Venezuelan Opposition Leaders Detained at Gunpoint in Raids | Hacker News Reader

Venezuelan Opposition Leaders Detained at Gunpoint in Raids

bloomberg.com

124 pointsJumpCrisscross167 comments

As a US citizen, whatever happens, I really hope America doesn't get involved in arming the protesters. Voice support for them but do not get involved in any material way.

We don't need another Syria on our hands, where two sides of a civil was were aided and armed by great powers who didn't care enough to significantly involve themselves in the conflict but cared just enough in principle to prolong it, destroying the nation in the process.

I recognize that Venezuela is far from being Syria, but at the end of the day, prolonged civil war is worse than either side winning outright. Order over chaos.

For comparison, Venezuela had a 57.15 murder rate in 2015 (per 100k habitants) while pre-war Syria had 2.23 in 2010.

My point being that many countries in LatAm live in a disguised civil war state and it's just "normal" (far from it, actually).

Wow. How much of that is due to drug cartels and gang violence though?

A lot. However drug cartels often also fill in as a form of local government in the areas they control. Additionally they are often just as well armed as the police minus things like helicopters and armored vehicles.

I wonder how the graph would look if you included police violence?

If the cartel is filling the void (granted the things they enforce are different) then you may as well make it an equal comparison.

I really wonder how the US graph would look if you included people killed by police.

http://killedbypolice.net/ provides the numbers for the US (it's up to 714 this year - 23 more than last year by this date).

Last year the US police killed 1162 persons, so that's a rate of 0.36 per 100k inhabitants.

In 2014, estimated murders in US is about 14,249. Estimated people killed by police is 1111 according to one site. So a 7-8% increase.

Washington Post has a neat interactive page I came across. The most shocking thing is the unashamed misandry when it comes to police killings. This year, only 25 women were killed versus 556 men. That's rather ... disproportional.

https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

http://www.killedbypolice.net/kbp2014

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shoo...

Police killings are hardly equivalent to gang and cartel killings.

Gangs murder people out of cold blood.

The overwhelming majority of police killings involve people who present an immediate danger to the innocent and are violent, dangerous criminals.

That's generally true, but there are places where the police and cartels are intermingled.

Yes, I was writing about the US specifically

> Additionally they are often just as well armed as the police minus things like helicopters and armored vehicles.

I wonder how big an impact the free flow of guns in Americas has had on the violence in the continent. It seems like one of the main reasons behind the extreme Mexican violence, at least, is the uncontrolled US weapons market.

Some but I'm guessing it is minimal. The countries from Mexico to the south have had unstable regimes and violence for a long time (probably because the Spanish institutions were exploitative and exacerbated differences between the landholders/other and Europeans/natives).

There have been lots of violent and terrorist movements from the 70s onward and even prior to that. Guns didn't help but the US is far from the only suppliers or cause.

Brazil is also a huge producer of guns. Given Venezuela's location at the edge of Central and South America, its hard to say where they would get most of their guns from.

People have been killing each other long before guns were invented, so I doubt very much it has any real effect. The "uncontrolled US weapons market?" Give me a break! The biggest seller of weapons to those countries is the US Government itself!

The scale of potential violence with guns vs. without guns should be obvious, so not commenting on that.

As for the US weapons flow to Mexico, there was a NPR article last year on the topic [1]. Wikipedia [2] mentions "many of the traceable weapons come from American weapons markets and festivals that do not have regulations for the buyers", which very much is the uncontrolled weapons market, right?

To be fair, the Wikipedia page also points to the other direction with "weapons [..] come from either government personnel who defect to the cartels, or are sourced from Central American black markets".

[1] http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/12/462781469/...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Drug_War#Gun_origins

Imagine the amount of suffering these countries could be spare their people if they just legalized drugs of any kind (it's not like it not freely available anyway), and just swept the cartles income from under them.

It's too late for that. The cartels are up and running in various industries like extortion and sex trafficking.

The Mexican cartels control politics anyway, so good luck just making them go away.

The drugs are mostly for export. Legalising them would run an increased risk of US military intervention.

Nothing would change much. The countries would still be exploited by small a oligarchy. They would still have one of the worst wealth distribution in the world. And they would still have a ultra violent police that routinely kills a lot of poor, black and indigenous people.

Infographic showing per capita murder rates for that region, by country: http://www.insightcrime.org/images/2017/January-2017/17-13-1...

Edit: Though, of course, countries like Mexico and Brazil would look more alarming if this map was broken down into provinces/states.

Syria being a dictatorship that makes people 'disappear' without official statistics, though.

Are you implying that the Salafist-Jihadist rebels in Syria don't do the exact same? Because they make people "disappear" too, in addition to brutally and savagely executing people in public (decapitation, mutilation, etc).

And I'm not just talking about the now-defunct Isil -- al-Qaeda (AKA Jabhat al-Nusra AKA Jabhat Fateh al-Sham AKA Hayat Tahrir al-Sham) are equally guilty of using religious pretext to subjugate and murder at their discretion.

There's more to the situation in Syria than what CNN and MSNBC spoon-feed the ignorant masses.

No, he's not implying that.

He's saying that prior to 2010 (pre civil war), a lot of people could quietly disappear in Syria due to the government.

CNN and MSNBC don't have anything to do with reading comprehension.

