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RE: U.S. Sanctions are to Blame for Venezuela's Increased Poverty and Chaos, Not 'Socialism'
It's mostly because of the oil price tanking in 2014. That's when their problems started. But the fact that their government is authoritarian and incompetent has very much to with it, too. My understanding of what is happening is based on what my Venezuelan friends here have told me.
Do define authoritarian. You might also consider that there are no few Venezuelans in exile today, just as Miami was filled with Cubans after the revolution that evicted gangsters and corrupt profiteers.
Since a quick skim at US special operations manuals reveals full spectrum economic assaults on nations being warred on, and are all attacks that are intended to create false flag effects by tricking people into blaming the victim for the harm suffered by it's people, unless you can honestly assert you have a thorough grasp of that gamut of attacks that have certainly been executed on Venezuela, and that the government has successfully countered them without suffering ill effect - which itself would be a miraculous feat for any government to manage - and then has independently miserably failed to govern reasonably, simply claiming the government is incompetent is vapid and of null effect.
A considerable basis for demonstrable understanding of these issues is necessary for any such remark to be considered valid. The opinions of those disenfranchised by nationalization of Venezuela's oil industry might just be tainted with anger that their extreme corruption and profiteering was ended.
tl;dr: citation needed.
Talk to this guy @lanzjoseg. He's a professor of public accounting in a Venezuelan university and a friend of mine on Steem. He'll tell you about the regime he has to live under.
I undertake no support of Socialism, nor Maduro. It has now been shown that the US used a virus similar to Stuxnet to destroy the PLCs of the Guri dam that then caused the national blackout in Venezuela. What system of government could be able to provide functional mechanisms in the light of such sabotage?
The US has been sabotaging Venezuela for decades. Absent detailed understanding of the mechanisms used, their actual effects, and similar grasp of economic baselines and realities there, it is simply insuperable to claim the government is incompetent. Your friends may be better informed about social realities there, and even have some grasp of relevant economics, but absent detailed and specific information regarding the impact of full spectrum warfare that has been ongoing for these many years, nobody can honestly and confidently assert that incompetence or malfeasance on the part of the Venezuelan government is responsible for any given fault or flaw.
It's just not possible for such a statement to be other than uninformed opinion, or likely disinformation from someone with that specific and detailed knowledge - and that would make them party to the sabotage, and therefore utterly devoid of integrity.
There is no doubt that the US has done all kinds of shady shit over the years against Venezuela. But I'm actually ascribing the shitty situation over there mostly to the fact that the price of oil fell by over two thirds from $115 in June 2014 to $35 in February 2016 per barrel. When you have an economy like Venezuela's nearly totally dependent on export revenue from oil, you will experience very severe hardship when the price of oil crashes. It's simply false to suggest that the US caused it. As you say, the US has been sabotaging Venezuela for decades, but until the crash of 2014, Venezuela was doing ok economically.
Also, I'd like to add that not preparing for fluctuations in the price of oil is a serious failure on part of a major oil producing country. When the price of oil was high, the Venezuelan government should've set up a fund to keep paying the bills even during the dips. Norway has around a trillion dollars in a sovereign fund in preparation of when the party ends.
I don't disagree that fluctuations in the price of oil have impacted Venezuela. However, your comparison to Norway is extremely prejudicial, and ludicruous as well. Norway's sovereign wealth fund is the largest such fund in the world. It's a stable nation that is not under constant economic and cryptic assault by the largest funders of terrorism in the world. It's not cut off from financial markets by sanctions.
Not only is it a completely unrealistic comparison, it begs the point: that absent specific and detailed knowledge of what secret and malicious attacks were executed, including the actual effects of those attacks on the actual state of Venezuela and what responses Venezuela undertook to mitigate them, it is impossible to honestly and factually state that Venezuela has failed due to corruption and incompetence. Only two kinds of people can make such a statement: those who are wrong, and those who know those details and therefore must be participants in the warfare, and must consequently not be expected to tell the truth regarding Venezuela.
