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Comment by drno123 | Hacker News Reader

I lived through the same extreme inflation in Yugoslavia in the 80s. It was very bad. Good luck to people in Venezuela :( Yet, I cannot ignore the fact that both Yugoslavia and Venezuela, otherwise very different countries, had the same political/economic system that lead to the inflation.

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Sanctions?

Sanctions are imposed to cut access to the investment money and to markets to sell produced goods.

No need to impose sanctions if major market and investor (USSR) just collapsed.

This post is full of pitch forks aimed at the socialism bogeyman. It’s a bit more nuanced. I’m not going to defend that prick Maduro, however oil prices and sanctions haven’t helped their situation.

Turns out there's a cost to guaranteeing a certain quality of life, without requiring the productivity that was previously needed to secure it. Capitalism has its faults, but for the day to day management of a population, rewarding those who produce goods is a pretty logical baseline for economics

I’m not arguing socialism or capitalism is great. I’m saying their crisis isn’t socialism in a vacuum, and lack of nuanced discussion in favour of capitalism vs socialism is getting kind of old.

It’s like thinking a program you wrote only has one bug.

Your highest level reply did not imply you were willing to consider socialism as a factor. Socialism is a very large factor in this. Not in principle, but in practice. Is it possible for a fair, balanced, stable form of socialism to be designed? Possibly, I don't know. Can a group of greedy, selfish, arrogant Great Apes manage it? Absolutely not.

The sanctions are the biggest factor and it's often external influences that force politicians to enact populistic policies as a massive bandaid that are then interpreted as socialism. The bandaid isn't the problem, it's the wound.

Yugoslavia did not have sanctions in the 80s, that was before the war. You are thinking about the sanctions that were imposed to the remainder of Yugoslavia (Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo) in the mid and late 90s.

I assumed 80s was a typo and you were referring to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_the_Federa...

That inflation was even worse - but I did not experience it. Of course, sanctions, war, etc. greatly contributed to the hyperinflation in the 90s.

My mistake. You know what they say about assumptions…

"They're a great time-saving measure in most situations."?

"You make an ass out of you and umption."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YS3i-irQ0L0

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