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Venezuela: Cheap Television Sets For All!
solareagle writes "Venezuelan President Maduro has declared war on 'bourgeois parasites' by taking over Daka, an electronics retailer similar to Best Buy. USA Today reports, 'National guardsmen, some of whom had assault rifles, were positioned around outlets of [Daka] ... Maduro has ordered to lower prices or face prosecution. Thousands of people lined up at the Daka stores hoping for a bargain after the government forced the companies to charge "fair" prices. "I want a Sony plasma television for the house," said Amanda Lisboa, 34, a business administrator who waited seven hours outside a Caracas store ... "It's going to be so cheap!" "This is for the good of the nation," Maduro said, referring to the military's occupation of Daka. "Leave nothing on the shelves, nothing in the warehouses Let nothing remain in stock!" Maduro said his seizures are the 'tip of the iceberg' and that other stores would be next if they did not comply with his orders.'"
People said that the characters in Atlas Shrugged were two-dimensional cardboard cutouts and that real life is totally not like that... I guess they never went to Venezuela.
They also said that Ayn Rand would leave us in some sort of post-apocalyptic world with no police, firemen, schools, or anything basic services. Who knew that the entire city government of Detroit for the last 40 years were all a bunch of secret Ayn Rand worshipers who have finally put her dreams into action!?!?!?!??
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
Get it now, because no one in their right might is going to import electronics into Venezuela anytime soon.
Isn't vaguely socialist dictatorship great?
Yes. Source: I live in Venezuela.
Oblivion Awaits
'National guardsmen, some of whom had assault rifles, were positioned around outlets of [Daka] ...
FIRE! Sale
Yes and as stupid as it sounds. This will work for a short while. Every person of means is probably desperately trying to leave. Once the "bargains" are gone, there will be no more product. Price controls drive growth into the ground and set the stage to inflation when they are released. Next comes wage control, then shortages, rise in crime (fueled by black markets), persecution of the wealthy, then hollowing out the middle class, and finally riots and needless death.
Yeah. It's real. And the ironic part is that Chavez died at just the right time that a lot of people are going to look back on his rule as the good ole days. The path he laid out was utterly unsustainable, but was pleasant in the sort term for a lot of the people who ended up on the right end of his ultimately self-defeating economic policies. A lot of what he did was paying for things on credit against oil that wasn't even pumped yet. The wheels would have come off the bus eventually, but now they're going to come off while Maduro's driving, not Chavez. And people will blame Maduro (not that he doesn't have it coming as well, as is obvious from this article).
Prices are so high in Venezuela because of inflation and exchange control. A dollar is worth 6.30 Bs according to the government but it's nearly impossible to get them, so you have to search in the black market where it goes for at least 60 Bs. This store (Daka) though wasn't importing merchandise, so the prices were not just, but since it was allied with the government, it was allowed to sell at whatever prices: something happened, either they screwed up or this is just an election ploy (there are elections next month). Now, the rest of the affected stores ARE importing, and why would they do it now? Since Venezuela's production is nearly zero, this will only lead to broke merchants, and less market fluidity. And these "cheap television sets"? They are being sold at three or four times their price in the black market. As ussual, Chavists are breaking this country apart.
Oblivion Awaits
at least not sane ones. If anyone knows the background on this though I'd love to hear it. This sounds more like a political attack on the owner of the store. I'm all for getting electronics into the hands of those less fortunate. But do it like Britain used to do with the old Z (that's Zed)x, not like this...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Thanks. Fortunately, it is, but at some point this madness will hit everything in the country.
Oblivion Awaits
Thailand last non-elected Prime Minister tried to buy popularity in a similar way, by capping sugar prices very low. The penalty he introduced was 7 years in prison!
Sugar producers smuggled the sugar and sold it across the border, others abandoned crops since it wasn't worth the cost of the fertilizer.
There was a sugar shortage after that.
(comment snipped due to NSA surveillance).
Without Zimbabwe, I'd never have achieved my dream of becoming a Trillionaire.
Suck on that, Bill Gates.
Detroit has been run by Democrats for decades.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
can you then tell are the "fair" prices high enough that they can restock or did venezuela just fuck up over-the-table electronics retailing for good in the country?
if the prices are't high enough then it's a short term robbery solution really..
