>When a Venezuelan entrepreneur we know launched a manufacturing company in western Venezuela two decades ago, he never imagined he’d one day find himself facing jail time over the toilet paper in the factory’s restrooms. But Venezuela has a way of turning yesterday’s unimaginable into today’s normal.
>Toilet-paper theft may sound like a farce, but it’s a serious matter for the entrepreneur: Failing to stock the restrooms puts him in violation of his agreement with the union, and that puts his factory at risk of a prolonged strike, which in turn could lead to its being seized by the socialist government under the increasingly unpopular President Nicolas Maduro. So the entrepreneur turned to the black market, where he found an apparent solution: a supplier able to deliver, all at once, enough TP to last a few months. (We’re not naming the entrepreneur lest the government retaliate against him.) The price was steep but he had no other option—his company was at risk.
>No sooner had the TP delivery reached the factory than the secret police swept in. Seizing the toilet paper, they claimed they had busted a major hoarding operation, part of a U.S.-backed “economic war” the Maduro government holds responsible for creating Venezuela’s shortages in the first place. The entrepreneur and three of his top managers faced criminal prosecution and possible jail time.
>Developing countries, like teenagers, are prone to accidents. One pretty much expects them to suffer an economic crash, a political crisis, or both, with some regularity. The news coming from Venezuela—including shortages as well as, most recently, riots over blackouts; the imposition of a two-day workweek for government employees, supposedly aimed at saving electricity; and an accelerating drive to recall the president—is dire, but also easy to dismiss as representing just one more of these recurrent episodes.
>In the last two years Venezuela has experienced the kind of implosion that hardly ever occurs in a middle-income country like it outside of war. Mortality rates are skyrocketing; one public service after another is collapsing; triple-digit inflation has left more than 70 percent of the population in poverty; an unmanageable crime wave keeps people locked indoors at night; shoppers have to stand in line for hours to buy food; babies die in large numbers for lack of simple, inexpensive medicines and equipment in hospitals, as do the elderly and those suffering from chronic illnesses.
Brayden Richardson
>A case in point is the price controls, which have expanded to apply to more and more goods: food and vital medicines, yes, but also car batteries, essential medical services, deodorant, diapers, and, of course, toilet paper. The ostensible goal was to check inflation and keep goods affordable for the poor, but anyone with a basic grasp of economics could have foreseen the consequences: When prices are set below production costs, sellers can’t afford to keep the shelves stocked. Official prices are low, but it’s a mirage: The products have disappeared.
>When a state is in the process of collapse, dimensions of decay feed back on each other in an intractable cycle. Populist giveaways, for example, have fed the country’s ruinous flirtation with hyperinflation; the International Monetary Fund now projects that prices will rise by 720 percent this year and 2,200 percent in 2017. The government virtually gives away gasoline for free, even after having raised the price earlier this year. As a result of this and similar policies, the state is chronically short of funds, forced to print ever more money to finance its spending. Consumers, flush with cash and chasing a dwindling supply of goods, are caught in an inflationary spiral.
Christopher Ortiz
>Meanwhile, the Venezuelan government can no longer afford to provide even rudimentary law and order, making Caracas, the capital, by some calculations one of the most murderous cities in the world. Drug traffickers run large sections of the countryside. Prison gang leaders keep military-style weapons on hand, and while grenade attacks still make the news, they are nothing new. Recently, the police captured an AT4 antitank rocket launcher—basically, a bazooka—from a suspect.
>The breakdown of law and order is so severe that even children are being robbed. At Nuestra Señora del Carmen school in El Cortijo, a struggling neighborhood of Caracas, supplies for the school-lunch program have been stolen twice this year already: Thugs have broken into the school’s pantry late at night after fresh food is delivered. The second burglary meant the school couldn’t feed the kids for at least a week.
>Elsewhere, school food programs have simply stopped working, because the government apparently can’t keep them supplied. In poorer communities, parents often respond to this by taking their kids out of school: They’re more useful standing in line outside a grocery store than sitting in a classroom. The regime has long put education at the center of its propaganda, yet the reality today is that a generation of underprivileged kids is being denied an education through straightforward hunger.
Joseph Johnson
send venezuelan refugees to argentina we don't want any
Oliver Lopez
Too late my friend, Houston is full OF Venezuelans, not that I'm complaining, most of the chicks I've met are pretty hot, decent at worst, since most are fresh off the boat, they're not yet corrupted
Nathan Anderson
Straya will take in as many Venezuelan women as needed to keep them safe from the violence, I personally will open my doors to them :^).