Exactly. Thanks.

Constant low grade civil war and dictators has been the offhand history of south america for a very long time, sadly. Definitely predates drug cartels and US influence.

See Darwin: http://imgur.com/Q68r0uD

From: http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?viewtype=image&...

I only raise this because there is a common and lazy supposition to Venezuela's state of affairs that goes something like, "It must be drug cartels or the US that caused all the problems, fundamentally." The country's problems are probably nuanced, deeper, and older.

Venezuela has one of the biggest petroleum reserves on the planet, and is responsible for 10% of America's oil imports. That is a lot lot lot lot lot lot lot of oil.

Only a geopolitical fool would allow a crisis/opportunity like this slip by without at least claiming a little side action. Even Goldman Sachs has skin in the game.

Which should make you question all of the American news on what's happening there.

Should it also question all German, British, Australian and so on news on what's happening there?

(Oh right they are all the U.S. sockpuppets of course)

Not particularly, no. One should merely be conscentintious regarding the potential for bias in all accounts of everything, but not to the point of self-confirming paranoid delusion. Being critical, even skeptical, should not depend on one's perception of who stands to gain or lose from something (in no limited part because even informed observers can end up being very wrong about who eventually profits from an undeniably complex sequence of events).

95% of export income in Venezuela is from oil. It's the lifeblood of the country.

And somehow it's still a shit country, apparently. Look at how Saudi, Emirati, Bruneian and Qatari live off of their smaller oil reserves. Something is clearly up with Venezuela's governance if they can have that much oil and do that badly.

Well, yes, the governance is horrible, but the oil is a bit deceptive.

It really isn't that good of oil and requires a higher price to refine. It is somewhat analogous to what the Canadians have to do to the oilsands production. Since it requires more work than say Saudi or North Dakota shale, it has a higher cost of production. Saudi's cost are very low, and the tech is making ND / TX fracking cheaper along with a new pipeline that cuts the cost of ND oil.

So, it requires a bit more competence and investment to get the value and compete in a global market. Sadly, Venezuela is incompetent.

It's still oil. At worst they can just not touch it at all or keep it on life support like coal is being treated in Poland due to miners' demands, it's a strain (and quite fucking unfair towards people who aren't miners at comfy labor union and politics infested governmental mines) but doesn't ruin the entire country on its own.

There are also plenty oil less countries that do well, what Venezuela is doing is just pure WTF, even considering their placement.

At the same time Maduro doesn't seem to give a shit and just presses on with his absolute devoted voter base, pure PR and attempts to meddle with the constitution.

Oh yeah, they are totally broken. I was pointing out the price point of their oil is higher than others in this downward pressure environment. It actually would take some basic competence to make it work which they have none. The government clearly doesn't understand the basics of running a grocery much less a country.

And if you don't want a new wave of refugees coming to the us, you shouldn't be backing a civil war, either.

If its okay for europe its okay for america.

I realize you're making a snarky political point, but, "Refugees are bad for a country's culture but we should still let them in if they exist" is a perfectly consistent position. It's trading off prevention of something unwanted but not an evil (cultural dilution) in order to prevent an actual evil (death of the refugees).

"We should let refugees in, but we should avoid creating refugees" is also a consistent moral position, and perhaps a more obvious one.

(Also, as an American citizen, the fact that we're not absorbing a significant fraction of the refugees in Europe when we have the resources to do so is absolutely unconscionable. I now feel like every time I was taught "never again" in grade school, it was just virtue signaling and we're actually totally fine with it happening again.)

> (Also, as an American citizen, the fact that we're not absorbing a significant fraction of the refugees in Europe when we have the resources to do so is absolutely unconscionable. I now feel like every time I was taught "never again" in grade school, it was just virtue signaling and we're actually totally fine with it happening again.)

And are instrumental in making it happen again.

> we're actually totally fine with it happening again.

Sadly, it is reality. It is happening all the time all over the world - Democratic Republic of Congo makes American press maybe once a year but has been awful for 2+ decades.

And as an American citizen I'm very glad that we aren't contributing to the problem by absorbing a lot of refugees. We should be providing aid, and if necessary, peacekeeping support so we can get these areas on their feet. The solution to "things are going to hell" isn't move everybody to the West, especially if we're absorbing all the smart people.

You are absorbing a lot of Venezuelans, they are just called asylees — rather than refugees — because we are able to arrive in the US with tourist visas.

Last year Venezuelans requesting political asylum passed China and is now the number 1 country. 3 years ago we weren't even on the top 10.

https://www.voanews.com/a/veneuela-china-us-asylum-requests/...

Refugees are accepted based on need. Priority is given to those from oppressed minorities, LGBT individuals, people with medical conditions and disabilities, etc. See https://www.state.gov/j/prm/releases/factsheets/2017/266447.... . We aren't systematically taking out the "smart people," even a massively expanded refugee program is unlikely to lead to a "brain drain" effect.

I agree that stabilizing the region is a better solution than taking in refugees. But stabilizing the region is much, much more difficult and requires time to work, during which individuals are suffering. The solution is to do both: resettle those in imminent danger, while providing aid and peacekeeping support to restore stability to the region.

