PING – Hugo is at it again!
Please FReepmail me if you would like on/off the Hugo/Venezuela Ping list.
HugoPing Archive
Posted on 12/31/2006 9:15:19 AM PST by cll
Thank you for your hard work, Alek.
And Venezuela, good luck to you.
Ping
-bflr-
Mexico's oil was supposed to bring something like nirvana to Mexico, too. No wonder the left doesn't want us drilling for it. You never know who will come out on top.
Having been married to one, I can attest to this fact!
Fueled by the prospect of essentially unending oil wealth, this situation can continue for a very long time. The cost is nominal for the inhabitants - class and party loyalty. And when socialism falls these folks are the last to go and the first to rise up again in the form of robber barons, as a cursory examination of the ex-Soviet Union will immediately reveal.
Should the oil wealth diminish, and it will eventually, for the appetite of the New Class always exceeds its means, then it becomes insular and predatory. At that point it must have solidified control over the state means of coercion or it will fall. There we have party armies defending class interests against the population at large. Mugabe's Zimbabwe is a case in point. Chavez has already made moves in this direction.
The predation of the New Class also manifests itself in a desire to export revolution in order to feed its appetite for power and provide the necessary means to keep its members in the style to which they've become accustomed. To a degree this is the reason the Wahhabi clerics are currently so fond of expansionism - it isn't all about religion, and they are very definitely the recipients of unearned oil wealth redistributed their direction by Islamic charity. Why not the world? What else do they have to do?
All of this is a result of the ability of the capitalist West to generate an astounding level of wealth. As long as the West continues to provide it, the New Class will spend it, and they'll happily kill the goose that lays the eggs because they don't think it exists.
For what its worth, I have said that the primary reason Venezuela's opposition parties have been unable to really coalesce against Chavez is that, at bottom, they agree with him. They know he is a bad guy, but they are unable to explain why he is a bad guy philosophically.
The natural political philosophy of Venezuela and indeed latin america in general is a kind of populism that sometimes manifests itself as leftist government, sometimes rightist, usually a combination of the two as now.
Although Chavez claims to be a revolutionary, he is really more of the same, just in a higher dose. He rails against the "neo-liberalism" that has supposedly destroyed the countyr, his name for free market economy, but Venezuela has never known a free market economy, it has always been a centralized economy in which the major resources are government controlled, which means that they are controlled by what ever elite are able best to manipulate the government.
The country was wrecked by other populists trying to do what populists do. They nationalized the oil industry in the seventies, and the result was economic stagnation. For years the government has robbed the oil industry to pay for its social programs, and the result has been entirely predictable, a one industry country, a people angered that they could be so poor in a country so supposedly rich, without any clear understanding that a country can not ever be rich with only one state-owned industry to pay the bills.
When Chavez launched his coup, the country went wild with adoration, and this included the political elite, who fell all over themselves trying to out-Chavez Chavez, trying to capture his popularity by attacking the banks, attacking what private business there is, attacking what foreign investment there is, and the result was to drive the country into the ground at an even faster rate.
Chavez stepped onto the stage, promising to throw out the constitution, blaming a non-existent "free enterprise" for the country's ills, and the people went for it in a landslide, the traditional parties collapsed, because none of them could explain why he was wrong. They could not because they agreed with him.
Even the opposition basically agree with him. They have faced him bravely because they know he is a dictator, they know he is a murderer, but they also feel betrayed philosophically because at heart they agree with the vision he promised. Venezuela is populated by populists left to right, top to bottom, and as a result who ever rules, who ever is overthrown, over the long haul the result is the same.
At some point you have to decide, either you love the country, and you do the best you can with what opportunities the system affords you, or you leave and start your little company in Miami or Los Angeles. If you stay in Caracas, you can do very well; populist systems are full of contradictions and if you are well connected you can do very well.
Chavez is not an aberration. He is a very Venezuelan throwback to a time everyone thought was past. That, and the mafia is more naked than usual is all.
"I believe the word we are looking for is "apathy"."
Looking into the recesses of my mind, I think it was locked who mentioned that some people suffer from the "fear of liberty". Liberty is too big of a responsibility and some people don't wanted. They rather have their lives run by somebody else (as long as there is food on the table).
Dad always said: "People get the kind of government they deserve."
locked = Locke
Well stated, both.
"nothing to do with this thread"
Hey, it's the same thing but in a larger scale.
OK, it's a weird list. Great stuff, though. Happy New Year!
As a card-carrying guy, I had to look up this "Comandante Lina Ron" and answer the question: hot or not?
http://www.reconocelos.com/data/media/1/linaron.jpg
Before you click the link, the answer is: not. She's a bowser.
Why did I expect any different from a "revolutionary chick"? Usually it means she's rebelling against bourgeois concepts like bathing and pit shaving.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Yikes.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
