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Comment by crdoconnor | Hacker News Reader

>For Venezuelans who remember ’89, the party system was the enemy, and Chávez was the hero, because things got better under him first of all. The price of oil went up. He started opening free clinics, and primary education, and universal health care, and subsidized food, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, but he acted as if there was enough money to sustain all this.

In fairness, he acted as if Venezuela wasn't going to become the bystander in a proxy fight between Saudi Arabia and US shale oil & renewable energy.

Venezuelan exports have always been largely oil based so whomever was in power, the plunge in oil price was going to cause disaster and a crisis of legitimacy.

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I'd say that Chavez and his family doing more to enrich themselves than plan for the country's future when oil prices inevitably dropped played a large part.

You can say what you want. Doesn't change the fact that Chavez helped bring many of Venezuela's poor towards something approaching a dignified standard of living.

Sure, by stealing money from the people who have it and giving it to poor people, for a short time you make the lot of the poor better.

Now where there were few jobs there are none, and crime has gone from a big problem to a terrible problem. Soon there will be war.

These are not policies that benefit the poor.

>Sure, by stealing money from the people who have it and giving it to poor people

Largely by redirecting money from oil exports to anti-poverty programs.

Before he took power that money was mostly siphoned off abroad and by the upper classes.

Do you really think the country would have fared much better if this practice continued?

The economy was growing under Chavez's predecessors. Yes, it would have fared much, much better. What he did with oil is less important than what he did to the rest of the economy. Chavez was lucky, in a way, because he died right about the time math caught up with his economic policies.

Actually the economy suffered a massive contraction in the 80s when - surprise! - oil prices plunged. This is partly what led Chavez into power - mostly because while the country technically returned to growth - wages did not go up and unemployment did not go down.

Same cause last time as this time but last time was "all the fault of capitalism" and this one was "all the fault of socialism".

Capitalism is theft. It's mathematically impossible for the holder of capital to generate profit if he pays workers wages equal to the value their labor produces. Somebody has to be shortchanged somewhere along the line. The rich in Venezuela should be thankful they only have to deal with mild social democratic wealth redistribution policies.

Everything except capitalism is theft. In a free market every good exchange is voluntary - made because both parties have decided they're slightly better off with it (else, they wouldn't participate). Therefore, everything but a free market implies deals that are non-voluntary for at least one of the parties.

Voluntary economic associations are not theft. To say that capitalism is theft is to engage in sophistry. It's only theft if the workers are actually slaves.

And brought all of Venezuela toward the eventual disaster under Maduro that was the necessary result of his policies.

But before Chavez the economy was considerably more diverse. His policies turned a vulnerability into a ticking time bomb.

It really wasn't. It moved from maybe 80% to 90% of exports. They were already in the full throes of Dutch disease when Chavez took power.

Saudi Arabia has failed just as badly at diversifying their economy for pretty much the exact same reason.

Exports only tell part of the story. Much of what a country consumes is produced locally, so just looking at exports ignores the collapse of industries like construction and agriculture.

Everybody loves a big spender. Spending like there is no tomorrow is how you appease children--not how you should run a household, let alone a business or country.

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