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Comment by DominikR | Hacker News Reader

A country with one of the greatest oil reserves in the world, fertile land, good climate, access to the sea (world trade) and no military conflicts for a century was turned into a population of homeless people hunting dogs and cats on the streets in order to not starve to death - only possible with Socialism.

I remember how ten years ago people on my university (in a Western country) were trying to convince me that Chavez's version of Socialism is the future for humanity. And when he came to give a speech he was celebrated like a pop star.

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> a population of homeless people hunting dogs and cats on the streets in order to not starve to death - only possible with Socialism.

Or the United States in the early 20th Century. Grapes of Wrath and all that.

And that was because of severe economic privations. Venezuela doesn't have anything to blame. Sure the price of oil has dropped, but as the previous poster said, they have fertile land and a long coast.

The United States was an extremely wealthy country with exceptional freedom up until the Great Depression. And this was only a short episode in US history.

Sure. The US had been rich since about 1850, and was broke like everyone else for a short time in the 1930s. But the grandparent said this kind of disaster is 'only possible with socialism', which the Great Depression proves is not true by counterexample.

The big difference here is that in Capitalism you have boom and bust cycles where on average people still get more wealthy over time while in Socialism you'll always and without exception end up in abject poverty - and what's even worse than poverty - an authoritarian government that will attempt to control and regulate every aspect of its citizens lives including persecution of wrong thoughts.

> an authoritarian government that will attempt to control and regulate every aspect of its citizens lives including persecution of wrong thoughts.

I think this is a perfect description of capitalist countries, including the US. Of course, they try to give people thousands of perceived options, like what color of car to buy, but in the end everyone needs to abide by rules that are increasingly more coercive.

Country being wealthy doesn't mean all the people in it are. Just a few percentage points at the top.

US citizens, esp those under so called middle class, rank worse than most other western countries. Ya know all those Eurpean socialist ones.

Some data that provides a different picture:

http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2016/08/us-is-doing-be...

Last time I checked, Norway, one of the richest and happiest countries in the world, is run as a Social Democracy. Hence, Socialism is not the problem. The problem is, was, and will always be: corrupted humans running it.

In the case of Venezuela, the late Chávez and his friends stole every petro-dollar they could laid their hands on. Obviously, they also made huge public spendings, something that will naturally give a sense of prosperity and economic development, and make them very popular; yet, that public spending was not investment per-se that could later generate wealth. The Bible puts it quite clear: don't give them fish, teach them how to fish.

Now the oil money is gone so is the fake bonanza. Maduro has to stay in power in order to keep himself and his buddies out of jail.

Living outside the us and thus exposed to Far more socialists per capita has fully convinced me even further of the toxicity of socialism.

Now you guys get to see what Chile would have turned into if it hadn't been for a certain general. Maybe after 50 years of poverty, famine and secret police your country will get back to where it started.

You're being vague here, so I can't be sure what you're implying, but if you're suggesting that Pinochet was a positive thing for Chile, that's a nightmarish thing for anyone to sign their name to. What am I missing?

You're missing the alternative, which is what Allende was implementing in Chile: expropriation of private property (both farm and industry), hyperinflation, severe devaluation of currency, release of convicted guerrilla terrorists... the list goes on. In other words, what happened in Venezuela.

I would very much like to believe that you are not saying that Pinochet was better than the alternative. And I too think Venezuela is a disaster.

Is there anything that the Maduro government could do that would make you say, "I wish a right wing coup like the one that happened in Chile had happened instead"?

There are, after all, a lot of communist revolutions that turned into complete bloodbaths once the ruling party consolidated its power.

I've met some reasonable, leftist-leaning people who lived through the coup, and who told me that "Something had to be done" because the country was in a state of crisis. Of course, the crisis was manufactured, Pinochet committed crimes against humanity, etc. etc.

Pinochet won a referendum in 1980 to stay in power. It may have been manipulated, but judging by the number of people I've met longing for the days of Pinochet, I wouldn't be surprised if he had a true majority supporting him. People told me variants of "He kept the trains running on time".

That's what people said about Mussolini.

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