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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

Venezuela'a foreign exchange reserves stand at less than $12 billion [1]. They pay over 15% of that this month to bond holders [2].

This makes no sense until one considers that the bond holders might be regime insiders. Venezuela is a state structured to maximise the transfer of wealth from the many to the few.

Shockingly, as recently as 2004 Venezuela boasted fair elections [3]. The degree to which Venezuelans are to blame for their predicament (and the related probability that they will recreate it in spite of aid) is a difficult moral question.

[1] https://www.stratfor.com/analysis/venezuela-new-roadblock-re...

[2] http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-wp-blm-venezuela-602c...

[3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuelan_recall_referendum...

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It's all just one poorly elected candidate away I guess. Look at what's happening in the Philippines with Duterte for a taste of why people are so concerned about Trump(regardless of whether the concern would end up founded or not).

It's why I'm concerned about Clinton.

Which of the various conspiracy theories about her have you swallowed?

Probably the ones backed up by hard evidence like the Podesta dump and videos. But who should we believe, anyway, you or our lyin' eyes?

Sorry, you'll have to explain what you mean instead of referring to dark mysterious stories that we don't know.

Isn't Duterte significantly more popular than Trump?

It took more than one election: https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/06CARACAS2063_a.html

Summary: the Venezuelan voting machines are rigged

Just like American voting machines.

When a democracy transitions to a dictatorship in a decade how do you not hood the electorate responsible? They made the choices continually to allow this.

How long did it take Germany to transition into a dictatorship? How long will it take the US to transition into one? For us, the laws are already in place. We're just watching and waiting for the right guy, or the wrong guy, depending on your perspective.

What does it even mean to "hold an electorate responsible"?

Something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_collective_guilt? (obviously what is happening in Venezuela is substantially less tragic and not directly comparable)

Probably the difference between something like Brexit, which no one doubts was a free and fair election, and, say, Assad, who is not really the 'fault' of the Syrian people.

I get that. I just don't understand how that informs our response to the situation. Both Brexit and Syria are terrible situations.

Brexit is inconvenient; Syria is a humanitarian catastrophe. There are several orders of magnitude of difference.

Plus Brexit was achieved by the most democratic of processes, Syria's government was overthrown from a foreign country, because someone else had all good contracts - how are the two comparable eludes me.

Are you actually refering to referundum as the "most democratic process" when they are (mostly) always accompanied by massive propaganda ? The Brexit one being no exception (on both sides).

I don't see anyone offering Theresa May amnesty if she'll retire quietly to Saudi Arabia or Iran or something in order to aid in the forming of a lasting peace in the British Isles.

I suppose outsiders feel more or less justified in meddling depending on how much "it's their own damned fault" ?

Thats a frequent opinion that sounds sensible. But when you put some thought into it, you realize that a lot of the electorate are poor uneducated people who did not know better.

Maybe so, it's often said that democracy requires an educated populace. So maybe if you don't have that, you don't have a democracy.

Also an unbiased and free news media, which is another thing that might need to be on your list.

If by unbiased you mean in terms of the bias variance trade-off, and not in terms of "tends to align with beliefs of neither side of the political spectrum," then I'm inclined to agree.

and in the regions most people vote for whichever party drove them to the polling booth in a bus then gave them a sack of food and a gas canister afterwards.

Venezuelan elections have never been fair - there is a lot of vote rigging from all sides

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