Of course, the events in Syria have demonstrated, in my opinion, a serious apathy on the part of the west to actually providing that second point. What the US and NATO allies have done in Syria is the bare minimum, and in doing so has allowed dangerous groups to fester and grow, and created a massive humanitarian crisis. The attitude in certain circles seems to be that as long as the West doesn't get involved in this, they can't be held responsible for the outcome, while getting involved means the West owns the issue and any consequences. But the issue is already the West's responsibility, because we have the ability to act and choose not to. We bear some responsibility for what is happening in Syria, whether through action or inaction.

But even when NATO/the West does more than the bare minimum, the whole world criticizes, NATO fails at the mission, and we just spend a boatload of money. All I hear is how we're intervening in everybody's affairs, until something bad happens then everybody wants our help, but then not too much help, just enough, oh and if you accidentally kill a civilian than that means we have 1,000 terrorists or whatever rhetoric. People in Venezuela are calling for US airstrikes. Like seriously? After all the anti-US/West sentiment now when it comes up in your backyard you want us there? No thanks. Solve your own problems.

>But the issue is already the West's responsibility, because we have the ability to act and choose not to

I mean, that's your opinion, but I disagree with that completely. Syria, though, is far more complicated than a normal situation.

Totally agree it's way too early to be talking about airstrikes in Venezuela.

My opinion is that, when faced with a potential humanitarian crisis, we should evaluate our various options (including inaction) for what leads to the least casualties and highest quality of life for as many people, including secondary factors like the possibility of intervention inspiring terrorists. This model will be far from perfect, as it's impossible to determine true outcomes 5, 10, 20 years down the line, but it will be the best we can come up with. Then we pick the best option (which will often involve a judgment call), and inaction is treated neither more or less important than any other option. From a moral perspective, I think this is the best strategy available.

You raise an important point about optics and the opinion of the world abroad, but I frankly don't care. People can complain and rage against the West for it's policies and decisions all they want. All we can do is our best, and we should do so proudly and openly.

> People in Venezuela are calling for US airstrikes. Like seriously? After all the anti-US/West sentiment now when it comes up in your backyard you want us there? No thanks. Solve your own problems.

Everyone is deserving of help, even those that hate us, even hypocrites. If they are ungrateful, that's there prerogative. We don't do this for approval, we act because it's the best we can do.

I understand and accept that you disagree with my view, and that my view isn't the most popular opinion.

Help... sure, but this isn't unvarnished charity like caring for sick babies or saving people from flood waters.

They're asking the US to go and kill their enemies as a favour.

Be sure not to equate refugees with migrants.

You may call it cultural dilution, but I call it cultural suicide. Safe zones should be established.

Good morning jack_galt aka nolepointer. Creating a new account to evade a ban is an absolute violation of HN rules, and it's quite ironic that you're worried about migrants destroying your culture when you're insisting on forcing your way into this community in violation of our rules and our values.

In any case, sure, call it "cultural suicide." I still think the death of a culture is an acceptable price to pay to avoid the death of even one individual.

And no, in the real world you don't get safe spaces.

> I still think the death of a culture is an acceptable price to pay to avoid the death of even one individual.

'Culture' is a broad term, and encompasses the legal and government systems as well. When you say death of a culture, you probably have in mind things like traditional food, music, and clothes.

What about things like legal and social equality of the sexes, worker's rights, the right to free speech or a fair trial, socialized medicine, the educational institutions supporting all of this, and a police and legal system where corruption is rare? They're just as much a part of culture.

Different countries have different amounts of these cultural characteristics. Many lives, far more than one or a thousand, were lost fighting for them, or lost due to their absence, and few would throw them away as carelessly as you.

That's a very fair counterargument!

I think I do not see it as realistic that those things you mention are threatened by mass migration (whether of refugees or otherwise). As a concrete example, I live in Brooklyn, where there is a significant Jewish sub-community with their own cultural identity and in particular very conservative religious/political views. This community showed up in Brooklyn largely because they were part of the Jewish migration from eastern Europe in the early 20th century, escaping anti-Semitism there (so, this was not quite voluntary migration by people who chose America for American values). They're very successful in their own neighborhoods and absolutely maintain their own values, but don't seem to have had any effect on Brooklyn's liberal values or the culture at large; if anything we're one of the communities most stereotyped as liberal to a fault.

Usually when I see fears about cultural changes in European countries receiving migrants, that fear is expressed in racial or at most religious terms, and not in political terms. I see things like "your child will be going to school with Muslims," not "your child will be taught at school that the right to free speech doesn't cover blasphemy." Yes, you can argue in theory that the former could imply the latter. But that doesn't seem to be what's actually happening. (If it is, I'd appreciate being corrected!)

Also, at least as I see it, the lives that were lost fighting for legal and social equality of the sexes, worker's rights, etc. were almost universally not fights between European culture and non-European cultures. They were generally fights within a culture, and occasionally fights between different Western cultures (e.g., the US war for independence). I do not see people arguing against migration e.g. within the US or even between Western states, just from one particular racial/religious origin to any Western nation, whether or not that Western nation believes in legal equality of the sexes, socialized medicine, free speech, etc.

Please, would you explain what is "never again" for a non american?

Is it about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Defense_League ?

"never again" refers to the Holocaust. As in, never again will we let genocide happen. I'm not sure what the origins of the phrase is, but I (an American) was able to recognize what he was referring to immediately.

