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Comment by dmix | Hacker News Reader

> The card is increasingly linked by the government to subsidized food, health and other social programs most Venezuelans rely on to survive.

I really don't understand how Venezuelans haven't revolted and given up on their failed socialist economic experiment. Typically lack of food has been the spark that starts these revolutions, but the failure of even basic services there has been going on for years now. How much more authoritarianism without any economic gain can these people take?

Are enough regular people really getting enough handouts from the government to not want to get rid of them? Is the propoganda machine working that effectively to blind them?

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When the government takes guns away from the masses it gets a little harder to pull off. Venezuela is a narco state at this stage too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narco-state#Venezuela

First article I found on it on Google: https://www.activistpost.com/2016/05/did-you-know-that-venez...

BBC Link about the ban: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-18288430

If the US army turned on its citizens do you think it wouldn't go through ANY resistance like a hot knife through butter?

You mean like it has in Afghanistan?

I live in the southeast. There are pockets here that would be very tough to take. It would be a Vietnam situation. So, yes. The 2nd amendment still has deterrent power.

It is not a matter of hard or easy, is a matter of simple economics: 2nd amendment = high price to pay, no 2nd amendment = easy peasy.

This is a terrible form of romance America has adopted recently, and it's costing the country a lot. 2nd amendment proponents have been singing praises of it while the 1st amendment has continued to be curtailed. This decline started under clinton with restrictions on media revenue being lifted but it has gotten so much worse in the past year.

I've no doubt that guerilla resistance would continue for years, but the imposition of petrol rationing alone would curtail almost all rebel attempts to hold anything of any importance within about two weeks.

If you can successfully blockade an interior group, sure. But that interior group has the ability to strike back and away from their interior that they want to hold. America's infrastructure is totally not hardened. The millions in prisons also make for a potential pool of manpower. All I'm really saying is any actual conflict would play out a lot different than the real civil war we had, or any of our foreign continent excursions where the enemy can't really strike back.

It wouldn't be a Vietnam situation, it would be an Iraq situation. Much more aerial surveillance and drone strikes.

Only if the government is stupid enough to take on them head-to-head. Any half-competent dictator will sell his vision first, saying how America is in danger and it's time for the freedom-loving patriots to take back their country...

...And then he can sit back and enjoy the fireworks from the safety of Washington DC, while his followers are doing the dirty work.

Those 2A arguments never really made sense to me: what makes you think your gun-toting neighbor (or even yourself) will be on the right side of freedom?

Who do you think makes up the US Army?

The US Army, or any other branch of service for that matter, isn't going to turn on its citizens: it would more likely turn on any leaders that order them to do so.

And don't discount the fact that among the civilians are a good number of individuals who were former military.

the army could certainly be convinced to turn on its own citizens, they just have to label those people as Traitors, Terrorists, Criminals, Gangs, Outsiders, Communists, Muslims, something other than "us".

And, specifically, they'd turn on those labeled peoples one at a time to single them out, it has happened many times before.

Kent State happened. Waco happened. There are ongoing protests about the willingness of police to shoot civilians. Given a sufficiently big breakdown of public order, especially along partisan lines, there would be talking heads on the news demanding that the army go in and shoot "looters".

Waco happened

Waco was the cops wasn’t it? Who are always happy to shoot random civilians.

"Kent State happened. Waco happened."

The Kent State shootings were in 1970. The Branch Davidian compound siege was in 1993.

In the former case, the Guardsmen involved claimed to have fired in self-defense and were cleared of both criminal and civil charges. In the latter, the military assets were limited to a few Bradley fighting vehicles on the perimeter and combat engineering vehicles -- which were actually used for breaching and wall-breaking -- under the direction (if not operation) by ATF and FBI, and no military units engaged in fire.

In neither case were military units ordered to suppress or attack civilians. And compared to the number of training related deaths that occur in the military during peacetime, the number of fatalities from the incidents you list (although tragic) pale in comparison over the same time period.

Who do you think makes up the Venezuelan army?

