That, according to what they said at least, they wanted to move Venezuela a little in the direction of Sweden’s icy social democracy isn’t something we should condemn them for. For being complete fools about how they went about doing so perhaps is.
It is a mistake to give them credit for what they say. What they do shows that they do not mean it. As bad as Tsarism was, and it wasn’t, in every possible way Communism was worse. Whatever drove people like Lenin to become good Communists, it was not what they said it was. It was not the suffering of the poor. It was not injustice. It was not inequality.
As we see in Latin America – getting and keeping power is vastly more important to them than equality. Otherwise they would have reversed course by now.
bloke in germany
Come on then, which airlines were stupid enough to give the Venezuelan government $3.3bn credit?
Ironman
$3.3billion does seem a little bit much to be honest. Doesn’t matter much, the utter insanity of the regime speaks for itself.
We all have our personal favourite behavioural feature of socialist regimes, mine is the way outside and internal sabateurs are always found to explain the inevitable economic collapse.
bloke in germany
The sabotage there is straightforward. The evil capitalist bastards are sabotaging society by failing to provide toilet paper at the government-mandated price.
Ironman
Bloke in Germany
Yeah, it does make you wonder though quite how they’re going to clear up this mess.
David
You have forgotten the appalling level of violence in Venezuela, which makes the situation even worse.
Bloke in Costa Rica
As I’ve recounted here before, we’ve had Venezuelan tourists stocking up on bog-roll while they’re visiting. An early harbinger of the demise of the Soviet Union was something I read c. 1985 that a most welcome gift if one were visiting was bars of soap. Not Levis or Sony Walkmans but soap. The real question about the coming Venezuelan collapse is not when it’s going to happen (the ‘if’ is a foregone conclusion) but how sanguinary it will be. The colectivos are going to resist the overthrow of Chavismo.
That, according to what they said at least, they wanted to move Venezuela a little in the direction of Sweden’s icy social democracy isn’t something we should condemn them for. For being complete fools about how they went about doing so perhaps is.
It is a mistake to give them credit for what they say. What they do shows that they do not mean it. As bad as Tsarism was, and it wasn’t, in every possible way Communism was worse. Whatever drove people like Lenin to become good Communists, it was not what they said it was. It was not the suffering of the poor. It was not injustice. It was not inequality.
As we see in Latin America – getting and keeping power is vastly more important to them than equality. Otherwise they would have reversed course by now.
Come on then, which airlines were stupid enough to give the Venezuelan government $3.3bn credit?
$3.3billion does seem a little bit much to be honest. Doesn’t matter much, the utter insanity of the regime speaks for itself.
We all have our personal favourite behavioural feature of socialist regimes, mine is the way outside and internal sabateurs are always found to explain the inevitable economic collapse.
The sabotage there is straightforward. The evil capitalist bastards are sabotaging society by failing to provide toilet paper at the government-mandated price.
Bloke in Germany
Yeah, it does make you wonder though quite how they’re going to clear up this mess.
You have forgotten the appalling level of violence in Venezuela, which makes the situation even worse.
As I’ve recounted here before, we’ve had Venezuelan tourists stocking up on bog-roll while they’re visiting. An early harbinger of the demise of the Soviet Union was something I read c. 1985 that a most welcome gift if one were visiting was bars of soap. Not Levis or Sony Walkmans but soap. The real question about the coming Venezuelan collapse is not when it’s going to happen (the ‘if’ is a foregone conclusion) but how sanguinary it will be. The colectivos are going to resist the overthrow of Chavismo.