Comment by fabiandesimone | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fabiandesimone | Hacker News Reader

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Venezuela should be a much richer country but was controlled by a cabal of wealthy families that siphoned the wealth off

I have heard that argument before...many times. Is a very poor argument.

Chavez has been in power for 13 years with the highest oil prices in Venezuelan history. Most of that money went to their personal pockets. How do I know this you might ask?

It happens that it is LAW. You see, the Chavez government created a LAW that would allow them to set the national budget price, at the time was at 70$ I think (don't quote me on that) and any amount above that would go to a PERSONAL presidential account that Chavez controls and has no OBLIGATION to tell anyone what he is doing with that money.

Let me remain you that we spent several years with the prices above 100$ per barrel and that Venezuela produces about 2.5 million barrels of oil PER DAY. I'm not going to pretend the need to do the math here for the HN folks, but just in case, for illustration purposes that personal account would receive somewhere on the lines of...

75 million dollars a day.

Try to grasp how MASSIVE that amount is.

You see, when you talk about poverty and literacy I simply know that you have not been nowhere near Venezuela.

Venezuela is falling to pieces, structurally, morally, economically, etc. We wasted a decade that could have turn our country in to a super power.

"Venezuela is falling to pieces, structurally, morally, economically, etc. We wasted a decade that could have turn our country in to a super power."

This is so true, based on my experience having stayed in Caracas, Venezuela on my way to Bogota, Colombia just a few months ago. I was shocked at the difference between those two neighbouring countries, Colombia is rapidly improving whilst Chavez is destroying Venezuela.

I find this very easy to believe and it is the story of the poor major oil producing countries. In Nigeria, 25% of the national budget is dedicated to the personal expenses of the lawmakers by law. The rest makes its way into a very corrupt system that the multinational oil corporations are complicit in building after infiltrating the government and civil service at all levels [wikileaks]. They easily avoid accountability for persistent decade-long oil spills that exceed the Gulf of Mexico incident each year. In the long term, this 'oil wealth' is toxic to the society, infrastructure and environment of these countries.

The demand for oil is in every sense an economic addiction and the governments of the industrialised world will suspend all principle to keep the pipelines flowing. They empower ruthless sociopaths with billions of dollars and feign outrage when these despots hold their people hostage and slaughter thousands to maintain their hold on power. Why are the world's most dangerous men invariably from major oil producing countries?

I think the capitalist ideal of money as the only measure of success is a very irresponsible way to run a planet. In the past at least, the system seemed to work in favour of a few countries that were first at the controls. Now that there is just so much momentum that this ship has started to fly itself, I find it amusing to watch the US and Europe scrambling to come to grips with just a small part of the helplessness of the other 5 billion.

Canada produces more oil than Venezuela. Not a country I would characterize for it's ruthless sociopaths and the slaughter of thousands.

Whenever you have something of value bad people will try to take it with force. The capitalist ideal of money is that markets allocate resources better than force. Saying that capitalism creates brutal dictatorships, is like saying banks generate robberies.

"Catch them young"

Canada was a highly developed economy before the era of big oil. It has the third largest proven oil reserves after Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. Despite high production, primary industries constitute less than 6.2% of GDP. Contrast this with embryonic economies that were just emerging from colonial control, where a few million dollars was disproportionately above average income and you could buy yourself a government by creating a ruling oligarchy.

"We only negotiate with terrorists when they're selling oil."

The capitalist deception is that money bought weapons for the ruling class to do the dirty work of taking these resources by force when necessary. Doing big business with a thug empowers him; when he's several orders of magnitude wealthier than everyone in his community, you get a polarized society of highly successful armed gangs and oppressed people. When he's also a religious extremist you get the Taliban. Can a free market exist without a free society?

" Why are the world's most dangerous men invariably from major oil producing countries?" Natural resources have a way of corrupting the society. I even did a project on the correlation between corruption and natural resources as a part of GDP. Here's a link , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse

Natural resources have a way of corrupting the society.

Natural resources have a way of bringing corrupt people to take those resources from you.

Good article. It is rather depressing to accept the reality that these countries will only continue to deteriorate for the foreseeable future.

Could this be analogous to the "Curse of the gifted" but on a geopolitical scale?

> It happens that it is LAW. ..at the time was at 70$ .. and any amount above that would go to a PERSONAL presidential account that Chavez controls

This sounds like propaganda. Got a link to this law?

Sorry I can't find a direct link to the law http://www.noticierodigital.com/2011/04/el-nuevo-herald-chav...

It's a national development fund controlled by the president, not his personal bank account. It is suggested by analysts that Chavez uses the money as his way to "buy elections" (probably by subsidizing the poor, and not helping the "trickle down" economy by giving the money to the rich). Of course some money gets lost, it always does, right or left goverment.

It's a national development fund controlled by the president, not his personal bank account. It is suggested by analysts that Chavez uses the money as his way to "buy elections"

So it's a fund controlled by the president in a government where he does not have to respond to anyone. Would you mind explaining how is that not his personal bank account?

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