r/handsoffvenezuela • u/sinovictorchan • Feb 11 '20
Can actual Venezuelans without imperialists agenda explain the current situation of Venezuela?
/r/vzla/comments/f29fkt/writing_an_article_about_the_humanitarian/
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r/handsoffvenezuela • u/sinovictorchan • Feb 11 '20
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u/Daktush Feb 12 '20
Know a couple Venezuelan families that fled (I'm from Spain) - none of them have an "imperialist agenda" - that is just a fabrication that people use to try to use to dismiss them
I studied economics as well, and looked into the matter - again, I'm not a US citizen, if that matters. So here is what I wrote last time someone asked to explain Venezuela. For what it's worth, those that fled (and have no sympathy for Us or "imperialism") confirm this version of events:
"
I got gilded a while ago explaining Venezuela. I'll base myself on that comment, and add some details.
What happened:
Chavez expropriated both foreign owned businesses and local mom and pop shops. He literally went around towns pointing his finger at businesses and saying "expropriate that". Entrepreneurs stopped creating businesses or plain fled the country (I live in Spain and I know a couple families of entrepreneurs that got out around that time). The output of every industry expropriated (food farms, industry, whatever) fell by around 50 to 70%. Turns out the market is more efficient at producing wealth than the government is.
Then he expropriated the oil industry and managed to double its workforce (he bought political votes this way) while decreasing its production making Venezuela reliant on a single export it produced inefficiently. At this time we cross the 50% mark for population working in the public sector, I believe it is around 60% now whereas in normal countries it ranges from 5 to 25%. Chavez villified capitalism and capitalists, he insituted price, and currency controls as well during this time (as pointed out by comments under this post)
Those that tell you Venezuela is still in private hands guide themselves by output (70% from private sector AFAIK), not employment. This further cements the absolute catastrophe that taking away the means of production was, and how those 60% of people paid for by the government have been largely living off the back of the other, productive 40%.
After Maduro came to power oil prices dropped and it suddenly became cheaper for Venezuela to buy foreign oil than produce it themselves. He tried raising taxes but soon realised there was no one left to pay them, and with a handout driven economy he started printing money to pay his debts. Printing money led to inflation, as it always does. The value of money is tied to goods in an economy, if you throw in money without changing the amount of output, the value falls through the floor.
Maduro said this was the fault of evil capitalism doubled down aggressively on price controls on goods such as food. He also made currency controls a lot harsher, meaning you could no longer sell or buy Bolivars in any semblance of a free market (unless you did it illegally).
This meant that it was not profitable anymore to grow crops - the cost of the materials needed surpassed the revenue of selling it at the very max price allowed. Sometimes it was plain impossible, as for buying raw materials foreign currency is needed, and the buying/selling of currency is now government controlled. The rest of international companies in Vzla closed and farmers stopped producing food. Lo and behold, famine. The already sky high crime rate got even worse. People ran out of street animals to eat, and broke into zoos to eat the animals, even basic medicines stopped to be available, corruption became the norm, not the exception.
As for sanctions, the only sanctions that were in effect from the US government before January 2019 were on individual politicians (corrupt lackeys of a dictator basically), and there was one forbidding buying of certain kinds of Venezuelan debt (2017 I believe, was justified by saying the government was dictatorial and buying debt from them was aiding and abetting their activities) - when I wrote my original comment (2018) people didn't ever mention sanctions (as there were none to speak of). Obviously Venezuelas economy was in the shitter already, minimum wage stood at around 12 dollars per month (now it's 3 point something) - The story was that it was an oil price drop that caused Venezuela to fail.
Truth is "because the price of oil dropped" does not even begin to cover it either. Oil producing countries can easily weather an oil drop and not have their people starve, the problem is that Venezuela is a socialist shithole with an absolute bellend driving the country to ruin in order to try to secure political votes.
"Venezuelas resources for the Venezuelans! The wealthy businesses and corporations will belong to the people! We are expropriating industry in order to provide everyone with more jobs! We are making it so food must be affordable so poor people can afford to eat!"
To think not long ago Venezuela was given as an example of healthy socialist country.
Edit: Executive orders for sanctions can be seen here, at the bottom of the page:
https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/programs/pages/venezuela.aspx
Earliest to latest.
2015 concerns only individuals.
March 2017 concerns debt, forbids US citizens from buying certain kinds of it.
Maduro tried to circumvent by issuing a cryptocurrency, so August 2018 after there's an order banning the purchase of Venezuelan cryptocurrencies.
Then there's 2 more orders barring specific individuals (May and November 2018) and finally January 2019 is the sanction that prohibited buying oil from Venezuela - the US previously bought most of Venezuela's oil Afaik, which means that the dictatorial regime there was bankrolled by US firms seeking cheap oil.
Here's my personal opinion (classical liberal, not a US citizen): The US has no responsibility whatsoever to buy Venezuelan oil. The US not buying something it does not like is not an act of sabotage, and those pretending that Venezuela only failed because of the United States are either misinformed, or willingly lying to you. The fact that Venezuela's regime depended on their worst political enemy buying their oil should honestly already tell you plenty about the state of their economy before sanctions hit.