Venezuela the Socialist Dream Crumbles

[Revolution Cork]

117th in the Press Freedom Index for some reason...

USA is 32nd

Ireland is 15th.

Press freedom please, Murdoch, etc... Do you really believe we have a free, fair and balanced media?

 

[Revolution Cork]

See response from Frank ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

So no answer then

 

[Stacky]

So no answer then

Venezuela is far from free.

I am not awary of any privatly owned media here being leaned on by the State but if you have some proof then I am all ears but keep dodging my point of Venezuella crumbling under Socialism.

Press Freedom Disappearing In Venezuela As Globovision Comes Under Government Control

By Andrew O'Reilly
Published August 22, 2013


FILE - In this Oct. 3, 2003 file photo, an employee at Globovision, a 24-hour television news channel, works behind a glass reading "News" with Globovision's logo "G" at the channel's headquarters in Caracas, Venezuela. Employees of the last remaining opposition television channel in Venezuela said on March 11, 2013 that it is being sold to a businessman friendly to the government. The employees said the sale would occur after April 14 elections, which Hugo Chavez's hand-picked successor is favored to win. (AP Photo/Leslie Mazoch, File)



Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro increasing pressure on the county’s last private news channel has prompted six senior journalists to leave the company in protest of what they say is a shift in Globovision’s editorial direction.

The reporters and television anchors left in response to the “abrupt, violent and aggressive” departure of creative director Leopoldo Castillo earlier this month after 12 years with the company. The president has been accused of meddling with editorial matters at the media conglomerate.

The “conditions for conducting free journalism are absent from Globovision,” Roberto Giusti, former host of talk show “33 Degrees,” told Bloomberg BusinessWeek.

Globovision is Venezuela’s most watched news channel and was a frequent target of attack by late Venezuelan Socialist leader Hugo Chávez, who branded the station as one of the “four horsemen of the apocalypse” for its role in a 2002 failed coup attempt against him. Since its sale back in May to three owners of Caracas-based insurance company Seguros La Vitalicia, the company’s editorial policy and coverage has changed dramatically.

The channel has ended six news and current affairs programs, let go of 14 journalists to date and stopped airing the speeches of political opposition leader Henrique Capriles.

“Globovision has been a window for the country to have information in real time that's different from that of the government," wrote Capriles in May after being informed that the channel’s new board of directors allegedly banned his speeches from being broadcast live.

In a statement on Globovision’s website last week, company Chairman Raúl Gorrín attempted to deflect the allegations made by former employees and said that the channel is committed to “the most diverse ideas and opinions, presented with respect and tolerance.”

The news of the departures signals the growing threat to free press in Venezuela, where independent journalism has been stifled, first under the Chávez government and now with Maduro.

“For journalists trying to find their way in Venezuela, it is very difficult right now,” Sonia Schott, Globovision’s Washington D.C. correspondent from 2002 until the sale of the company back in May, told Fox News Latino. “There is no way for journalists in Venezuela to work freely right now.”

Schott, who has not been in contact with Globovision's new management, added that she is concerned about the physical and job security of her colleagues working in Venezuela.

"In Venezuela, it is difficult to escape from the pressure to cover stories the way the government wants them covered," she said. "You are always cornered to take a side. There is no objectivity."

Some press freedom activists have drawn a comparison between Venezuela’s current situation and that of the press consolidation conditions in Russia when President Vladimir Putin came into office. When the Russian leader took power for the first time in 2000, he soon went about dismantling independent media and using wealthy friends to buy up opposition media groups.

This is what you’re seeing now in Venezuela,” said Arch Puddington, the vice president for research at the watchdog group Freedom House. “Things are not moving in the right direction in Venezuela.”

For journalists in Venezuela, while the country’s major media outlets may be succumbing to the pressures from the government in Caracas, there are still other outlets available to them. Many journalists who have left Globovision and other Venezuelan media organizations have begun relying on blog and social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to spread their stories.

