
It’s always so nice to see right-wingers telling us all about how socialists think. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2016, 10:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-happening-to-venezuela/757883/31 "2016-06-22T10:19:07Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > I don’t think that’s it. > > I think the socialist/communist mentality is that a country’s wealth is something that just naturally exists, such that the prime focus is on dividing up the pie. If there is too much income inequality, then it follows that the guys who have it better are just leeches who are taking more than their fair share, and we need to redivide the pie in a more equitable manner. > > The notion that in aggregate the people with more than their “fair share” are people who actually create more wealth than the guys at the bottom, and that knocking them off their pedestals will therefore shrink the entire pie is an alien concept to this worldview. You’re talking about the most primitive of theories of redistribution (before even taking into consideration things like “what is a fair way to redistribute”). I’m talking about the practical way in which it comes out, about how populist politicians take the negative feelings in the population and turn it into a weapon against “them”. The populists _never_ talk about “hey, those guys have X thing which is better than the rest, how about giving it to the rest as well?”, it’s always “… remove it from them!” And I’m not talking only about money: it can be money, rights, power, a different government structure, different social relationships. Whomever has it better is always a “them” (1), and whatever they have more of must always be taken from them. Splitting it around if it is splittable, or instituting it someplace else if it isn’t (such as government structures) isn’t as important as taking it from “them”. And note that populism works on any side of the spectrum. There is always a “them” who’s got it better, and something to remove. 1. I just recalled that little idiot my mother insisted in introducing to me during her “maybe my daughter is a lesbian” period. This woman voted Socialist because “they are the people’s party and I am very people” (it loses in translation, take ‘people’ to mean ‘working class’ or ‘majority’), never mind that in her mid-30s she hadn’t worked a day in her life and every single item she owned had been paid for by Daddy, by inheritance or by people who owed favors to Daddy (who had worked for the local government and was a strong believer in mutual backscratching). ---
**Author:** ![Ryan\_Liam](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ryan_liam/32/3965_2.png) [@Ryan\_Liam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ryan_Liam)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2016, 12:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-happening-to-venezuela/757883/32 "2016-06-22T12:11:47Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > I don’t think that’s it. > > I think the socialist/communist mentality is that a country’s wealth is something that just naturally exists, such that the prime focus is on dividing up the pie. If there is too much income inequality, then it follows that the guys who have it better are just leeches who are taking more than their fair share, and we need to redivide the pie in a more equitable manner. > > The notion that in aggregate the people with more than their “fair share” are people who actually create more wealth than the guys at the bottom, and that knocking them off their pedestals will therefore shrink the entire pie is an alien concept to this worldview. Then you have to think, what kind of breeding ground allowed this kind of thinking to happen in the first place, before Chavez took some attempts to alleviate poverty, Venezuela was horribly unequal. ---
**Author:** ![Chihuahua](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/dec6dc/32.png) [@Chihuahua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chihuahua)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2016, 12:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-happening-to-venezuela/757883/33 "2016-06-22T12:31:24Z")
> [@Happy\_Fun\_Ball](#): > > They told me that 90% of the people with educations were trying to emigrate as Chavez fired them when he nationalized the industries and gave their jobs to the poor. The brain drain was incredible and it was pretty clear to me that the country was doomed. See, Chavez wasn’t so bad. Most communists just murder the educated people. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2016, 1:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-happening-to-venezuela/757883/34 "2016-06-22T13:07:51Z")
You know, it’s easy to just sit back and pile on the insults about socialism and communism. Really easy. Like shooting fish in a barrel. Takes almost no effort. End of post. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2016, 1:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-happening-to-venezuela/757883/35 "2016-06-22T13:07:52Z")
> [@Ryan\_Liam](#): > > Then you have to think, what kind of breeding ground allowed this kind of thinking to happen in the first place, before Chavez took some attempts to alleviate poverty, Venezuela was horribly unequal. The amounts of ignorance, racism, sexism… were and are enormous. [A post](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=15532118&postcount=10) recalling my cousin’s work getting kids to school and people’s existence officially recognized. One of the things she had to learn was that she needed to ask people how many _hijos e hijas_ they had, sons and daughters: in this instance, the word for children is also _hijos_, but if she didn’t specify “and daughters” they’d only count boys. I’ve met several Venezuelans who spoke of people who’d moved from the jungle to the city in their teens or as grown-ups and who didn’t know how to use “basic” appliances such as a toilet or hob, referring to them as “idiots”: when I asked when and where would such a person have encountered a toilet or hob before, and how would they have known how one works, it took several tries for the “oh so wise one” to even begin to accept that “uninformed” is not the same as “imbecile”. I know people in Spain, from generations ranging from my great-grandparents’ to my parents’, who at one point were in the same situation as those jungle folk, but whose own employers realized they needed to train the new servant in the very basics, not insult them! It was very fucked up, but slowly getting better. Now it is not slowly getting better ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2016, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-happening-to-venezuela/757883/36 "2016-06-22T13:46:56Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > You know, it’s easy to just sit back and pile on the insults about socialism and communism. Really easy. Like shooting fish in a barrel. Takes almost no effort. End of post. Well, sure - only under communism could you get a desperately incompetent and corrupt but populist demagogue anywhere \*near \*the highest office in the land. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2016, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-happening-to-venezuela/757883/37 "2016-06-22T13:49:31Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > You know, it’s easy to just sit back and pile on the insults about socialism and communism. Really easy. Like shooting fish in a barrel. Takes almost no effort. End of post. Well, as someone said upthread: > [@TriPolar](#): > > Hardly a debate here… 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2016, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-happening-to-venezuela/757883/38 "2016-06-22T13:52:13Z")
> [@Gyrate](#): > > Well, sure - only under communism could you get a desperately incompetent and corrupt but populist demagogue anywhere \*near \*the highest office in the land. _golf clap_ Now my stupid brain is doing its best to come up with examples for every single form of government for which it knows the name… it’s kind of like having a political earworm. ---
**Author:** ![Mighty\_Girl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7bcc69/32.png) [@Mighty\_Girl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mighty_Girl)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2016, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-happening-to-venezuela/757883/39 "2016-06-22T14:17:19Z")
Vargas Llosa (brilliant writer, unlikeable human) once said (pre-Chavez) that Venezuela was a “very poor country with a very rich government”. This bred a culture of extreme corruption, as the government directly controlled the biggest source of income the country had. Venezuela has always been dysfunctional (at least as far back as I remember). Very bad things were going to happen when the oil well dried out, regardless of who was governing. This batch of dummies made it worse by dismantling whatever non-goverment industries the country had. Colombians used to flee to Venezuela (and discriminated), now Venezuelans are flooding out, including to Colombia. Even here, as far back as 13 years ago you couldn’t throw an arepa without hitting a newly -arrived Venezuelan. They are all over (doesn’t bother me at all). Another lesson on why not to be nasty to immigrants. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2016, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-happening-to-venezuela/757883/40 "2016-06-22T14:18:26Z")
Utter idiots can get to the top in any form of government; none of them have any real advantage in this regard. Democracies, though, are better at limiting the damage they can do, if only by making it easier to send them home. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-happening-to-venezuela/757883.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-happening-to-venezuela/757883.md?page=3)