I mean who the fuck would officially import ANYTHING to the country after this if they might e forced to sell the inventory at a lower price than what they paid for it...
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I remember all the morons on Slashdot who thought Chavez was the best thing since sliced bread and wanted the U.S. to follow in his footsteps.
Hello from Australia.
Minimum wage here is $16.37 AUD ($15.23 USD).
Seems pretty prosperous.
Without food, you won't need toilet paper. Problem solved!
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
It's enough if you exchange the Venezuelan currency to dollars at the official exchange rate. Of course only a complete fool would exchange dollars for bolivars at the official exchange rate. If you do at the rate people who actually do have dollars will agree to, then the store is only getting like 10% of what they paid for the electronics.
He forgot to add: " If you like your current TV set, you can keep your current TV set. "
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Venezuela sells oil to the world and receives US dollars in exchange. Dollars are NOT freely available for the common citizen. They are granted through much bureaucratic processes (institutions named CADIVI, SICAD and so on). Foreign exchange controls have set an official rate of 6,3 BsF per 1 US dollar, which are hardly obtainable as previously mentioned. A black market that widely operates outside the foreign exchange controls have set the price at around almost TEN times that amount (60,00 BsF as of today). Since Venezuela's inflation rates are going through the roof, people want to protect their money by obtaining dollars instead. Small businesses have imported goods using black market dollars [again, dollars are seldom available to the common folk], thus having to inflate prices ten times to protect their investments. This workaround upset the government and a crackdown ensued. Thus, many of these businesses are forced to sell at ludicrously low prices and subsequently shut down for good. Protip: there's a hefty election day in less than a month. With a raging food shortage that has been going on for many months, this was seen as a populist move to turn the balance back on their favour at the expense of dozens of legit businesses that got caught in this loop. Greetings from warm, sunny, and recently HDMI'zed Venezuela.
> Every day in Saudi Arabia
The Saudi regime doesn't act like crazy paranoid nutbags out to get us or out to convince their own citizens that we are out to get them.
That does alter the equation a bit.
As far as "atttacks on Venezeula" go, I see much more of that in European news sources as American ones just tend to ingore Venezeula and leave them to their self inflicted misery.
If anything, you're the frothing bigot here distorting reality by whatever means necessary to justify your little hate-gasm.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I read the article, which claimed that this was to set an example. Also, retailers are attempting to price their products based on the hyperinflation that the country is experiencing, and the government is attempting to force them to stop doing this.
Are you prepared to invest your money in a business venture to import consumer goods into Venezuela?
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Free-market/Austrian economics predicts that inflationary expansion of fiat currency inevitably results in government implementation of price controls. We are just conditioned to see the Venezuelan version as ridiculous whereas the 'Murican version is far, far more damaging.
No Inflation Taxation without Representation
What's really going to make this thing sting is that it is illegal to fire or lay people off in Venezuela. I guarantee you that this is going to cause their profits to dry up really fast. What happens when there's no money to pay the workers? The management gets sent to jail? Executed? I'm sure that will work out real nice.
Entrepreneurism is well known to be what drives economies. What's going to happen when people realize that starting a business in Venezuela is a bad idea? (Hell, they probably already do at this point; Venezuela will probably see foreign investment dry up very fast as a result of this, assuming it hasn't already.)
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
And they also robbed Exito, the Colombian grocery store chain, and 65 percent of the food imported comes from Colombia. Thank god I do not live there.
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
It's enough if you exchange the Venezuelan currency to dollars at the official exchange rate. Of course only a complete fool would exchange dollars for bolivars at the official exchange rate. If you do at the rate people who actually do have dollars will agree to, then the store is only getting like 10% of what they paid for the electronics.
No, you didn't read the story. Importers specifically said they could not purchase replacements of the TVs Washers/Dryers at the official exchange rates.
Importers complain that there is such a shortage of dollars they are having to buy them on the black market to import inventory at a good price. If they were to charge clients based on obtaining the dollars at the official rate, they say they would make no profit.
If you buy on the black market with dollars, you can get a washer/dryer cost $650, which is about what you would pay in the states shopping at the low end devices at Lowes or Sears. But at the official exchange rate, re-sellers can't survive.
So, the importers will simply not import. It really is that simple.