>prolonged civil war is worse than either side winning outright. Order over chaos.

That really depends on what timescale you care about and who's side you're on.

Would Korea be better off if the US never got involved? What about if the Chinese never stepped in?

What if the US had tried harder to prop up the Shah in Iran? What if the US hadn't backed Saddam in the 80s?

What if the US had never backed the Mujaheddin against the soviets? Backing them caused a lot of bad stuff but bleeding the USSR to death may have averted continuing the cold war and another Vietnam somewhere else in the world decades later.

Time only goes one way. You never get do-overs. You just get to make the best decision you can for the current situation.

I'm also in the camp of "we're not world police"

The current government caused the caos. As long as they are in power, it will continue.

America barely armed any Syrian rebels or protestors. Much of the DC establishment and military community wanted to arm them, but Obama was against it and therefore any real military aid was severely limited: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33997408

The conflict in Syria was started and escalated by Assad. It was prolonged by a number of actors, including Russia and Iran supporting Assad, and the gulf states / Turkey etc., supporting the other side.

America is a common boogeyman for whenever something goes wrong in the world (Venezuela's Maduro never misses an opportunity to blame the US for his own regime's multitude of failures and crimes).

If the press reported it correctly, weapons stolen from Iraq's army were a big enabling factor for the ISIS fast growth. They would invade a new region and get for free a big enough supply for invading the next place.

Venezuela, by its turn, is mostly Brazil and Argentina's fault. The US gave some financing to the current government, but it's a rounding error overall. The Brazilian government even helped organizing their dictatorship at the time it was trying to do the same here.

This is true just if you believe the right wing Brazilian press. Fox News would be ashamed of our journalist ethics.

What are you claiming to be false? That he and Chaves were financed by the same mafia running the Brazil and Argentina governments, or that our criminals helped on their logistics?

I'm not sure how I feel about your statement. I see a lot of Venezuelans with no recourse other than to start fighting. I don't see how order is more important than having a chance at a future at all? It is frustrating to watch a socialist country fail yet again. Downvote that statement all you want, it's the truth--the idea of ceding more and more power to a central state always ends up with dictatorship and now it's the world's problem. It's stupid human behavior over and over again and we never learn our lesson.

What I simply can't get my head around is why aren't there enough Venezuelans resisting this nightmare? Is everyone just a sheep, go along to get along, afraid to pop their head up lest it get lopped off by government thugs?

As a Venezuelan that left long ago, I feel you. I have had to argue for years with people here that Vzla isn't some socialist paradise.

The worst part? The opposition in Venezuela is socialist! Even without tampons and basic medicine they won't admit they are wrong.

> The opposition in Venezuela is socialist!

But are they communist? Or do they just support a welfare state? (Like many of Brazilian extreme right would be confused with the left if they ever traveled to the US. Is it the same case?)

I got the impression they were mostly formed by the business people that didn't flee your country.

Sorry to tell you, now you just need to found a political party in USA that won't support dictatorships around the world.

BTW, the USA is has a great dose of responsibility for mess in Venezuela is in. Maybe if it were not for your interventionist politics, Venezuela wouldn't be living all this radicalization.

Search in YouTube for the impressive documentary "The Revolution won't be televised".

I hate Maduro as much as any sane person should but these particular people were rallying the people and the army to do a coup. I'm not sure how well that would sit in a country like the US. You can do that under the flag of free speech?

Even more cynical there are still people in the Mercosur that back Maduro even now. I can imagine left leaning people would align with a socialist government initially but still after all this happened? Let me put your names on the list of people to never trust with a democracy again.

> You can do that under the flag of free speech?

Not legally, but the Declaration of Independence states that it's the right thing to do sometimes.

Disclaimer: I'm not informed or invested enough to have an opinion in this case, at least not yet.

What's really great about the Declaration of Independence is that that it lays down the rights of people and then spells out in a bulleted list more or less exactaly why those rights are being violated and therefore why the rebellion is justified. However, my favorite part of that document is this:

"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

I love it because it says to use caution and that rebelling for small things and things that will pass soon is not a just reason to rebel. And that a long standing government which is stable should be respected.

But it then switches gears and says people are more inclined to not do anything about it and that revolution is in fact a very scary thing - that suffering a bit is probably better in most peoples eyes.

And then the last part - when it has gone too far and the people have been abused so much that their claim to life, liberty and happiness has been taken from them under the thumb of a despot, then they must act in violent manner.

Saying that, today in the USA we are quite far away from crossing the "light and transient" part so a conspiracy to overthrow the USA government would not be justified. You could make the argument Venezuela is in a transient phase as well since this is a monetary crisis created by very bad policy. However, their leader is making some pretty dubious claims to power currently, using a crisis to consolidate his parties rule on the people.

>You can do that under the flag of free speech?

These days you can't even carry large amounts of cash in the US. Free speech as an ideal would allow for calling for violence as a last stand against oppression.

As for what you can legally get away with in the US, assuming you aren't wealth enough to afford a good legal defense, you do not have any rights any more. If those in power decide to ruin your day, you have a chance of ending up in prison despite being completely innocent. Maybe the ACLU/EFF/etc. will defend you depending upon what they actually try to charge you with, but even that isn't a guarantee with how the legal system current works.

That's a huge exaggeration.