Joshua Stewart
>falling apart This implies that it was ever "together" to begin with
Carson Collins
...
Anthony Gonzalez
>the imposition of a two-day workweek for government employees
christ
Owen Campbell
>we don't want any
Xavier Ramirez
SOCIALIST UTOPIA GUYS
Julian Taylor
I don't understand how a country that had as much oil wealth as Venezuela did can be this poor. Like I literally do not see how it's possible to mismanage a country's finances so catastrophically.
I couldn't spend as much as they had with so little to show for it if I tried. I mean just what DID they spend their revenue on?
Noah Perry
>Drug traffickers run large sections of the countryside. Prison gang leaders keep military-style weapons on hand,
How long before Venezuela upgrades from socialism to narco-feudalism?
Cameron Collins
Communism
Samuel Smith
Oil prices dropped. It was pretty much the only thing they had that was profitable.
Michael Clark
A woman holding a baby.
Jason Jones
Looks like they are only few years away from what befell Zimbabwe as of late:
>Chávez expropriated businesses on a whim, sometimes on live television. He sacked 20,000 workers from the state oil firm, PDVSA, and replaced them with 100,000 often incompetent loyalists, some of whom were set to work stitching revolutionary T-shirts.
>Outside a state-owned supermarket, a dozen national guardsmen equipped with body armour, truncheons and tear-gas are stopping a pregnant woman from coming in. It’s not one of her designated days of the week for shopping, they explain. (You get two.) Shoppers must show their identity cards to enter the store and have their fingerprints scanned before buying their ration of price-controlled goods.
Jaxson Hernandez
I enjoy look at shitskins suffering. Makes me feel good. All the better its shitskins that bought into Jewish lies.
shitskins will never realize the jew just wants to destroy their nation. It was never about helping poor subhumans.
Evan Diaz
>2018 >Socialist Paradise collapses >Rebels storm government >Rebel leader gets phone call >President Trump >Demands immediate first payment on all the weapons sold to the rebels >Rebels literally took over virtually nothing >Surrender large swaths of real estate for pennies >TRUMP buildings emerge all over Caracas
The man may very well beat Alexander's or Genghis' highscore
Connor Green
the problem is that unless he wipes out the subhumans that live there, the value of shitskin land is always zero. Unless he plans to put chains on these animals, that would still be a bad investment imo
Jackson Hughes
>enough TP to last a few months. They never would have had this issue if they had hired only Indian workers.
Luis Bennett
Calm down, little edgelord. :-{D
Jonathan King
This is bernie's utopia, no tp.
Austin White
They reap what they sow. Venezuelans are the worst snitches on earth. I can't wait until they destroy themselves as they've tried to destroy the White man for the last 20 years.
Gavin Bell
My God you're on to something.
Isaac Wood
saved
David Brooks
Communism—not even once.
Owen Parker
So when will it be declared not real socialism?
Tyler Edwards
>shithole "socialist" country collapses >socialism is blamed >shithole "capitalist" country collapses >dumb niggers are blamed
Hooray double standards. There are tens of countries in Africa that are following IMF guidelines to a T, as capitalist as capitalist can be, and they're going backwards in living standards just like Venezuela.
The problem here is not economics, it is a lack of capability. "Socialist" economics can be implemented in a way that works, and we see that all across the world in developed countries and in China all the time. It's not that what is being implemented doesn't work, it's that what works isn't being implemented. It's the same problem that those poor niggers that the IMF is trying to help have.
But don't let me get in the way of the LMAO LOOK HOW SMART WE ARE circlejerk.
Dominic Rivera
9/11
austria and the arab nation joining together
Ethan Davis
>China
Huehue
Aiden Fisher
Already has been. It's not successful like Sweden or Norway, so it's not real socialism.
They don't realize that socialism only works in a 95-100% ethnically identical cultures. Any more non-natives than that and the system crashes. Sweden is heading down the same road as Venezuela because there isn't enough cultural unity to keep the system running.
Which is why socialism is a bullshit idea in America, and even more in Western Europe. The Russians couldn't pull it off, what makes you think that you can? Norway and Denmark are the only living successful "socialist" states, and they're ethnically homogeneous and have a shitton of resource wealth and smart people, letting them run a post-industrialized economy just well enough to keep them afloat.