Its a political ploy by a party facing an election, and the currency will be devalued shortly after the election is held. For all the oil money Venezuela makes, they have never gotten a grasp of basic economics. If they want a command economy, they are going to have to start manufacturing their own goods, because nobody will sell to their importers at dictated prices.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Except Australia could be doing better, in particular the poor. Here's a quick recap of studies by Stossel on minimum wage in Australia. I also recommend you check out the Roy Morgan polls and studies regarding unemployment and under-employment in Australia.
Quote:
In a 2004 study published in the Australian Economic Review, economist Andrew Leigh looked at what happened after Western Australia increased its minimum wage compared to the rest of Australia.
He found: "Relative to the rest of Australia, the [percentage of people employed] in Western Australia fell following each of six [minimum wage] rises." (Study here [1], update here [2].)
Another Australian economist, John Humphrey, summarizes [3] the findings this way:
"[Leigh found] that for each 1 percent increase in the minimum wage we can expect... [to lose] 96,000 jobs" in Australia.
[1] http://andrewleigh.org/pdf/Minimum%20Wages%20(AER).pdf
[2] http://andrewleigh.org/pdf/Minimum_wages_reply.pdf
[3] http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4064106.html
These comments are mine; I do not speak for my employer.
Siding with the rich works better? Sometimes, sometimes not. The Indian Moghuls were rich and secure... and for decades the foreigners were the lesser party, until they weren't. I don't think the 1% realise how their short-sighted policies are hastening their own fading, though they'll keep saying it's everyone elses fault even as the ship sinks. Sure, join them switching off bilge pumps to power the 1st class suite.
but so, you cannot buy 1 dollar for 7 bol(or whatever the official rate is) from the government, I suppose? but they will gladly take your dollar and give 7 bol?
thats what the government should have been fixing.. not robbing importers. it's their fault the importers can't buy dollars for so cheap.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
A minimum wage doesn't destroy prosperity but it doesn't create it either. A minimum wage simply raises the price of all goods and services, nullifying its intended benefit [of raising the living standards of the lower to lower-middle class]. Think someone working for minimum wage can afford property in Sydney? Ever compared the cost of goods and services there to the USA? Or compared the prices of US cities with a high minimum wage, such as San Francisco? (even before the tech boom).
bummer.
i've been to venezuela many times. it is a great place. the last time i was there the black market exchange was Bs.7 to $1. that was just 3 years ago. now it is Bs.60 to $1. a country with vast oil reserves should be investing not spending!
With this Maduro is killing the last vestiges of business. Nobody will start one because the government will just call them thieves and seize everything. Maduro is digging his own grave.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Don't worry, they still do. Socialists never let a little reality get in the way of their ideals.
No, you didn't read my comment.
Hence the "only a complete fool would exchange dollars for bolivars at the official exchange rate" in my comment.
No, it's the an excerpt from Atlas Shrugged. Don't worry though, Francisco D'Anconia blows up all the Venezuelan Best Buys before anyone gets to loot them.
but so, you cannot buy 1 dollar for 7 bol(or whatever the official rate is) from the government, I suppose? but they will gladly take your dollar and give 7 bol?
thats what the government should have been fixing.. not robbing importers. it's their fault the importers can't buy dollars for so cheap.
Anyone who knows how economics works has been chased out. This is what you get, a mentality that everything should be free and money magically appears. Not even socialists are this idiotic.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I live in Caracas. Parent is utter and complete bullshit. NO media in Venezuela is owned by foreign companies, and certainly not by US ones. Actually, the government owns more than half of all media companies, and constantly threatens privately-owned media with closure if they don't toe the official line. That is a threat that they've actually followed thru with more than once. Look it up yourself if you don't believe me. Parent is a Maduro shill or worse.
In 30 years, current Venezuela will be held as the prime example of how they ran a thinly-veiled dictatorship while the rest of the world looked the other side and refused to call a spade a spade. It takes lots of guts to call "democracy" a country where critics of the government never appear on live, unedited TV. It takes lots of guts to call "democracy" a country where the president forcefully takes control of the media airwaves every day. It takes lots of guts to call "democracy" a country where the government openly threatens its workers with dismissal if they're found to be voting "for the counter-revolution". It takes lots of guts to call "democracy" a country where the next election day (Dec.8) has been officially declared "Day of Fealty to Chavez".