“Quitting may be the only option if you feel the new management has been as disturbing as it appears,” Puddington said, “However, social media can now serve as an alternative to the official press.”

 

[How bad boy]

So hear I am arguing with a hobby economist who disagrees with such notables as Warren Buffet, Stiglitz etc.. Who to believe hmmmm

Play the ball, not the man. But anyway, I can point to many, many (in fact, the mass majority) of economists* that think that Venezuela is doing a crappy job, and setting the economy up for a stupendous fall. It is so insanely reliant on oil that it is anything but sustainable.
Even the finance minister of Venezuela admits there are huge structural problems (i.e. overreliance on oil and state aid):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-23924372

Of course I was going to mention the average mean wage in America, how much has it increased since the 60's compared to inflation? Its not a debate its a fact, wages are decreasing since the 60's thats a fact no debate needed. Now if you want to throw out the usual excuse about technology and quality of life, well God bless you the last time I heard that one was on some Deep South evangelical channel at three in the morning in Atlanta.

Nominally, wages have not actually decreased. Accounting for inflation, one can make a case for them decreasing. But there are a hell of a lot of technical factors in there. The composition of the workforce (the entry of women being one huge factor), the composition of households, social transfers and how the data are actually collected are factors that significantly muddy the waters in this area. There are a lot of technical difficulties with them, by changing from measuring income by tax units to household units, you find, for example, the increase increases fivefold. Adjusting for social transfers more than doubles the rate again, so that if you measure the median income one way, it increases by 3.2% between 1979 and 2007, of you measure it another, it goes to 36.7%. Richard Burkhauser has done some interesting work in this area.

Ever since the free marketers have come into vogue three things have happened, wages have decreased, poverty is in fact increasing, the inequality gap is growing larger. There is actually a fourth, in that the middle class are being squeezed further towards the bottom and it is becoming hard to decipher the middle class from lower class.

I think I wouldn't have a major problem with most of the comments in that section (although I would seriously quibble them), but I just can't let the bit in bold slip. Where's your evidence for that???

The republican agenda is based on hyperbole and trickle down economics, which has not worked for the majority of people in any state in which it has been introduced, in fact it has lowered opportunities, wages, living standards etc...

You failed to answer the HPI question or is it uncomfortable?

The HPI question is not uncomfortable, it's a multi-variant measure that is, like many economic measures, somewhat flawed.

If you think I'm really a fan of the republican agenda, you clearly have misread my politics. Redistribution is a good thing, if done sensibly. State ownership can work, again, if done sensibly.

It is not done sensibly in Venezuela.

Press freedom please, Murdoch, etc... Do you really believe we have a free, fair and balanced media?

Yes, I do, actually.
I don't read or watch anything that goes near Murdoch. My main newspapers are the Guardian, Economist, Telegraph and the UK's Independent. They all have their own biases, but you can't claim that they're all biased the same way. The Guardian and the Economist would be my main reads.

But then you have access to dozens of good news sources on these isles, many of which are really quite independent.



And finally...

A few examples of highly respected economists, because hey, if you're going to say my opinion is invalid because Stiglitz said many years ago that Venezuela was an example to emulate, then I might as well defend myself against charges of being an ignorant amateur:

Daron Acemoglu, one of the world's top development economists:
http://whynationsfail.com/blog/2013/3/14/paradoxes-of-chavismo.html
"his battle against the elites also enabled him to create his own dictatorship that was potentially even more damaging to Venezuela’s economy, and in the process, undermined the possibility of creating new and more inclusive institutions. "

Gary Becker, Nobel prize winner:
http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/
"Venezuela that has conducted a war on the private sector has seen poverty grow and its economy stagnate"

Don Boudreaux, explaining in some of the most basic economics possible why price controls in Venezuela are dumb:
http://cafehayek.com/2012/04/but-hes-our-leader-exploiting-our-economic-ignorance.html
"of course these shortages are caused by price controls. By preventing prices from telling the truth about underlying conditions of supply and demand, such controls spread economic lies. Producers and consumers are thus misled into acting destructively rather than productively"

In addition, the IMF, World bank, international financial markets, most doing business measures and most western economic policy groups consider Venezuela's current economic and political policies to be foolish at best. But I presume you discount all that by default.