RIP Venezuela RIP Germany RIP Sweden RIP Yugoslavia
Noah Ortiz
After the cannibalism sets in.
Mason Martin
Socialism does not even work in Scandinavia, they are on antidepressants to stop themselves from committing suicide.
Justin Murphy
>shitton of rescource wealth >living successful
we're already dying, and we'll be a new sweden in 30 years max if a revolution does not happen. goes twice for norway.
Mason Reyes
>"china isn't socialist" State-owned enterprises hold 40% of private assets, m8, and government spending is 15% of the economy.
Plus, you can't own your house, only a 99-year lease.
Asher Rodriguez
>Hooray double standards. There are tens of countries in Africa that are following IMF guidelines to a T, as capitalist as capitalist can be, and they're going backwards in living standards just like Venezuela.
There are other factors at play here. You cannot expect people that have been uncivilized for thousands of years to suddenly build countries that are economic powerhouses.
>The problem here is not economics, it is a lack of capability. "Socialist" economics can be implemented in a way that works, and we see that all across the world in developed countries and in China all the time. It's not that what is being implemented doesn't work, it's that what works isn't being implemented. It's the same problem that those poor niggers that the IMF is trying to help have.
Except it doesn't work. Socialism has been proven to be the most inefficient economic system because it doesn't take human nature into consideration; absolute power corrupts absolutely, and that scenario has been predominant in almost every socialist country that has been established.
I'm not arguing that capitalism is perfect, but it's the best economic system that we have so far that actually works in practice. It guarantees personal freedom for all individuals living in it.
Thomas Rogers
F to pay respects
Jayden Stewart
whew, truly we have so much to learn from their socialist ways, anyone else feeling the bern right now?
Lincoln Harris
Socialism has crashed
[Close] [Send crash report and close] [IT WASN'T REAL SOCIALISM YOU DECADENT CAPITALIST PIG!!!!11]
Mason Price
>Socialism has been proven to be the most inefficient economic system The USSR and China were the second-fastest and fastest growing actual economies in all history. The USSR was a global superpower, something that most capitalist countries have never achieved, and China is turning out the same way.
I don't think you can really claim that with a straight face.
>absolute power corrupts absolutely How much power have you ever held in your entire life? You don't even know what power is. Power is an issue of governance, not economics. Chile was a tinpot dictatorship with a free market, and there are Western nations all over the world with strong socialist policies and mixed markets that are very liberal.
Thomas Bailey
this is what happens when you vote a bus driver to run your country fucking socialists
Brandon Rivera
I thought socialism worked though.
Andrew Garcia
this wasn't real socialism though
Noah Cook
>human nature
This. If you have an unconstrained vision of human nature I just don't get it. To think a society can be advanced simply by giving power to a select few, the "right" select few, will work is insanity.
To adopt a constrained view of human nature is more sensible, to realize human limits, to write a constitution similar to the American one where it looks to stop power ever being localized in one person
Brandon Rodriguez
>make all of the poor people starve and kill each other >no more poor people
truly genius
Julian Davis
>and there are Western nations all over the world with strong socialist policies and mixed markets that are very liberal.
And if that doesn't change, every single one of them will be a Muslim country by 2100.
Jonathan White
>USSR
who?????
Matthew White
I'm dating a Venezuelan. I'm worried about her grandma. I asked her how she is, and she said she's doing fine. The family has money, but apparently the grandma is living on government income. Maybe she's downplaying it?
Jackson Barnes
>ID
Ayden Thompson
>The USSR and China were the second-fastest and fastest growing actual economies in all history. The USSR was a global superpower, something that most capitalist countries have never achieved, and China is turning out the same way.
I don't think you can really claim that with a straight face.
They also starved their own people and stripped them of their social liberties. Keep in mind that the Soviet Union collapsed.
>How much power have you ever held in your entire life? You don't even know what power is. Power is an issue of governance, not economics. Chile was a tinpot dictatorship with a free market, and there are Western nations all over the world with strong socialist policies and mixed markets that are very liberal.
Those Western nations are still considered to be capitalistic at heart. Either way, you cannot depend on the government to make good decisions with your tax dollars; Sweden is a prime example of this.
Luis Moore
so cheap venezuelan wives when?
Ethan Russell
communism saves another nation's poor, thanks karl!