Yes, like all the people pumping gas, filling grocery store bags, etc. Full employment!
Or ... not. If you a make a job economically unproductive, it goes away. Businesses don't pay to lose money.
I understand and have sympathy for that argument. But in practice even a free employee needs things like paperwork, supervision, and co-workers. An employee so unproductive as to not justify the minimum wage could easily cause negative revenue.
There's a reason not every business accepts unpaid interns, lowering/eliminating the minimum wage probably won't make an appreciable dent in unemployment.
I stole this Sig
Why? He's doing an EXCELLENT job of flushing the country down the drain. All by his widdle lonesome self.
Eventually the people in his own country are going to wake up to the consequences of his policy of thuggery and theft.
At that point, if he actually survives the coup, it'll be a miracle.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
No, it has been in a death spiral for a while now.
The country is spending money like crazy while keeping their money printing presses running around the clock. Read the line in the article, "Venezuela's central bank said the country's money supply grew 70% in the past year." The currency is collapsing due to stupidity and power-grabs in government.
Many countries have seen this sort of thing happen, and it is not pretty. Wheelbarrows of money to buy bread, only accepting payment in foreign currency, and financial collapse are common with this scenario that is playing right now.
Zimbabwe did this about a decade ago as the currency collapsed. Collectors picked up the trillion dollar notes that were printed at the end of the collapse and worth practically nothing. I hope it doesn't happen but part of me thinks it would be fun to collect a billion bolivar note from the country if/when the collapse happens.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
The problem with debating this in terms of the minimum wage is that the value of money isn't a constant. An argument which works when the currency has a certain value might not work when the currency has a different value, even if the minimum wage stays exactly the same.
If you want to see what's really going on, you have to look at the wage in terms of individual productivity. If the minimum wage is significantly lower than the average amount of productivity generated by lowest-income workers, then raising the minimum wage will increase the country's overall productivity (an income distribution which is more proportional to individual productivity results in fewer people wasting money on extravagances like gold toilet seats). But if the minimum wage is close to the average amount of productivity generated by lowest-income workers, then raising it will simply result in their jobs disappearing. An employer would lose money hiring a worker because he'd end up paying the worker more money than he got back in terms of productivity.
While I do think the U.S. minimum wage is too low, this is the crucial aspect those arguing for a "living wage" as the minimum wage are missing. Raise the minimum wage beyond a certain point and you don't magically create wealth for the working poor. You simply put them out of work (and the average wage goes up because these people disappear from the denominator). For the minimum wage to work while keeping the lowest-wage workers in a job, it has to remain slightly lower than the productivity generated by those workers. Otherwise an employer is simply better off not hiring them. If that productivity is below what would be considered a "living wage", then you have to choose between paying them less than a living wage, or not giving them a job at all.
Venezuelans cannot by dollars from the government for any number of Bolivars. It's illegal for them to have any currency other than Bolivars.
Many fell for Chávez et al.'s socialist act, especially since out there you don't have enough tidbits to glean and see their true colors: authoritarian, bald-faced liars, sore losers, sectarian... It's all been a gradual power grab with "boiled frog" written all over it.
But you cannae change the laws o' economics, and the whole farce was teetering before Chávez died (officially on March 5, but his voice hadn't been heard since early December). Maduro's ineptitude as a statesman is more evident than Chávez's only because of his frequent blunders (Bush 43 shines by comparison), but the collapse was a matter of time:
* Local production of goods has waned, in good part because of ridiculous controls and destructive expropriation of businesses, increasing the demand for foreign goods and the currency to buy them.
* Venezuela barely exports anything beyond oil and some steel.
* The state oil company was run into the ground by bad management and direct social spending (by presidential mandate); even less dollars coming in.
Venezuela owes some $215bn (60% of GNP), and Maduro had to go in person to China to negotiate the latest $5bn loan. 12-month inflation is 54%, likely to increase as December rolls in. Nope, not looking good.
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
> with assault weapons
That's just the sensational way of saying that the army was there. Bringing some soldiers when seizing a building doesn't seem so strange to me. They didn't fire, or surround the shop. It's just sensationalist reporting.