Incidentally, could you please post a link to any article where Warren Buffett says that Chavez had a sensible economic policy? I can't find one, and I seriously, seriously doubt he said it.

 

[SilkenStars]

The thing about people like Stacky, liam2me and the other right wingers that post these threads is that they present themselves as Men of the World, so much more knowing than your lefty college socialists, but in reality they often have a very narrow scope on reality due to the fact that are generally straight white middle class males or aspire to be as such, and don't tend to really integrate with people outside of their social grouping in any meaningful fashion.

In some cases they are people who have had to "pick themselves up" and work their way up from relatively little but they seem to fail to understand the concept of individual experience, or social mobility rates for that matter.

To people like Stacky the stories of states like Venezuela are simply there to appropriate for his argument against the other team, reducing an entire culture and it's people to nothing more than a cautionary to use against Pinko Commies. This is a very white/eurocentric thing to do in the first place and the irony is that people of this social grouping tend to be the most entitled as they see they have a right to reduce other cultures and lifestyles to something that's useful to them personally.

I think we need to address the deeper problem here. While we are more saturated in the culture of the US, UK and to a lesser extent the rest of Europe when it comes to complex economic matters is a very foreign state we are not going to be the best people to ask about it. Again this has a lot to do with eurocentric entitlement amongst other things.

 

[INFERNO]

Socialist dream my hole.

Veneer.

Just another fucked up example of a corrupt ruled by force state. One where the value of human life has always been low.

 

[How bad boy]

The thing about people like Stacky, liam2me and the other right wingers that post these threads is that they present themselves as Men of the World, so much more knowing than your lefty college socialists, but in reality they often have a very narrow scope on reality due to the fact that are generally straight white middle class males or aspire to be as such, and don't tend to really integrate with people outside of their social grouping in any meaningful fashion.

In some cases they are people who have had to "pick themselves up" and work their way up from relatively little but they seem to fail to understand the concept of individual experience, or social mobility rates for that matter.

To people like Stacky the stories of states like Venezuela are simply there to appropriate for his argument against the other team, reducing an entire culture and it's people to nothing more than a cautionary to use against Pinko Commies. This is a very white/eurocentric thing to do in the first place and the irony is that people of this social grouping tend to be the most entitled as they see they have a right to reduce other cultures and lifestyles to something that's useful to them personally.

I think we need to address the deeper problem here. While we are more saturated in the culture of the US, UK and to a lesser extent the rest of Europe when it comes to complex economic matters is a very foreign state we are not going to be the best people to ask about it. Again this has a lot to do with eurocentric entitlement amongst other things.

Easy to paint your opponent in an unflattering light, especially if you stick a straw man suit on him.

The fact of the matter is this. Venezuela is exploiting it's oil reserves, a non-renewable resource. It is doing it badly, and using the proceeds to fund its social welfare system.

Despite this largess, $100 billion a year over a population of 28 million ($3,500 per man, woman and child), the government can't balance the books (9% in 2012, significantly worse than Ireland) and basic goods are not available.


Now the redistribution, per-se, isn't *that* bad.

But it's not exporting anything else. The world doesn't want to buy anything else from Venezuela. Without oil, the state is dead, it is bankrupt, and all of this social spending will end in catastrophe.
If most of the people rely on the state for most of their income, then that state had bloody well have some fucking solid foundations.

The foundation of the Venezuelan state is oil. That is not a stable foundation.

10 years ago, the oil price was $20 a barrel. It is now $110. It is possible that it can drop lower, $50 is entirely possible (as is $200).

If the oil price drops to $50, Venezuela WILL collapse as a state. It will make the Irish situation of the past 5 years look like a trip to Disney World.

Draining a country's productive resources to cushion social programs while entirely neglecting the mechanisms that create competitive, sustainable economies is moronic, short sighted and should be recognised as such.

