In Venezuela, life has gone from bad to worse. And the world has quit noticing

Yes, there's been an enormous propaganda push to legitimize a future U.S. intervention - either a direct invasion, or igniting a full-blown civil war by arming right-wing paramilitaries, as was the standard operating procedure throughout the 80's.

citing the new york times :/ didnt they push for WMD in iraq? edit: ah yes, unquestioned reporting pushing the administration's policy of war. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2004/may/26/pressandpublis...

isnt this what happened with collusion as well? oh yeah https://taibbi.substack.com/

the oil is poor quality and requires constant reinvestment in extraction and refinement infrastructure to remain competitive with other exporters. for various reasons this investment has been neglected for the last decade or two, but it’s not quite a turnkey fix to just decide to sell more oil.

The oil reserves are in shambles too, due to as you said mismanagement. They are a special type of oil that requires extra investment to produce, and the government has failed to make those investments.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2019/01/29/charting-the...

The economy of Venezuela lies in shambles due to US intervention and sanctions. Venezuela has very limited access to the world market.

There is no mismanagement. This is what happens when organized crime takes control of a country - they milk it for what it's worth and when they are done it is but a lifeless husk.

They do not care a wit for the future and the need to reinvest into production or safety[0], they'll use it while they can, extract what they can and then try to flee the country. Most engineers and doctors have already fled the country.

[0] This includes the country's power system too, Maduro blamed recent blackouts on US hackers, but the entire system is not even digital, so the attack vector for hacking did not exist in the first place. That, and the recent accident on a hydro plant, reported to have been a diversion, carried out by a lone saboteur with a gun...

The populace is largely disarmed.

They have the support of the military forces. So rioting doesn't work. It just gets you killed on the street with no repercussions for the government.

Also, the word "leader" implies that this is a legitimate democracy, which is not. Venezuela has an authoritarian corrupt government at best, a dictatorship at worst.

It's not always that easy. Look at what's going on in the US right now for example...

The government still has the support of an enormous number of people, mostly from the largely non-white working classes, whose economic and political interests were trampled on by the pre-Bolivarian governments and who are naturally suspicious of the right-wing agitators currently attempting to overthrow the government with the backing of foreign powers

The support of the military and by being a not so well known narcostate. If the situation would come to light properly maybe then we will see massive change. I am surprised nothing is done about it honestly.

The reason the leaders of Venezuela still have their heads is that they first won free and fair elections and they then proceeded to do the will of the people.

There is a lot more that the population accepted, it's not just the gun ban. Venezuela is the right-winger's nightmare scenario, basically where politicians got elected on left wing promises and then switched to being completely corrupt. The gun ban is just one element of their total coverage of every single American right wing fear. Honestly at this point the biggest reason why someone in America might oppose government situations like universal healthcare is out of the reasonable fear that they will be administrated corruptly to the point where they're worse than nothing.

There are plenty of guns in the population - the regime has armed supporters and organized them as militias.

As long as the military continues to support the government, an armed population cannot not successfully force Maduro out.

There are also many Venezuelan civilians who still support the regime. These people would presumably also have guns.

What are you trying to say? Things would be better if "the population" had guns?

After socialism took over Venezuela in 2007 through Chavez the "eternal president" of Venezuela I wouldnt consider any votes as valid. I still remember back then knowing that things were wrong and bad in Venezuela. He was president till he died. The elections were a joke.

Getting a lot of downvotes for this comment, but could someone please explain where I'm going wrong? A lot of people think the way I do, so it would be helpful to explain.

A country with a bright future just a couple decades ago experienced a truly remarkable decline after a socialist was elected. I'm sure there are other factors, but surely this is going to be seen as yet another failure of socialism.

Whether this is because the socialism was not "implemented correctly" or not, clearly the socialist label has been used by a number of very bad people as a way to accumulate more power.

It would be interesting to know the fraction of totalitarian governments that are socialist or communist. You could probably compile something based off [1] cross referenced with governance style. It is not clear to me that socialism is over-represented in the authoritarian set compared to the non-authoritarian states, but I haven't gone through the list rigorously.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index

I'm not a socialist. However, the claim that socialism necessiates a central gov is not universally accepted. Furthermore most socialists envision socialism as anarchism, as in self-governing workers' collectives, etc.

You cannot possibly compare central planning as a reaction to the free-market (walmart and amazon) to the central planning of an entire nation's economic output / consumption.

That is so intellectually dishonest, I'm actually speechless.

how are those corporations the result of centralized planning?

Every instance of centralized planning by an authoritarian gov't has ended in disaster. And yet, every time, different excuses have been brought up about why it failed.

> The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.

- https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Friedrich_Hayek#The_curio...

> that centralized planning doesnt work is just wrong :) look to walmart and amazon as examples of efficient central planning.

Walmart is one of many players in the economy and it reacts to consumer demand when it decides what to produce and sell. That is not a form of central planning.

An example of central planning would be the government ordering Walmart to produce ten million bicycles per year and to sell them for $80 each -- regardless of how many people actually want to buy bicycles and how much they are willing to pay.

Hopefully when Bitcoin-Core transaction fees reach $30 again like they did in December 2017, the common Venezuelan people will be able to afford the $60 overhead ($30 opening fee and $30 reserve needed to close the channel in case of counterparty fraud) to open a Lightning Network channel, or simply switch to a more scalable cryptocurrency.

The Venezuelan government destroyed the economy. On top of that, the government is using military force to prevent foreign aid from entering the country.

Sanctions make things a little bit worse, and they make Maduro's claims that outside forces are to blame for Venezuela's problems seem more convincing. (Sanctions have the same propaganda effect in North Korea).

But in any case, it is pretty clear that the Venezuelan government's mismanagement of the economy has been the primary factor for almost 20 years: Chavez was first elected in 1999 and the problems began under his leadership.

The US is practicing the geopolitical equivalent of "stop hitting yourself."

You are seriously misinformed. Serious issues (crazy inflation) started years before the sanctions.