When a US cop does his job, is he described as "an officer with a Taser, Mace, and firearm"? Of course not. That sort of nonsense reporting is reserved for stories about Central and South America.
The article mentions a fridge being sold for more than five thousand US dollars, so it seems there was indeed a need to do something. Seizing the oil refineries worked very well for Venezuela, maybe this is worth trying for electronics too.
I'm not saying it *is* a good idea, I'm just pointing out that the quality of reporting is lousy and there's the usual bias against any Central and South American leaders who don't pander to the US.
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Just like what happened to Mugabe in Zimbabwe. While I'm not willing to predict that there won't be a takeover, I wouldn't be so quick to assume that his goose is cooked. Despots have a habit of surprising the free world with their brutality.
Only thing is it's not getting more unequal. Income maybe, but income doesn't equal wealth. Wealth has actually been spreading in the US, but not thanks to any government, rather thanks to capitalism. Government has actually been slowing that down in the form of tariffs, wage floors, and price controls.
- Tariffs increase the cost of goods and reduce domestic production (imports and domestic production rise and fall with one another - this has been empirically proven numerous times.)
- Wage floors increase unemployment and reduce purchasing power of the poor by making goods they buy more expensive. (A poor person is more likely to balk at a tomato rising in price from $.60 to $1 in order to make up for increased labor costs than Bill Gates would, and the poor person is also now less likely to be able to find a job. See the lump of labor.)
- Price controls restrict supply and artificially create scarcity of wealth (lines at the gas pump in the 70's.)
I like to make a comparison of a poor person today with a rich person of the 80's. In the 80's, you were one fatcat if you owned any combination of a car phone, a big screen TV, and a personal computer. Today even the poorest own laptops, big flat screen TV's, and cell phones, and the ones they own are of much better quality than those that were owned by the 80's fatcat.
Government didn't make that happen, actually the very rich did. The rich got there by figuring out innovative ways of making things simultaneously cheaper and better so that you'd buy from them instead of some other rich guy.
Anyways, we'll see the result of what happens in Venezuela. I think what's going to happen is they are creating a very bad situation of the first and third item I described that governments can do to reduce the distribution of wealth: Since shops in Venezuela are required to sell at prices well below their worth in the actual exchange rate, they'll be effectively forbidden from importing goods. The result will be fewer material goods in the country, which means that as these goods break and depreciate, the poor will become even less wealthy.
If things turn out the way I'm pretty sure they are (their bonds have already collapsed as a direct result of this, by the way) then I'd hope you'll see why your war against the 1% is a pretty bad idea. Sure, they'll lose their wealth, but you'll lose a lot more than that. You'll get to declare that you won a war, but you'll be permanently much worse off than when you started it.
If I'm wrong, well then, viva la revolucion.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
Funny how the definition of socialism changed over the years. First it was social ownership of everything with no private property. Then it was central planning of the industry with some made up price system that never worked like the various schemes Soviet Union came up with (usually followed by a famine). Then it was the "third way" of countries like Yugoslavia (at the time it was briefly prosperous before the collapse) with a mix of state owned industry and some small scale private enterprise. Now it's basically a capitalist economy like Sweden with a slightly higher taxes than in the US and more welfare spending. Pretty soon you guys will finally be driven all the way to the right and call laissez-faire capitalism "socialism".
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
And did Venezuela stop being able to import groceries after they seized El Exito? Was the country ruined?
Actually a lot of Venezuelans would answer "pretty much" to both questions. Major shortages of basic goods, like flour, sugar, cooking oil and toilet paper started around the time and continue to this day. The collapse of the economy and the skyrocketing crime make living in Venezuela very harsh now.
Hunger and poverty have gone down significantly since 1999. Even the anti-Chavez people accept this.
Chavez's only merit was to be lucky enough to rise to power just in time for the biggest boom in oil prices in the History of Venezuela. The governments of the 80s and 90s never had nearly as many resources as Chavez had. The governments of the 70s were close, and they were MUCH better at reducing poverty (without the violence and hate Chavez brought).
Chavez also seized the oil companies, and stopped Venezuela's biggest resource being a cash cow for foreign companies.
Plain false. Oil industry was nationalized in 1976, over 30 years before Chavez. If anything Chavez has led to Venezuela's biggest resource to be a huge cash cow for Cuba and China.
