I'd say that's 99% of its use within USA's political dialogue. I've never met a person arguing for a purely socialist system, we don't have a single advocate for pure socialism within our government, nor presidential candidates, nor respected political commentators. So while Venezuela is an example of a failed socialist system, and using it to educate is a fine thing to do, I don't think that's why it's brought up SO often within mainstream media. Venezuela was nearly all of the right wing's response to Bernie...
How heavy? That is the question. I think light dose, but these are opinions and vary from different people. I wouldn't even call them socialist, but I get you.
"Chile hired a French military training mission in 1858, and the Chilean legation in Berlin was instructed to find a training mission during the War of the Pacific in 1881. But large-scale emulation of the Prussian Army began in 1886 with the appointment of Captain Emil Körner, a graduate of the renowned Kriegsakademie in Berlin. Also appointed were 36 Prussian officers to train officer cadets in the Chilean Military Academy. The training occurred in three phases; the first took place from 1885 to 1891 during the presidency of Domingo Santa María, the second was the post-civil-war phase, and the third was the 1906 reorganisation."
This is a separate topic, but the US isn't anything remotely close to unrestrained capitalism. If you've ever run a business you'd understand why very quickly.
We get more oil from Mexico than we do Venezuela in case you were wondering. Mexico could probably double their oil production if they didn't have only PEMEX running things. If I missed the sarcasm then for me
They opened up some offshore blocks to foreign investment. Shell was one of the buyers and already flipped some of their interest.
Interesting. I guess I haven't kept up with it in awhile. I had just read a couple articles awhile back talking about their declining production and how it could be fixed. I wonder if Shell was having trouble developing things due to the govt. I would guess that AMLO would not be in favor of opening things up more.
I'd lean just as heavy as the other top countries I listed earlier. We aren't unrestrained but we are missing A TON of key regulations, that's why our government IS bought by the wealthy. Of course, I also understand we have a good amount of fairly bad/hard regulations for many categories of small businesses (some put in place by larger corporations to stunt the markets) so I completely understand what you're saying on that end.
How are the people down there doing? Are they still in the streets? eta, and I'm sorry: You "wonder" if outside O/G interests had trouble "due to the govt"? No kidding? Their infrastructure is several decades behind.
That's true, but we have some socialism apologists on this board and that's who I was really talking about. Venezuela is an example of "Democratic Socialism", so if that's what you want, that's the kind of thing you'd get. Now in fairness, most people in America that are calling themselves "Democratic Socialists" are really just Social Democrats that are too dumb or ignorant to know the difference between the two which is what many of those countries you listed actually are. Effectively a welfare state supported by a strong capitalist economy to pay for it all. Social programs does not equal socialism but sadly we have socialists attempting to change definitions of words to try and make the history of socialism look a bit better.....it would be like Nazis trying to change definitions of holocaust to mean birthday parties for children. No one SHOULD want a socialist economy because that leads to a situation like Venezuela every single time, but unfortunately actual socialists still exist. .
Oil is already and tanking and you want to make more oil? Oil is a commodity. Even a little more supply than demand would crash the prices further.
Aww that's no fun for the jokes... but OK makes sense. Nearly everyone copied the Prussians during that stage.
The problem isnt socialism as much as what the government spends money on. In good times governments have to invest in things like infrastructure Saudis spent their money on ridiculous luxury. Its gonna catch up to them. That being said ten years ago everyone thought the price of oil would never decrease. A lot of that had to do with real data on what was previously thought to be the amount of accessible oil and the supposed limits. You also have to obviously not put all your eggs in one basket. Texas has diversified its economy a lot more since the early 80's. That type of action requires well meaning and able leadership Im not bragging but i promise i could foresee these type problems when oil prices first started decreasing because oil people would tell me nobody knows how much oil is out there because fracking has allowed access to so much more Peek oil is a thing of the past. There is a paradigm shift going on in oil. Those over top prices are never coming back. It was obviously going to catch up to countries heavily dependent on it We are blessed to live in this country tbat has a divirsified economy
I’m just getting all my information from twitter for the most part. The protests and support of Guaidó in the streets is still continuing. My gf’s family down there isn’t protesting. They have a young kid and she just bought a house for them down there. A bit of a tangent but if you guys didn’t know everything is dollarized down there now. You can’t buy things with the Monopoly money Bolivar currency. My dad who was in the Army and in Vietnam was asking me earlier how Maduro was paying the armed forces if everything is dollarized now. I honestly don’t really know and I’m curious to find out. The US just blocked Maduro trying to withdraw $1.2 billion in gold from the Bank of England so I’m curious if some kind of money crunch is coming. The US is considering oil sanctions which would likely break Maduro. I’m guessing he is funding the military directly from oil sales. Also, I know it’s just Twitter and sentiment of the few Venezuelans I know but there is really a desire from the people down there to see the US kick Maduro out. Kind of like the people want to see the bully finally get his ass kicked. There was even a funny mistake made by the state run media where they showed a poll where it said 79% of the people wanted outside intervention at this time. The news anchor got all tongue tied and didn’t know what to really say because obviously that would be terrible for Maduro. The state run media sounds exactly like glynch or any other overtly biased, delusional American thinks they understand what is going on without having any vague understanding of the situation....if you were wondering. Fwiw I don’t see any way that the US gets involved in any sort of major unilateral military action though. It’s just not anything close to a simple or ideal fight and the regime is already breaking. If Maduro does try to pick a fight with shutting down the embassy by force then you will likely see the Marines get involved in some minor capacity. However everything points to multinational/UN action if anything does happen. It will be interesting to see what happens on Sunday though since that is the deadline Maduro has given. Also, to all the people crying about US imperialism...who do you think owns Venezuela already? Maduro has sold Venezuela out to the Chinese and Russians. There is no US imperialism here. We are acting in conjunction with the neighbors of Venezuela to get this ******* out of office who is destroying the region. ***rough translation*** If they dare to kidnap me again, I ask you to keep us on the peaceful route and in a non-violent but forceful way, demanding freedom and without losing the direction of our route.
Did they ever figure out who did the bombing in Colombia last week? I would assume FARC or some such group. Last I heard the truck was traced to the VEN border....
Although I believe it's very heavy "tar" oil, unlike the Saudi sweet light, but I think refineries may be able to deal with that better than they have in the past.
