Comment by somenameforme | Hacker News Reader

Comment by somenameforme | Hacker News Reader

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Wiki conveniently has a nice graph demonstrating the real GDP/capita in Venezuela [1], which is reasonably reflective of the economic crisis. In 1980 it was around $16,000. By ~2013-2014 it had peaked a bit higher than $18,000 and had risen dramatically faster than the average for Latin America.

In 2014 there were mass protests against the government, in reality it was an attempt to overthrow the government, which was responded to with brutality. That brutality was met with sanctions. Today their GDP/capita is about $5000. That's obviously going to be explained in part by the decline in oil prices around the same time, but not to that degree, to say the least.

* - As an addendum here it's also unclear to me how exactly Wiki is calculating that figure and whether it accounts for, in any way, the substantial scale of emigration from Venezuela. If not, then the relative decline is even larger than it sounds.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_in_Venezuela#/media/Fil...

No, those sanctions were on very specific people, not companies or industries. Those came later in 2019 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctions_during_the_Venezuela...

Not quite. A useful term related to sanctions is overcompliance. You can read the exact verbiage of some of the earliest sanctions here. [1] In a nutshell engaging in any form of trade (including transfer of expertise or whatever else) that directly or indirectly benefited a sanctioned person could trigger extremely harsh penalties.

Many government officials in Venezuela have direct involvement with various industries, including oil. So it suddenly becomes this extremely complex and dangerous mess when doing any trade whatsoever with Venezuela. This is why their economy completely collapsed following the sanctions.

[1] - https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2015/03/11/2015-05...

Our collapse predates the sanctions.

Also, Maduro is willing to trade our natural resources if it gets him more years in power:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/10/world/americas/maduro-ven...

Absolutely, which makes this whole thread all the more absurd, or at least typical. It seems increasingly likely we'll get a war in Venezuela, likely supported by this Nobel Peace Prize winner, with the goal of installing her in power. It seems Guaido is out of fashion? Anyhow, if "we" win, and she gets installed, you know the first thing she's going to do? Trade access to your natural resources for wealth and power. They're the only reason the US is there. And then in a decade you'll be ranting against her.

Look at the history of people the US sponsors in regime change operations around the world, and how things turn out. So long as they're loyal to the US, first and foremost, anything goes. Carlos Castillo Armas, Fulgencio Batista, Humberto Castelo Blanco, Augusto Pinochet, Efrain Rios Montt and many more though I'm limiting myself to the Americas. Of course I can fully understand the perspective that 'anything must be better than this shit show.' But it often turns out, in hindsight, that that's not exactly the case.

And in general this is a big part of the reason that I'm highly opposed to the US meddling in countries around the world. There's always such a heavy price to pay in American dollars and the blood of others. And.. for what? Yeah yeah, this time it's different...

My man the alternative we are currently suffering is WAY worse, you think we care if we do business with the US once we recover our democracy? It’s what I’m expecting. The country needs a lot of foreign investment, the US was our main partner before these criminals came to power.

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