I've never been there. It's probably the country I most want to visit, and one of the main reasons is because it's so hard for a foreigner to know what the country is really like. I just read the Venezuelan newspapers and talk to Venezuelans sometimes here in Europe (mostly rich Venezuelans who don't like Chavez).
Please do. Venezuelan malandros eat naive, easily-deceived first-worldies like you for lunch.
Who's to say that everything shouldn't be free?
I guess no one...
But what I can say is that if my hard work is now "free", then I won't work hard anymore.
If you don't compensate people for what they do, they'll stop doing it, unless you enslave them and use brute force. It works for awhile, until it doesn't.
For the record, this is exactly what socialists DO.
"Whenever the cause of the people is entrusted to professors, it is lost." ~ V.I. Lenin
Sorry for pissing on your righeous parade, but Sweden is a social democrat state, and social democracies are still a form of socialism. In fact, it's further to the left than a textbook social democracy, because Sweden still forces some sectors of the economy to be centrally planned and managed, such as housing and licquor selling. In fact, the swedish government has a ministry dedicated to managing Sweden's housing and construction.
Where would you fit a ministry dedicated to housing and construction in your laissez-faire capitalism idea?
That's not exactly a policy which is to the right of Europe's typical social democracies, is it?
The slippery slope nonsense is nonsense, and you're only showing off your ignorance.
Point being, he was saying the same essential thing originally. You misunderstood his post, then proceeded to write a fairly informative summation of the incentives, so honestly I was too confused on how to mod you. :)
That's the sort of reasoning that underlies minimum wage, but there's little evidence it works that way. Individual small businesses making short term plans may "pay whatever is required". That's because businesses don't optimize perfectly and instantly. Long term, however, they do.
European grocery stores already don't have baggers or shopping cart attendants. Raise the cost of hiring further, and you're going to see more self-checkout. Go even higher, and grocery stores are going to move to RFID checkout. Even higher, and they are going to go to stores based on fully robotic warehousing systems.
In the end, it's cheaper for most businesses to (1) either have customers do part of the work (whose time is cheaper than that of a full time employee), or (2) to automate. You don't help people by creating incentives for eliminating their jobs.
Straw man. Social democracies have existed for decades. Some stuff (like the postal service, and power) is better nationalised. The US, bastion of the free market supposedly, pumps billions into infrastructure via private companies. It's more socialist than you realise.
So why shouldn't everything be free? Because without money, most people will not exert effort beyond their own existance which is why communism and pure socialism tend to migrate to oppressive implementations. So in short, the people and human nature say it shouldn't be free.
You're partly right, but then stop mid-track. You're absolutely right that there needs to be an incentive to show that "effort beyond existance", but in theory this could anything that is seen as a reward. You'rer educing that to money because that's what we're currently are used to as the only form of reward.
How could the native americans have a society for centuries without a concept of wealth and currency? Or go back a few hundred years in Europe. People from knights to bards did not queue up to work for a king because of huge monetary saleries. (even if the job provided a higher standard of living than most people had). The incentive that made them "exert effort" was fame.
But this worked only as fame and appreciation something valueable. Neither an aluminium chip with "Hero of Work" embossed or "Employee of the month" are worth anything today.
bickerdyke
Well, if I plan to sell TVs, I need to hire someone whose expertise is selling TVs. No matter if I'm a country or a electronic retailer.
Espescially if you're a country. If a retailer fails at selling TVs, Crazy Eddy goes down the drain and no one would notice. You don't want your country to fail just because they didn't know how to sell their stuff.
In theory, there are pros for planned econoomy. But the biggest con is that so far, no one got it to work...
bickerdyke
He's got an internet connection, so he's one of the wealthy minority, who's probably not too happy for being reminded that people of his class have been raping the country for generations, and finally someone is attempting to do something about it, albeit not with great success.
Notice a pattern? The definition changes to fit whoever someone needs to have made a bogeyman out of.
Pretty soon you guys will finally be driven all the way to the right and call laissez-faire capitalism "socialism".
