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Comment by hourislate | Hacker News Reader

Interesting that you would think Maduro and his Government have any honor. How could they possibly have any face left in the International world?

Communist/Socialist Governments typically use such financial vehicles among many others to systematically remove and transfer some/most of their countries wealth into their own/friends coffers through various arrangements with financial institutions et al all the time.

Just another day and another dollar. Pride/Honor have nothing to do with any decisions when it comes to stealing billions. The human cost isn't even part of the equation.

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> Communist/Socialist Governments typically use such financial vehicles among many others to systematically remove and transfer some/most of their countries wealth into their own/friends coffers through various arrangements with financial institutions et al all the time.

Oh, come on. Such activities happen the world and history over regardless of the ostensible public political veneer.

While all governments are funded by their citizen's wealth Communists almost always take it to the extreme. Read up on the aftermath of almost any communist takeover: currency exchanges, assets seizures, wage controls and/or outright murder of the former elite. The almost all the nations wealth is quickly transfered to the government/party/leaders.

Socialists practice the same - just in moderation - but it is how all governments are funded. The trick is just to not go full retard like Venezuela and kill the golden goose.

I'm not sure governments are funded by their citizenry, those citizens have to conduct commerce in the nation's currency and pay taxes in the same currency, which is solely issued by the government. It becomes more of a social relationship that way.

> Oh, come on. Such activities happen the world and history over regardless of the ostensible public political veneer.

Socialist/communist regimes are founded on a system devised to take away any and all wealth away from the people to handle it to the state, supposedly with the objective of spreading the wealth and taking care of everyone's needs.

In practice, the system takes away any and all wealth from the people, and handles it to the regime's cronies for them to use to pamper themselves as they wish.

The history of socialism repeats itself over and over again. We see it right now in Venezuela, we saw it in Brazil with the successive Worker Party's, we see it right now in Angola as well.

Cultural/Male honor is huge in LatAm

It's pretty silly to assume "male honor" would be the deciding factor in a country's politics.

Why? More than two millenia of that sort of thing preceeds the previous five decades of post-nuclear-age politics, no?

Because once you're corrupt, there is no honor.

I don't think you're using honor the same way OP is. In LatAm, honor is often used as synonymous of pride or in this case misplaced pride.

Whoa, haven't thought of that. Pride and honor are very distant in my spectrum of understanding. One is internal integrity, and the other is a form of social Google page rank.

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