Incidentally, Rafael Correa has agreed to go ahead and drill for oil in the Yasuní National Park.

http://www.theguardian.com/environm...13/oct/15/ecuador-president-misleading-yasuni

Apparently it will only affect 0.01% of the park.

He was forced into it as the world would not pay Ecuador $3.6 billion not to drill there. That and there's a serious problem in developing existing fields in other locations. Mostly because multinational oil companies won't touch the country with a barge pole due to the dicking about with Texaco/Chevron.

Both are now petro-economies spending more than they earn from oil.

With rising oil prices, that'll be fine (albeit highly irresponsible and very vunerable to insider/outsider problems).

With falling oil prices, expect all social gains to be wiped out.

 

[mire]

Easy to paint your opponent in an unflattering light, especially if you stick a straw man suit on him.

The fact of the matter is this. Venezuela is exploiting it's oil reserves, a non-renewable resource. It is doing it badly, and using the proceeds to fund its social welfare system.

Despite this largess, $100 billion a year over a population of 28 million ($3,500 per man, woman and child), the government can't balance the books (9% in 2012, significantly worse than Ireland) and basic goods are not available.


Now the redistribution, per-se, isn't *that* bad.

But it's not exporting anything else. The world doesn't want to buy anything else from Venezuela. Without oil, the state is dead, it is bankrupt, and all of this social spending will end in catastrophe.
If most of the people rely on the state for most of their income, then that state had bloody well have some fucking solid foundations.

The foundation of the Venezuelan state is oil. That is not a stable foundation.

10 years ago, the oil price was $20 a barrel. It is now $110. It is possible that it can drop lower, $50 is entirely possible (as is $200).

If the oil price drops to $50, Venezuela WILL collapse as a state. It will make the Irish situation of the past 5 years look like a trip to Disney World.

Draining a country's productive resources to cushion social programs while entirely neglecting the mechanisms that create competitive, sustainable economies is moronic, short sighted and should be recognised as such.

Incidentally, Rafael Correa has agreed to go ahead and drill for oil in the Yasuní National Park.

http://www.theguardian.com/environm...13/oct/15/ecuador-president-misleading-yasuni

Apparently it will only affect 0.01% of the park.

He was forced into it as the world would not pay Ecuador $3.6 billion not to drill there. That and there's a serious problem in developing existing fields in other locations. Mostly because multinational oil companies won't touch the country with a barge pole due to the dicking about with Texaco/Chevron.

Both are now petro-economies spending more than they earn from oil.

With rising oil prices, that'll be fine (albeit highly irresponsible and very vunerable to insider/outsider problems).

With falling oil prices, expect all social gains to be wiped out.

Hands up who really expects oil prices to fall, ever [other than in short term dips]? Simple rule of supply + demand would suggest that oil prices will head in one direction only. Population and economic growth globally is predicted to drive demand for the foreseeable future.

 

[How bad boy]

Hands up who really expects oil prices to fall, ever [other than in short term dips]? Simple rule of supply + demand would suggest that oil prices will head in one direction only. Population and economic growth globally is predicted to drive demand for the foreseeable future.

Production is rising. Demand in many countries is falling. The market is inelastic. Prices can be highly volatile, falling as well as rising.

$90 a barrel is entirely likely. That price would destroy Venezuela as its currently running.

 

[mire]

Production is rising. Demand in many countries is falling. The market is inelastic. Prices can be highly volatile, falling as well as rising.

$90 a barrel is entirely likely. That price would destroy Venezuela as its currently running.

Yes, the market is inelastic, because of the nature of the good. Despite that, there has been one defining feature of oil price trends historically-increasing prices, despite huge increasing production levels.

Now, production is rising, but this is a market response to meet rising demand. You say that demand is falling, maybe in Denmark and Netherlands [20 million] but it wont be falling in BRIC, USA, Africa, South America [billions of people in expanding/developing countries] in the next 10 years.

You are correct that Venezuela is vulnerable, but not because of falling oil prices