I think that line has already been crossed when simpkly the thought of everyone having health insurance has been called "socialism".
bickerdyke
This is spot on. I'd guess that the tendency to redefine Western European countries like France, Germany, Sweden and even the UK (with its NHS and high welfare spending) as 'socialist' comes from the rhetoric of a particular American political party opposed to the introduction of universal healthcare. Or from people opposed to that particular party who want to draw a definite line between the US system and what's done in every other western developed country (including ones outside Europe like Australia, Canada, NZ).
Of course there's no definite, scientific definition for 'socialism' but academcis and political parties in these countries usually define their system as a 'mixed economy' or a 'Social market economy (German: Soziale Marktwirtschaft)'. Which basically means a capitalist based-economy where the majority of GDP remains in private ownership but the government takes a significant amount (33-45%, sometimes more) to fund a welfare state and other programs, and the government has significant power to intervene in markets to ensure fair competition, prevent environmental damage etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_market_economy
http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Mixed_economy.html
Pre-canned Evolution Links for all those Slashdot holy wars.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/07/venezuela-not-greece-latin-america-oil-poverty
Interesting theory, but it looks like they have 35 Billion in the bank.
If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.
Or if there is more than everybody could possibly consume, and nobody needed to produce it.
This is why I like robots.
Help I am stuck in a signature factory!
The stable social democracies around the world, at least those that don't have debts over 100% of GDP, are enlightened enough to know that they should get out of the way of business and try and make conditions as conducive to private profit and investment as possible. In those that fail, the temptation to manage private business "in the interests of the people" almost always fails. I would recommend a quick reading of Ludwig Von Mises for a good explanation of why.
The ignorant fools running Venezuela at the moment (including his predecessor and the morons in the West who hold Venezuela up as some kind of worker's paradise, like Britain's Owen Jones) are treading a familiar path that will almost certainly result in the collapse of their economy. But hey, they will finally get what they want: Equality. Everyone will be piss poor.
Everyone will be piss poor.
The saddest part is that is never quite what happens.
Private property is the most fundamental component of freedom and democracy. Strong private property rights both in the form of society won't allow a strong man to just smash and grab and society does not appropriate property at will are key. Add to that a currency and you get a form of democracy. One mans money is as good as the next and if you want more of it you'll have to get offer him something he will consider a fair trade for it.
What you get in the face of communism/socialism is political currency becomes a new sort of exchange. Politically important people still find a way to concentrate wealth in their hands. Even shortly after the Russian revolution while perhaps most people were hungry and being forced to share what had been single domiciles because nothing could get built or maintained, loyal party members got to eat tea-biscuits and watch the ballet. Sixty years later when it all comes a part a small group of people who'd managed to get into the right government roles managed to walk away with lots of formerly state property giving themselves quite the leg up in the new economy.
Marxism might be a nice ideal but it completely ignores human nature. Whenever anyone really tries to implement you don't get your Marxist workers paradise you instead get something that is a lot more tribal; an oligarchy where a few guys share power with their sons, nephews, and old army buddies who live very comfortably, a little more equal if you will, and everyone else who gets to support it.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
That summing up of knights seems a bit like Renaissance fair history. You're right - knights didn't receive monthly bank transfers. In some cases they'd receive land, and the goodies they pillage. This tradition survived well in to era of gunpowder. There would also be knights fulfilling pledges to their lord or a king for which they'd get to keep their power and land, and perhaps rewards in the afterlife. Bards similarly were getting recompense for their work. In short, these were reciprocal arrangements. That they didn't receive salaries doesn't change this. You can't eat fame. This wasn't some medieval reality TV show, and knights used to shit in their armour.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
The stable social democracies around the world, at least those that don't have debts over 100% of GDP, are enlightened enough to know that they should get out of the way of business and try and make conditions as conducive to private profit and investment as possible.
Unfortunately, that's not a good plan either. If you look at the place in which it's succeeded the most, the US, you'll still see lots of undesirable byproducts of unregulated business, like major income inequality and, consequently, a higher prison population. Not to mention the decline the US has been experiencing due to relying on unsustainable exponential growth. What I mean to say is that we're fucked either way, embracing or extinguishing the free market.