It's not that huge--just compare what is illegal in NY State versus most of the others. The discrepancies are rising even in the US and our freedoms are being hemmed in more and more each go around. All because people believe the lie that the government that is all-powerful can give us all the peace and security we desire.

he's not wrong. police seize more cash through civil asset forfeiture (without due process) than all robbers. its pretty sad

You should read what happens to people who cause some high ranking police officer to develop a strong personal grudge against them. It can be very brutal, and the unlucky ones end up in prison because they took a plea deal for a few years instead of decades due to trumped up charges and possibly planted evidence.

> Even more cynical there are still people in the Mercosur that back Maduro even now

Definitely. Brazilian Workers' Party (ruled the country for the last 13-14 years and drove it into the worst recession in a century) just signed a letter last week offering their full support for Maduro.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-07-31/latin-ame...

> Even more cynical there are still people in the Mercosur that back Maduro even now. I can imagine left leaning people would align with a socialist government initially but still after all this happened?

Not just Mercosur, the leader of the UK Labour party is a long term Chavez supporter, and still hasn't come out against all of this.

These days, the American dream is more apt to be realized in South America, in places such as Ecuador, Venezuela and Argentina, where incomes are actually more equal today than they are in the land of Horatio Alger. Who's the banana republic now?

- Bernie Sanders (on his site, https://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/must-read/close-the-...)

Yeah. Sanders and Corbyn are strange figureheads really. I've spoken to Labour politicians who think that Corbyn hasn't changed his mind since 1983. They all are still carrying all of this pointless and discredited Cold War era baggage.

A friend of Corbyn's has praised North Korea and Stalinism, and Corbyn appointed him to a major position in his election campaign: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/jeremy-corbyn-defends-...

They do the job of right-wing ideologues for them by conflating social democracy with communism and authoritarianism. They still have not learnt the lessons of Orwell and Solzhenitsyn about the nonsense of arbitrarily taking sides.

This type of situation is actually the one that makes me believe in the long-term viability of cryptocurrencies. If i were living in venezuela right now, i would buy as many bitcoins as i could with my money, as soon as the president prevents regular currency trading through regular banks (which shouldn't take too long to happen, unless it's already the case).

There are decent size mining farms in Venezuela, the government has recently started to seize them. (in Spanish) https://criptonoticias.com/sucesos/desmantelan-centro-mineri...

What if the government shuts down internet access ? Then how do you buy bitcoins? Or sell the ones you have for a local currency?

I don't see how Bitcoin is a great solution here when it depends on utilities managed by the government for its liquidity...

Move all your savings from your bank account into bitcoins ( as long as you have à internet access, that's correct). Then all you need is to store your wallet in a secured cloud storage.

Once internet is completely gone of course all you're left with is buying diamonds or gold, put as much as you can in your luggage and just run.

Not diamonds. Thanks to debeers, they're far more expensive to buy than their resale value would be.

(The resale value is closer to fair, at that. Diamonds aren't actually rare.)

I would be surprised if existing capital controls wouldn't prevent you from doing just that. Not every country is as liberal as the West when it comes to moving money around.

isn't bitcoin less monitored by states ? i don't see how they could prevent people from trading bitcoins unless they resort to total shutdown of the internet. But maybe i'm not informed enough.

well, by fining you for tax evasion or putting you in jail. Sure, they can't physically stop you from trading bitcoin, but they sure can make sure nobody will be willing to trade it.

Bitcoint itself is less monitored but to buy bitcoin (as opposed to mining or earning it) you have to use the money in your bank account. And if there are currency controls you won't be able to take your Venezuelan bank account and transfer the money to a US bitcoin holder in return for bitcoins. And I doubt many people in Venezuela who have bitcoins will want to trade them for Venezuelan currency.

That's an issue i hadn't anticipated indeed.

Wouldn't it possible to buy real goods in venezuela using native currency ( like , say electronic equipment, or maybe something that doesn't loose as much value in secondhand market), and sell it online against bitcoins ?

I'm sure you could do it somehow but I wouldn't think it would be any easier to use Bitcoin than US dollars. The fundamental difficulty of working around the Venezuelan banking system is there in either case.

How is that different from just about any other kind of foreign-domicile financial asset? Just buy US bonds, for Christ's sake...

i wouldn't know how to do that without going through my bank.

Good luck finding someone to take the other side of that trade

You can't buy anything useful with Bitcoins. Most Venezuelans trade their bolivars for US dollars or other stable foreign fiat currency on the black market to escape inflation.

I don't think they accept bitcoins at the Venezuelan black market

I love the bitcoin concept, but it's clear most of their fans don't understand much about how the real world works

How do you propose they trade Bolivars for BTC? Do you think VNZL mines enough to have a local market? See the restrictions on foreign currency purchases in VNZL (and what is effectively two exchange rates)

How do you propose the bitcoins are subsequently used? For buying basic items (like toilet paper, which gets smuggled from Brazil)

Airlines can't repatriate their earnings from VNZL. Oh I know, they should buy bitcoin! /s

But I assure you most of the well offs already have their earnings safely in a Miami bank account.

You can buy with dollars on the black market, bitcoin is trivialy exchangeable for dollars. You have to mine them, but power is heavialy subsidized...

You can buy USD paper currency in Venezuela, how do you buy bitcoins with that?

