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Comment by simias | Hacker News Reader

The economy failed because it was completely dependent on oil. When the oil price went down the economy went bust. It's only at this point that the socialist politics failed the people by not making the drastic and painful cuts that would've kept the country afloat.

Lack of protection for the private property probably didn't help but making that the main cause for the Venezuelan collapse is a very ideological stance to have IMO. Insert here the obligatory "look at china" counter-example.

As far as I can tell the only way to really avoid this catastrophe would've been to diversify the Venezuelan economy in decades past (something Chavez promised to do but didn't) but nobody did it, regardless of political affiliation. "Free money coming straight from the ground" is just so much easier for a politician than making a complex and potentially impopular long term economic reform.

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China is not a great counter example. Chavez actually did things to redistribute wealth, and when certain goods got too expensive they fixed prices, and when the businesses failed or refused to operate at a loss they were nationalized.

China has a state plan and they invest in businesses. That means they provide resources to businesses instead of taking them away. Maybe that sounds like just better implemented socialism. Or maybe it's just literal capitalism on a scale never before seen. Think about it. What does the government of China provide to its citizens? If you are poor in China, will the government take care of you? No. It might provide you with a job, though. The USA is more socialist than China, the government will provide food, housing and even medical care for you and your children. You cannot be refused from an emergency room because you cannot pay. A few extremely wealthy people run China, and make decisions that are in their best interests. They invest their capital to get returns. Sounds like capitalism to me.

To be clear I wasn't stating that the situation in China is equivalent in any way to that of Venezuela, I just felt it was a bit strange to root the current woes of Venezuela solely on lack of free market basically. It probably doesn't help but what killed Venezuela in the end is their complete reliance on oil money and complete lack of plan B when it crashed.

I'm pretty certain that if the right had been in charge when the crisis happened things would've played out mostly the same (I don't believe for a second that the right would have better diversified the economy for the same reason that the socialists didn't, nobody says no to free money), the main difference being that they would have cut all the benefits to the poor immediately to cushion the fall a bit and they'd have let papa USA bail them out in exchange for a de-facto feudalization of their economy. I agree that it would probably have turned better for the Venezuelan people (at least in the short term) but socialism vs. capitalism is not really the cause of the crash, it's more about the recovery or lack thereof. If the petrol infusion had kept going I'm sure people would be chanting Dear Leader's name in the streets, whoever that would be.

Oil is not too far from the all time highs, it's certainly much higher than when Chavez took over. Why isn't everything better? They killed basic market economics, including (especially) in the oil industry. They made it so people are afraid to invest in business in Venezuela. They didn't want to admit that their policies were killing the economy, so they doubled down which just made it worse.

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