James Wright
Just worked out and now I have an entire pizza to myself, a big protein shake and a chicken breast.
Feels good living in white civilization.
Juan Bell
It's not even their fault. The jews don't even know what they're doing. Don't give them that much credit. They're just the right amount of smart with the right amount of stupid to be damaging.
Dumb enough to buy into Marxism, and smart enough to make an impact with it.
Oliver Carter
Uh no. The shitholes you speak of have been in constant war and only just recently got out of total anarchy. It takes decades, even generations to recover from that.
Socialist countries in the otherhand started off wealthy, like Venezuela. Now it's worse off than Afghanistan.
Charles Wilson
>be Australian >immigrants from three main streams >Asian; flat as a board >Indian; flat as a board >islander/fob/Samoan; 99.9999% chance of being obese
I WOULD TRADE IT ALL FOR HOT SOUTH AMERICAN ASS
fucking Americans complaining about immigrants when a large portion of their immigrants are fuckable. Just fucking kill me
Dominic Perry
>not doing Christian Lebs baka desu senpai
Matthew Long
What have they been doing to destroy the white man? The only thing I see is sexy women enticing the men to spread their seed and water down their genetics.
Daniel Adams
Christian lebs are 10/10 but not exactly as widespread as posters will have you believe.
Arab girls who drop the scarf are fuggen hot but like said above , the majority of immigrants come from those three streams. Though I will say that islander girls who don't get fat can be 10/10 absolutely stunning, there's just barely any as their culture even promotes it for some reason
Justin Cruz
Come back to us when you figure out socialism can't be implemented properly.
Ryder Gutierrez
>Aussie keeps dancing around the word of merchant, as if it was meant to bite him
Is Sup Forums a competition of some kind?
>The USSR and China were the second-fastest and fastest growing actual economies in all history.
Nigger, most of commie states experienced a rapid boost in developement that lasted until generation replacement pushed forward groups raised entirely under new system. By this point initial diligence and optimism inevitably evaporate. And this is still the fate of countries which had already developed before new system has been established.
What is more, CCCP thrived off of produce taken from their satellite states in exchange for raw resources at a rate that was barely sufficient to produce given supply of said export goods. Soviet economical boom practically fed on the misery of their vassals - just because you see a parasite swell with every drop of blood it drinks doesn't mean that it is a sustainable model.
Gabriel Lewis
kek read some thomas sowell you filthy commie
Austin Thomas
He was implying China is a shithole (which it is) and youre a moron for using that as an example of a Socialist utopia (which you are). Theyre house of cards has peaked and is falling anyways.
Gabriel Johnson
That "bern" feeling youre getting is your asshole when it runs out of toilet paper.
Charles Anderson
Venezuelan refugees coming to DR in 3... 2... 1...
Nathaniel Collins
Russia wasn't a shithole when it started, it was actually quite wealthy and beginning to industrialize organically, why else did Germany want its most valuable territories? WW1 crippled it economically which left it ripe for the taking by the jewish communists. By the end of the USSR it was basically a third world nation and couldn't even sustain its nuclear arsenal.
Gavin Murphy
>designated days of the week for shopping, they explain. (You get two)
DESIGNATED SHOPPING DAYS
Carson Adams
that's a lot of plastic surgery.
Parker Reyes
>>They also starved their own people and stripped them of their social liberties. Politics is not economics.
>Those Western nations are still considered to be capitalistic at heart Only by people whose entire worldview relies on that. They're capitalistic - not capitalist. The government allows free markets where free markets are beneficial to the state and the citizens, and disallows them where they are not. That's not capitalism. If anything, it's mercantile.
>you cannot depend on the government to make good decisions with your tax dollars Nor can you opt out of taxes.
Andrew Cook
Who would've guessed
Chavez's daughter richest in Venezuela, net worth 4.2 billion.
>just because you see a parasite swell with every drop of blood it drinks doesn't mean that it is a sustainable model. t. "infinite-growth model capitalist"
>By this point initial diligence and optimism inevitably evaporate There has been an overwhelming trend towards political cynicism and apathy over the past 150 years across the entire Western world, yet productivity continues to rise.
The USSR failed because of politics, not economics.
Jonathan Harris
>Theyre house of cards has peaked and is falling anyways.
Actually, China has some good prospects, but merely because it turned its own people into inexpensive, expendable slaves.