Who do the members of the Venezuelan army pledge their loyalty to: an individual (such as Maduro) or a set of laws and established regulations (such as their Constitution)?

And if the latter, does that Constitution or do those regulations outline and reinforce the importance of individual rights, or simply the importance of compliance to the State?

Do members of the Venezuelan army receive extensive and annual training/re-training regarding the laws of land warfare, treatment of captives, and expected conduct under the Geneva Convention and any other applicable rules of engagement?

Are members of the Venezuelan army professional soldiers or conscripts?

Are units of the Venezuelan army composed of individuals from the same geographical area, and stationed in a different geographical area?

Answers to these questions should give one insight as to the difference between any Third World army (Venezuelan or otherwise) and those of the United States military.

Parts will, parts won't. It's not as unitary an entity as most people would like to believe.

The US army is composed of the citizens of the United States and is held together by a small elite run by the officer corps and high level civilians GS-13 and above. I estimate this to be under 5000 people. Unless a convincing narrative is formulated, US soldiers will refuse to fight their own. One way to accomplish this is to paint "the enemy" as unsophisticated ludditical racists.

What's the difference in any other national army (besides the budget of course)

US military budget: $590b; 3% GDP

Venezuala military budget: $2.6b; 1% GDP

Your analogy needs work.

EDIT: Corrected US military budget %GDP value.

Your US numbers are very weirdly off. I've never seen someone try to claim US defense spending was 15% of GDP.

US military budget: ~$700 billion, 3.4% of GDP.

US GDP will be close to $20.50 trillion for 2018. Your 15% figure implies a GDP of about $4 trillion (close to the size of Germany's economy).

The US will add roughly $1 trillion to its GDP figure in 2018. That's nearly the size of Mexico's entire economy (15th largest economy), added in just one year.

You're right, I was hasty and copied the % of the federal budget instead of % GDP.

In any case, the US military is much better equipped than the Venezuelan military.

In a focused area, sure. In general, not really. Take all law enforcement in America, combine that with the entire US Military, and then just look at able-bodied adults in, say, the 20-60 age group. The civilians vastly outnumber law enforcement, and there are enough guns in America already to arm every last one of them.

Most revolutions are not won by rebels successfully shooting their way to power, but by general strikes.

Are you joking, there are almost constant mass protests? [0] Also there was this 'drone assassination attempt' [1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuelan_protests_(2014%E2%8...

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-45073385

Also more than 2 millions are said to have fled the country (out of 30 something millions). [1]

[1] https://www.euronews.com/2018/08/28/venezuela-exodus-people-...

[edit] spelling (thank 2RTZZSro!)

*fled

Then what? A revolution isn't going to fix the economy and meanwhile a lot of people would have even less to live on. Venezuela needs more rule of law, not less.

Are you kidding? It's the current governments policy that has caused all of their issues. Their "rule of law" is the problem.

A peaceful transition is always better for people living through it. Their current government is indeed terrible but minority governance is a really hard situation to fix.

So, what changes specifically is your revolution demanding?

I don't know, maybe some real free elections? It seems the current government is rigging the elections: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/05/21/612918548...

The answers to your questions are: yes and yes. As long as the current regime has money to keep their coalition together, they are going nowhere. (as long as oil keeps coming out of the ground, money will be there)

But the oil isn't coming out of the ground. Production has been steadily declining. https://tradingeconomics.com/venezuela/crude-oil-production

They have tried that, but the government sends out his thugs (some of them civilian but armed) and the casualties happen and people retreat.

They don't have firearms. The loyalists and the government do. What do you expect the people to do? You can't revolt and take out the socialist tyrants if you don't have weapons.

Of course you can, by a mass refusal to work. Weapons are useful in a revolution but realistically rebels will always be guerrillas vastly outmatched by conventional forces in any developed country, so the possibility of shooting one's way to success (as opposed to making total oppression expensive) is near zero.

You can't win a revolution without significant popular support, and you can't get that if your only strategy is to shoot your antagonists because it's not clear how you differ from them in that case.

firearms are a factor, but the idea that they are the only factor is demonstrably wrong.

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