The word "socialism" is missing from the article. The situation must be a natural disaster.
https://www.salon.com/2013/03/06/hugo_chavezs_economic_mirac...
The money quote:
> When a country goes socialist and it craters, it is laughed off as a harmless and forgettable cautionary tale about the perils of command economics. When, by contrast, a country goes socialist and its economy does what Venezuela's did, it is not perceived to be a laughing matter - and it is not so easy to write off or to ignore.
How the dictatorship is supposed to be a means of representing the people's will is left unspecified. This is no problem to the Marxist, because their picture of the way the world works is quite different, and the fact that literally every Marxist socialist government became a brutal and incompetent dictatorship is not interpreted as a flaw of their belief system, but a sign that the will of the people was not properly enforced.
What is for sure true is that power corrupts and concentrating too much in too few hands is bad. Ignorant people like Chavez and Maduro who have simplistic ideas and too much power is really, really bad. Think Mao and Pol Pot.
When the cause becomes more important than the truth, whether it be communism, environmentalism, religion, free markets, etc., then people will suffer if policies are implemented simply to support the cause.
Just saying, “Socialsim is bad” is not helpful because then all one has to do is paint a particular policy as being socialistic to be defeated. There are countries that have what many Americans would call socialist policies that do great. Some do not.
And considering that the nation has no oil wealth, enough language and cultural diversity to make a single language impossible, massive poverty from independence, its achievements are nothing to sniff at.
And they passed Net Neutrality laws after people pushed for it against incumbent telcos having the upper hand at the start of the process.
"Hugo Chavez declared the oil belonged 2 the ppl. He used the oil $ 2 eliminate 75% of extreme poverty, provide free health & education 4 all" - Michael Moore
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/8540/what-is-wha...
(I think it's cultural difference between US and rest of world where the US considers socialism ~= communism)
If you think some of your government officials don't have the same thirst for power that would eventually lead the country in a path similar to that of Venezuela's, then you're putting too much faith in humanity.
Not saying that I agree with that, just presenting a different point of view.
Don't you think that the first tribes, before the agricultural revolution were not free? And yet they didn't have private property.
Ride the chieftain's favourite horse and see what he'd have to say about ownership...
What you mean is that some European countries have a welfare system paid by a highly effective capitalist economy.
What people often don't understand is, by the way, that the supposedly "more socialist" countries in North Europe, like Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark, are in fact in many ways more market driven and have very free economies, compared to e.g. "non-socialist" Southern Europe. But of course, in all countries the politics meddles with the economy.
all the fans of socialism always forget, the same problem that doomed Venezuela exists in all nations. Politicians. Politicians who are above the law, who are the one percent, who are there to lead and by that requirement deserve special status. Doesn't matter what you call your government type, they always have more power and less restrictions on their actions.
the difference is that it is implied in a socialist society that there is no private property or very little. as such what is there to aspire too? some quasi socialist countries try to juggle this issue to some success but are they really socialist or truly capitalist with some "socialist" qualities?
when government fails to protect the private property rights of people, to the effort of their work, their physical property, the wealth they create in their businesses, it is only a matter of time before it folds. you can only take until the wealth dries up. once that happens you only have force