Xavier Flores
L O N D O N O N D O N
Jace Morris
God damn it
William Roberts
Oh joy, now it's time for the "make baseless assumptions about the person I'm arguing with so that I can justify my rage" part of the discussion.
There's no such thing as utopia, socialist or otherwise. The goal of a state is to maximise security, and the purpose of the economy is to facilitate that goal. Socialist economies are as capable of that as capitalist economies, and we see that in China today.
>BUT WHAT ABOUT MUH RIGHTS AND MUH FEELINGS Go live on a commune, hippie.
Blake Campbell
>The USSR failed because of politics, not economics. No no, that's wrong. It objectively failed economically, because Socialism is garbage.
Levi Bell
A year ago today...
Cameron Martin
>Russia wasn't a shithole when it started are_you_kidding_me.jpg
Russia was the least developed part of Europe with the exception of some parts of Hungary, and the most politically backward. They didn't have a revolution because everything was going swell.
>MUH JEEEEEWS >>>/stormfront/
Jason Allen
>It objectively failed economically, because Socialism is garbage. Epic fallacy bro.
>the USSR failed because socialism is garbage >socialism is garbage because it leads to failed states like the USSR
Josiah Jenkins
>using toilet paper >not your left hand >in the current year bourgeois please
Christian Cruz
Perhaps if venezuela dies, there will be new rainforests growing there again.
Perhaps its all for the good.
Thomas Stewart
Should make a zoo out of it, might even be able to turn a profit.
Dominic Powell
This doesn't prove anything because capitalism also failed in Venezuela (circa 1998)
The whole reason Chavez was elected in the first place is that capitalism failed there
Jayden Anderson
>The USSR failed because of politics, not economics.
USSR and its leaders attempted to pre-determine the sectors of industry and their developement before global economics gave even a hint as to how it would play out.
Specialised industries were arbitrarily assigned to Eastern Bloc countries which meant that Bloc's economical output was destined to live in the isolated bubble, growing ever incompatibile with surrounding world.
It has gotten so bad that our gommie leaders were forced to borrow horrendous sums of foreign money just to placate the citizens so that they wouldn't chimp out. Only few years ago we were finally capable of paying all of it back.
Carter Barnes
My favourite metaphor for Venezuela is Pastor Maldonado. An incredibly shitty Venezuelan racing drive who gets PDVSA to pay F1 teams to allow him to race. An extravagant waste of money that achieves zero success except for entertaining car crashes.
>USSR and its leaders attempted to pre-determine the sectors of industry and their developement before global economics gave even a hint as to how it would play out. Pretty much. The leadership at the top of government lacked the capability to run the economy, and the longer it dragged on - consumed by party games and political backstabbing - the more incapable and out-of-touch the leadership became. The USSR was a strong country that pulled off an amazing feat of industrialisation, catapulting itself from the most backward country in Europe to a global hegemon in just a few decades.
However, the people at the top let their country down and stopped leading. A classic tale of corruption.
Camden Parker
There's an obvious solution user.
Ayden Sullivan
>The USSR was a strong country that pulled off an amazing feat of industrialisation, catapulting itself from the most backward country in Europe to a global hegemon in just a few decades.
Prior to the revolution, Imperial Russia had the largest economy in the world, complete with fully developed petroindustry that allowed their near-entire output to be processed on their own soil - something that is still out of question in current Russia.
Many estimates point out that had Russia not caved under gommie revolution, it would have crushed nazi Germany in a fraction of time that Soviets required.
Imperial Russians were also quite sober compared to their gommie counterparts.
Dominic Long
holy fuck how is he allowed to keep racing? It's amazing he hasn't killed anyone yet.
And here I thought Jean Alesi was the biggest joke racer...
Jayden Price
Read basic economics, reading a conflict of visions, what else do you recommend
Matthew Perry
>Prior to the revolution, Imperial Russia had the largest economy in the world
What?
Charles Bennett
maybe he meant in terms of land occupied
Isaiah Cruz
Not Sowell, but Economics in One Lesson by Hazlitt is good as well
Eli Reed
Well, but that wouldn't have been different from post revolution. I think he might just be stupid.
Landon Campbell
Don't fall for dogmatic people like Sowell
Read economics by empiricists
Brandon Collins
>pulled off the biggest feat of industrialization No, industrialization was already coming to imperial russia and was the primary reason for the collapse in WW1