I'm not sure what's the story with credit cards there, but I assume the limits are strict.

>David, 27, a computer scientist living in Maracay, imports basic staples to help feed his family. He purchases Amazon gift cards through the bitcoin-friendly website eGifter, and then channels his orders through a Miami-based courier service.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/04/venezuelan...

That is one way to get the money out. As the article points out, others keep the money in bitcoin (which would have net them a handsome profit lately), but presumably you could also get an overseas bank account denominated in dollars.

> i would buy as many bitcoins as i could with my money

Which would mean that there would be someone selling as many of their bitcoins as possible for your money. If the situation is so dire that buying bitcoins is the obvious solution, who is going to sell them to you?

Buying Bitcoin would only be useful in this case if you intended to flee the country, to get around the currency export limits.

Buying them as a store of wealth would only be useful back when the Bolivar was worth something - as it stands, the black market exchange rate is several times the most generous official exchange rate (there are 3 official exchange rates for some reason). So buying BTC now would only make sense if the government currency had any further to fall.

Can someone explain me how the country with the biggest oil reserves in the world can be in economic problems, that lead to shortages? Even with an incompetent government this seems highly unlikely to happen to me.

I'm not against socialism but this particular form of it was basically handing out money for nothing. In short term the poor gain a bit but it does not do much for the economy in the long term.

Luckily there's a neoliberal right wing government ready to take over and run the country into the ground with a bunch of new dogmas, like Argentina went from Kirchner to Macri.

Ah, the no-true-socialist fallacy.

You can't just say their political system wasn't responsible for this, especially when it's how these types of governments always end up.

Reading Jacobin articles on Venezuela has been fascinating. They're fairly honest about facts-on-the-ground, which makes for some interesting contortions to avoid criticizing socialism.

The two leading stances seem to be "it would have been totally fine except for enemy action" and "sure, chronic shortages are a predictable issue with not paying for things, but at least the starvation is distributed equally!"

Yeah it is definitely nothing at all to do with their hyper-reliance on oil.

> Ah, the no-true-socialist fallacy.

No. In order for this to be a fallacy, it actually has to be fallacious. Many years I have been on Slashdot, Reddit and HN and seen this bandied about. I do not believe it is a fair assessment.

One of the core tenets of Socialism is collective worker control over social means of production and its democratic management. There have not even been plans in Venezuela to put this into place.

Another is the abolition of the functions of private (i.e bourgeois) property via seizure. This has not happened and many businesses employing wage labour continue unimpeded.

Another is the abolition of wage labour. This has not happened nor has there been any apparent effort put towards it.

Another is production for use (i.e maximising use-value) rather than for exchange, exchange containing within it the operation of the Law of Value. Almost all goods continue to be produced for the purpose of exchange value maximisation.

Another is the removal of money, as Engels said in Anti-Duhring, "Money is already contained in embryo in the concept of value; it is value, only in developed form." This has not happened nor has there been any effort toward it.

A possible replacement for money is the adoption of non-exchangable labour vouchers, a possible suggestion by Marx and Proudhon for "lower stage Communism". This has not happened nor has there been any effort toward it.

Venezuela exhibits all aspects of the capitalist mode of production. If you think that "Socialism" means "government doing stuff" or "government gives away money to people", you are either using a very strange and ahistorical definition of Socialism, or you are wrong. The actions of Venezuela more closely resemble a weak social democratic model.

So what exactly are you trying to say?

I mean you are wrong. My family had their farm, property, and businesses taken away. I've argued for years against socialists that its not some socialist paradise. now that its impossible to hide, people still don't admit their wrong. this is on bernie sander's site to this day:

- Sanders (https://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/must-read/close-the-...)

Instead they just deflect about oil prices. Are oil prices shooting protests and abolishing free speech? Is Dubai (with less money) able to stock tampons and basic medicine?

I apologise, I did not mean to say that it hasn't happened at all, rather, it has not happened on the scale that would be required for the abolition of private property. I am curious, what kind of business was it?

I can't really defend Sanders on that point, ultimately he and I have different goals, my goal is not to reduce income inequality, but rather to create the material conditions such that things like "income inequality" cannot manifest themselves.

The thing I see failing within socialism is individual work effort--everyone comes to believe that work is someone else's deal and not theirs or they become discouraged by the high taxes and simply go Gault. Then the crackdowns begin, further eroding morale until everyone is just beaten down, poor, and decrepit in body and spirit. Then they are ruled over with an iron fist.

Marxism is the bane of humanity--the ultimate promise of something for nothing which is the biggest lie ever told.

>The thing I see failing within socialism is individual work effort--everyone comes to believe that work is someone else's deal and not theirs

Socialism isn't about having other people work for you, it is about bringing about the necessary conditions such that the average amount of work per person required in society is reduced by eliminating what Marx terms 'contradictions' which are inherent in the capitalist mode of production. Nor do I believe it is about high taxes, or any taxes at all - in fact a key component of Socialism is the withering away of the state as the functions are either abandoned for not fitting material conditions or transferred to the proletariat.

>Marxism is the bane of humanity--the ultimate promise of something for nothing which is the biggest lie ever told.