Do please consider that fact. Not even Saudi Aramco is as large a sovereign wealth fund as has Norway, and any fund Venezuela did effect to compensate for fluctuations in the price of oil had to operate in the global finance markets which have been weaponized against Venezuela, both overtly and covertly. Given that much of the acts of war executed against Venezuela have been covert, how can you state that the publicly knowable circumstances aren't stunning victories over such sabotage, terrorism, and destabilization? At least 20 people died as a result of the US cyberwarfare attack that left Venezuela without electricity this last week. Is the fact that Venezuela is a socialist nation responsible for those deaths, or are the terrorists? Would a capitalist nation under such assault by the most powerful military in the world conceivably have not been harmed similarly?
Hubris is a silly conceit, and humility is both underrated and enables reason to better provide factual bases for understanding reality. Believing you are competent to make such judgments when you demonstrably do not have salient facts necessary to base such judgments on reveals much about you, and nothing at all about Venezuela. If you want to be seen as reasonable, you should consider only making statements with factual basis.
The crashing of the price of oil has had a totally disastrous effect on the Venezuelan economy by wiping out their export revenues. As Venezuela has never been even remotely close to any sort of self-sufficiency, this has understandably had a massively catastrophic effect on social well-being in the country.
The simple fact is that you don't need American sanctions to explain the economic collapse of Venezuela while the definitely have made it worse.
Have you read @lanzjoseg's comment on this? He made some pretty strong counterarguments to your claims? Why don't you address them? You sound off like a passionate anti US government crusader. You are talking about Venezuela. Why do you not address arguments put forward by informed Venezuelans?
According @lanzjoseg, the plant hydroelectric plant in question that, according to you, fell under a cyber attack by the USA, did not have any digital equipment. Why do you not address that and the other points he made?
While oil price has, as I previously stated, undeniably impacted Venezuela's income, how much impact is impossible to extricate from the excessive noise that obscures that specific signal. We can't know how much prior economic interference already had impacted Venezuela prior to price affects, nor if such interference abated after oil prices exerted their influence - which could practically eliminate the actual effect of oil price changes, if such intereference was severe enough.
Without actual data WE CAN'T KNOW. Assertions are therefore nothing more than opinions based on assumptions, and have no basis in provable data and relevant facts.
As to the assertions your friend is making absent actual data to separate signal from noise, they can only be just what I have indicated: assumptions, and since data to support them is not available, they cannot be anything more.
As an American, I do not dispute that I vehemently oppose my authority being usurped to murder people around the world, surveil Americans without lawful justification, or any number of crimes against humanity that are provably laid at the feet of the USG. I don't think that makes me un-American. Instead I note that the statements of the founders of this country, the Constitution and Declaration of Independence which they composed to institute it, and the inherent rights and sovereign authority of natural persons endowed by virtue of their actual existence with those rights, are the very essence of America, and those are things which I support unreservedly, not only for me, my family, friends, community and nation, but for all people everywhere, in all times, and under any circumstances.
Lastly, do your own research. The Guri dam was controlled via PLCs which aren't particularly sophisticated and are practically ubiquitous in such facilities. If your friend asserts that pre-1950s tech was used to build the dam and was never upgraded, I must seriously question his integrity.
Venezuela is a perfect example for the Resource curse
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse
and they probably cannot afford to save in better times, precisely because of the sabotage. Read "The dictator's handbook" if you wnat to know why.
In short: if you don't distribute all the riches, someone else who promises to do that will rise up and kick you out (if you are lucky).
That is why revolutionaries fighting against corruption end up being at least as corrupt when in power. After a revolution you need every piece of power you can get. That means you need to get the power from those who hold it. The corrupt ones.
Ceuscescu was pretty good at letting his people starve through excessive austerity.
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That is basics for a dictator: Starved people have no power to stage a coup.
Not really. There have been plenty of dictatorships where most people have been well fed. The fiscal policies of dictatorships have been all over the place from lax where goodies have been distributed liberally to keep various groups happy to austere like that of Ceauscescu's Romania. He gave priority to Romania being debt free.
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Friend @lennstar0de . I can tell you with a lot of property here in Venezuela there is no dictatorship, the reality is a well organized group of criminals who are occupying positions in the government, killing everyone who opposes him and killing a large group of people. Venzolanos, applies techniques of communism Cuba trained them very well, but to them the capitalism escapes them, more than 50% of those government delinquents speak ill of the United States, but most of them love to visit North America, nothing easy to understand.
Yes, the government and corruption play a part. But the point is the current level, would not be what it's at, without the sanctions. Things would be far less grave. Sanctions hurt the whole nation of people, not just the government.