This must have been what it was like in the late Roman Empire, when successive emperors tried to stave off decline by decreeing how the economy would work.
Eg, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incomes_policy .
In the US, Truman placed the railroad under US military control in 1950, and I recall at least threats of having military take over coal mines both in the US and UK, because of worker strikes.
You're using this as an example of fending off economic decline?
> GDP Growth Rate in the United States...[reached] an all time high of 16.90 percent in the first quarter of 1950...
The referenced article concerns oil mining placed under military control, so I thought it was relevant to point out that the US has also placed privately owned critical infrastructure under military control.
If there's any meaning to my comment, it's the suggestion to look to more recent history for compelling analogies, rather than ancient Rome.
Where is there notable about Venezuela which makes this comparison insightful? Wouldn't it be more insightful to compare it to, say, the decline of the British Empire?
Has Venezuela, like Rome, had a long series of costly wars (including civil wars) which took money out of the government coffers?
Has Venezuela, like Rome, lost a revenue source by no longer being able to expand into new territory?
Does Venezuela have anything like the Vandal pirates which disrupted Roman trade?
Has it undergone a partition like that of the Eastern and Western Roman Empires, where the money diverted into strengthening Constantinople meant that Rome was less defended against invasion?
Is the Venezuelan military increasingly peopled by foreign soldiers of fortune who have little loyalty to the country and might instead attack it?
Because all I get from the comparison is that there's hyperinflation going on caused by poor government and a loss of income. Which has been true of a lot of countries.
If I am betrayed by a friend and say "this is what Caesar must have felt like", I am not saying that my friend's betrayal is the most like that of Caesar's, nor that Caesar's betrayal is the most similar historical betrayal to my mine. It just means "oh, now I know more about what that feels like".
I lost a glove. What I felt must be like what Luke Skywalker felt when he lost his hand.
I set a PR of 7:15 on running a mile. That must be like what Bannister felt when he broke the 4 minute mile.
But montrose made more than a simple comparison. The implication is that high-level government attempts to control economic policy is what lead to the similarity.
I disagree that assessment, and pointed to other attempts at high-level government control of economic policy, with a variety of results, to show that there isn't a strongly causal connection.
Plus, there are other factors which are involved. Why should we think that the views of Romans in the late Western Roman Empire were similar to what's going on in Venezuela now?
I will translate your suggestion like this:
-Either be a full-on dictatorship OR
-Be a modern democratic state
China that infinite8s mentions in his comment could also be considered as such.
Heck, Franco's Spain lasted for 30+ years...
It's been a while, but I think Venezuela was one of Ian Bremmer's prime examples.
That's an ideological statement. One can be a "police state" and has advanced technology and products -- free market not required.
In fact most of the technical and product developments in 18th and 19th century took place in markets quite far from "free", and of course Nazi Germany (the de fact "police state") was quite competent technologically.
> Truman placed the railroad under US military control in 1950
These seem like non-sequiturs to me. The economy in the 50s was booming. Truman took control of the trains to mitigate the effects of a worker strike during wartime, when it was important that the trains be running efficiently.
So, a tried and tested way (from the ancient Greek loan relief [1], to laws to suppress the Great Depression, to all kinds of monetary policies used worldwide), except in periods of cultural and political decline.
Every country decrees how their economy should work. That's what central banks, laws, regulatory bodies and fiscal spending are all about.
Venezuela's economy is tanking because it was so heavily dependent upon oil revenue and because oil prices collapsed. That really is it. This isn't about socialism or capitalism or central planning or markets. This is all about oil, dutch disease caused by oil and political and economic instability caused by the fight over those resources.
The same thing happened in the 90s when Venezuela could hardly be called socialist and the resulting economic and political turmoil propelled Chavez in to power. Back then it was all "capitalism's fault".
Of the countries 'blessed' with massive natural resources - relative to the size of the economy, I can think of precisely one that hasn't been fucked up by it.
Edit: -2 points and 0 counter-arguments. Apparently the idea that Venezuela (along with African and Middle Eastern countries), with vast natural resources get screwed up politically and economically by them is not a popular one, but nobody really wants to say why they think that...
Norway ?
Nonetheless, it doesn't appear to be having a positive effect on your politics. Imagine if people like Gina Rinehart started to dominate.
Largely because there are few countries that are quite that oil dependent. Russia's a screw up but even they aren't as oil dominated as Venezuela, for instance.
I suppose there's Iraq...
>the government's extreme antagonism to non-oil businesses
This antagonism dates back to the 2001 coup in which the leaders of those non-oil businesses banded together in an attempt to unseat Chavez and replace the democratically elected government with tanks.
Generally this kind of behavior is strongly frowned upon, when it's done against a government that is friendly to the US. But, when it is done against a government that nationalized US oil interests, the propaganda wheel spins the other way: as you said, "it's not them that were hostile to him, it's him that is too hostile to them".
Anyways, can point fingers all you like in that conflict (and all sides do), but the fact remains that the conflict simply would not have happened without the spoils of the oil resources to fight over.
Corruption was similarly driven by the vast natural resources, just as happens in Africa, in the Middle East, in Russia... in every country in the world with vast economy-dominating natural resources except that sole unafflicted country - Norway.
It stretches credulity even further to believe that Venezuela's disastrous economic policies were the necessary and unavoidable consequence of a oil company strikes and short-lived military coup 16 years ago which was as unsuccessful as Castro's own attempts to overthrow an elected government with tanks a decade earlier. Especially not with periodic coup attempts and more regular mass strikes being an occupational hazard of being a Latam president regardless of oil wealth or lack thereof.
Here, let me get you started: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehmed_the_Conqueror#Administr...