I don't think that's true at all, and it's a gross misrepresentation that a Socialist society is a "promise of something for nothing". There are a great many people who would benefit by the kind of labour-saving optimisations that a Socialist mode of production introduces, especially those who put in something and get very close to nothing. As Russian anarcho-Communist Kropotkin said in The Conquest of Bread:

>In virtue of this monstrous system, the son of the worker, on entering life, finds no field which he may till, no machine which he may tend, no mine in which he may dig, without accepting to leave a great part of what he will produce to a master. He must sell his labour for a scant and uncertain wage. His father and his grandfather have toiled to drain this field, to build this mill, to perfect this machine. They gave to the work the full measure of their strength, and what more could they give? But their heir comes into the world poorer than the lowest savage. If he obtains leave to till the fields, it is on condition of surrendering a quarter of the produce to his master, and another quarter to the government and the middlemen. And this tax, levied upon him by the State, the capitalist, the lord of the manor, and the middleman, is always increasing; it rarely leaves him the power to improve his system of culture. If he turns to industry, he is allowed to work — though not always even that — only on condition that he yield a half or two-thirds of the product to him whom the land recognizes as the owner of the machine.

Europe has been riding an unprecedented wave of stability and prosperity after the Second World War while many countries adopted a form of socialism. And if they wouldn't try to ignore problems around immigration so hard for the past decades the left wing would probably still be quite popular.

The left wing has grown in popularity in the UK over the last while - look at the last election results.

While a majority voted for Brexit, a movement very much aligned with alt right. There's not a clear message here but for some reason right wing popular politics are on a rise where the left more or less stands still in terms of ideas.

I didn't mean Brexit - which I didn't think was that closely aligned with the normal left-right spectrum. After all, the left wing in the UK regarded the EU as a capitalist plot and the right wing regarded it as a socialist plot!

What was popular were Corbyn's promised bread and circuses as in free university tuition for instance. He has subsequently retracted that promise. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/0/shelving-corbyns-tuit...

> You can't just say their political system wasn't responsible for this

He didn't?

> I'm not against socialism but this particular form of it was basically handing out money for nothing.

Chronic underinvestment in the people and equipment needed to get that oil out. It's not a simple "just dig until you find oil".

There's also the government taking over private companies and running them poorly(surprise). Which leads to less investment and production which leads to less tax revenue, and the downward spiral keeps picking up speed.

It's South America. I figure there's a ton of corruption and just plain stupidity. Look at how China runs things--they don't fix anything, they just build stuff and let if fall apart. It's a different way of thinking.

Oil prices dropped from $100 a barrel to $40, their economy relies almost solely on oil exports. There's some amount that is explained by corruption and poor investments over the past decade, but primarily it's the oil price.

So are Saudi Arabia's, yet they are not in the same situation.

Saudi Arabia banked funds more effectively - they have the fifth and twelfth largest sovereign wealth funds in the world. Venezuela has roughly .1% of that, for the same population.

Beyond that, Saudi Arabia has substantial infrastructure development to pull oil out of low-value land. Venezuela has ongoing fights over which reserves should be recovered (it's under valuable rainforest and watersheds) and excess spending has steadily undermined infrastructure - their break-even price is ~15% higher than Saudi Arabia's.

So: Venezuela sank their wealth into some mix of corruption and admirable initiatives that nevertheless haven't paid themselves back. Saudi Arabia saved the money and drove down production costs.

Saudi oil is also much easier to pump out of the ground and refine, even if you discount infrastructure investments. Venezuela oil is notorious for being the opposite (not their fault, this is just a curse of geology).

Our general idea of how life is for a Saudi is lacking, sources suggest a 25% poverty rate^ in the country. They execute protesters and journalists covering the poverty issue, and have been trying to shift attention away with war in Yemen.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jan/01/saudi-arabia-r...

It's called resource curse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse

This podcast from the BBC was really helpful to me in explaining it: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p051zkj8

Years of harassing the foreigners who had been maintaining the oil machinery out of the country and not reinvesting any of the oil profits in maintaining the machinery. Then oil prices crash.

An incompetent government is more likely to fuck up their economy when it's based on an easy to extract resource, like oil or diamonds.

When resources are easy to extract, you don't need to attract foreign capital investments (for example, by protecting property rights) and you don't need a highly skilled, well educated population to work the oil fields and mines.

In other words, you can afford to turn into a dictatorship.

Their oil is heavy, which means that it needs more complicated refining than say that of Saudi Arabia. That is not normally a problem, but due to government corruption the local oil company can't do it, and no foreign company dares to invest.

How long until Maduro and his Goldman Sachs allies are bailed out by the IMF?

http://money.cnn.com/2017/05/30/news/economy/goldman-sachs-v...

In the end it will be the rest of the world (with most of the support coming from US tax payers) that bails out this country. Maduro will continue his reign and the debt will continue to pile-on. The money from the IMF will go directly to Goldman Sachs to first pay off debts, and then will go directly to Maduro.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-imf-g20-worldbank-venezuel...

The same thing that has happened in Latin/South America since the 70s.

I don't think Maduro will get out of that alive.

He could have run away last year, but now I don't think he has anywhere to go.

The strongest argument against gun control you will ever find.

Not to say anything about gun control, but being Latin America, they could as easily, have been communists arming themselves to overthrow a right-wing government.

Would you also be supportive of them?

What do you mean by "right-wing"?

'Right-wing', as in opposite of 'left-wing'

The term goes back to the French Revolution:

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/26029/what-is-th...

I'm supportive of widespread gun ownership (or the right to acquire guns) so that the public can not be easily pushed around by some tyrant and his brownshirts/paramilitary/secret-police/goons. Goons not so useful if they face the threat of armed resistance. Does that answer your question?

Then you'll be happy in chaotic countries where gun ownership is high, like Somalia and Yemen. Still hasn't helped them solve their problems, however. I'm not sure it has ever worked, but it definitely allows for self defense when law and order break down.

Happier in an orderly country where gun ownership is high, like Switzerland. I'm not saying it's the only thing you need.

Switzerland is one of those high responsibility countries though, so you might not be so happy living there. In that, they require you to store your gun safely at home, they have the right to verify that, you have to own liability insurance if your weapon isn't just for militia reasons (and if it is, usually the bullets are stored somewhere else other than your home).

I'm all for gun ownership the Swiss way in America, but many pro-gun people would go nuts over the responsibility aspect. Same with everything else in Switzerland (a lot of enforced personal responsibility, e.g. you have to buy health insurance, where do you think Romney/Obama got Romney/ObamaCare from?). With rights should come responsibilities.

Pretty good argument against socialism as well; since it seems that they piled on the expenses until they either had to compromise services or compromise fundamental property rights. The obvious choice for one's own term in office is to compromise property rights.

Now, say, what country do we know of which prospered under a non-socialist government which recognized the right to keep and bear arms, and strong recognition of property rights...

P.S. Consider replying before you vote, it'll be a heck of a lot more convincing than a decreasing counter of non-argument.

You chose the wrong word when you said "socialism". Socialism is a spectrum. Many aspects of the US are socialist. Scandinavia has implemented notably socialist policies. When was the last time they 'compromised fundamental property rights'?

I think you're arguing against a certain type of authoritarianism.

> You chose the wrong word when you said "socialism". Socialism is a spectrum.

Gun control is also a spectrum, but you can call it gun control for every step on the scale, not just when every gun is banned for everyone.

> Many aspects of the US are socialist.

Yes, and those aspects are an immense burden on society, and often achieve the precise opposite of the stated goals. To the extent that these policies successfully achieve goals, it is unclear that these goals weren't already being met. The policies characteristic of the "war on poverty" are not correlated with any positive outcome for the rate of poverty.

> Scandinavia has implemented notably socialist policies.

To the extent that each Scandinavian country is socialist, it is having trouble funding the policies. Norway noticed this was happening in the early '80s and course corrected by slashing taxes and regulations. Sweden had a lot more runway, but they're starting to feel the weight of the promises their social programs made. Denmark could not be described as very socialist today. Sweden is both the most socialist, and the most troubled of the three Scandinavian nations despite having a lot of industrial momentum in engineering and energy.

New Zealand famously rolled back their welfare state and saw success in doing so. I think they have slid some since then, but it's worth noting.

Yeah indeed, because they wouldn't have been able to arrest them if they had guns of course.. \s

How so? How would having a gun in a cupboard or somewhere help you in a situation like this? Once you are at gunpoint it's game over, regardless of gun control. It's easy to imagine this is hollywood where the hero easily escapes from gunpoint with kung fu ninja skills while the evil mastermind explains the master plan but that isn't a realistic scenario.

EDIT: is it just me or did this say something about airports before?

A few years ago the government banned civilian ownership of guns. Then, a few months ago they announced the arming of a half-million strong militia. Now they are rounding up political opposition at gunpoint. Yes, I do think it is easier to send your goons to round up enemies when only your goons have guns, and don't need to worry about getting their heads blown off. Now with they can proceed to round up whoever else they need to take care of.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-4419630/Venezuel...

An armed society can retaliate and react to these types of actions. As they add up and become too much an armed society can gather to fight a despot who has continually abused their power to take away inalienable rights of the people. An armed society can more easily get the backing of military generals and form a credible resistance quickly. An armed society might make a potential despot think twice about going down that route.

In the scenario you describe, you're right. But as a government continues this type of abuse eventually an armed society can rebel against it. It is their responsibility to rebel against it.

An unarmed society is crippled in this regard.

Well, because when they come knocking at your door to carry you off you get to shoot one or two before they kill you. Those one or two will not make it to the next house. Do you understand how this disincentive works now?

Dictatorship in full swing. Please send weapons.

Whatever we do, we should not do that.

I spent quite a bit of time traveling through Central America. The third or fourth time you hear about massacres by us backed armies, or hear people tell you that they were made orphans when their entire family was murdered by death squads who were armed by America, you have to question the wisdom of backing armed rebellions.

And if you look at the planes parked in the wrong hangars at 9.11 by us backed insurgents, you never know what your backing up will accomplish.

Agreed. The middle east tends to get all the press, but IMO we have more blood on our hands in South America. I'm typically of the opinion that the US as global hegemon has been a net-positive for the world, but our history of incompetent meddling south of our border is almost indefensible.

Yeah, because getting the power via the armed way it's the right thing to do. There's terrorism going on you know? They are planting bombs on policeman, and burning civilians with homemade weapons.

Not really an HN article? Also, I've got tired of downvoting stupid comments on this thread so I've flagged the whole thing.

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