It usually works like this: The official exchange rate gives you, say, X10 per $1 and the black market rate X100 per $1. (Which happens because the official rate is not one which balances supply and demand). So, everyone wants to sell $s at the black market rate and buy at the official rate. The government then forces everyone they can who has dollars to sell - legal exporters and their customers, for example - to do so at the official exchange rate. This gives them a small source of official dollars. Most people can't get these, there are too few, so they go to people the government likes. eg, bribe-givers, political allies, ruling politicians and their families, etc. Those lucky people can then immediately sell them on the black market at huge profit, or import goods very cheaply which they can either use or sell at huge profit. You could also use it simply to bankrupt all of the private companies you don't like to support the ones you do (until you run out, of course).
I don't know any specifics about the Venezuelan government, but governments doing this usually have no incentive to fix it. Much easier to use it as a source of power, wealth and patronage.
Unfortunately, that's not a good plan either. If you look at the place in which it's succeeded the most, the US, you'll still see lots of undesirable byproducts of unregulated business, like major income inequality and, consequently, a higher prison population. Not to mention the decline the US has been experiencing due to relying on unsustainable exponential growth. What I mean to say is that we're fucked either way, embracing or extinguishing the free market.
The prison growth has nothing to do with unregulated business, there is not even a correlation between regulation and prison population, or it would be decreasing. One of the few things that does correlate with prison population is single parent households. When children of single parents are corrected for there is little difference in crime rates between blacks and whites, 70% of children in juvenile prisons are from simple parent households, 80% of inmates are from single parent households. Many of these studies were done in the 90's when only 25% of children were raised by single parents, while now the number is over 40%, which would correlate with the growth in prison population. CEO's making 6 or 7 figure salaries are not causing it there is not evidence to even correlate it.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
You see, I'm not even solid middle class, though I have a degree that took me 8 years to get because I had to work to pay for college. I have a job and I *still don't make as much money* as some leech that's living off welfare. I am angry because despite working my ass off and getting an education I can't get off the ground. Instead, we get laws that protect criminals, leeches and corrupts. Chavistas have been "attempting to do something" for 15 years by now. Obviously, they have no idea what they are doing, and in the process we live in a country which minimun wage is around 50 bucks. An underage girl who gets pregnant by a killer who's in jail and lives with her grandmother makes more money than, say, an engineer. I understand she might need it, but this country is raising a generation of people who don't want to work for a living, because they want to suck off the government, who, fishing for votes, encourages it. TL;DR: I'm not, and you're talking bullcrap you have no idea about.
Oblivion Awaits
Yeah, 35 billion is nothing. That's half the budget, annually, for California. If they have these reserves and pull them out then the country truly is at rock bottom. It will be heading there as the attack on Daka demonstrates only state owned stores will flourish and they likely won't have anything in stock because nobody wants to sell to Venezuela and be paid in toilet paper Bolivars. It'll be like the good old days in Soviet Russia - where you sell your neighbor for a pair of blue jeans.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Most people in collapsed East Europe and Soviet Union did not blame the Evil USA for their problems, they knew who was at fault.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
>United States
>Unregulated business
Pick ONE. Business regulation has been expanding for a full 100 years. It is now collapsing under the weight. Not just Federal, but state and local regulations as well.
Further, income inequality is caused primarily by money printing by the central bank. It doesn't really have much to do with regulatory regimes. No, the purchasing power of everyone holding dollars is diluted every time a new dollar is printed, and they are printing $85 BILLION a month. Those who receive the freshly printed money first are the ones who get the benefit, as the purchasing power of the rest is transferred to them. It amounts to something like $268 for every man, woman, and child in the US. That's like every household having an extra mortgage to pay, on top of their own debt and the taxes they already pay, and you pay it without even knowing it, as it is simply taken out of the power of your dollars.
It won't end well for most.
Q. How do you know your country is NOT a democracy or a republic?
A. Your country has "Democratic" or "Republic" in it's name.
Dark Reflection
Many Americans and Europeans may have trouble with the idea of "official" and "real" exchange rates. You can go in to any bank and purchase or sell currency, you can trade larger amounts on foreign exchange markets. You find the price never varies much place to place at a given time, because you can always go elsewhere. If Citibank wants more for Euros than Deutsche Bank, well you can buy them from Deutsche Bank even if you are in America. The currencies truly float, their value against each other varying all the time based on trading.
This is not the case in a place with a fixed currency like Venezuela. The government says "You can buy X amount of our currency for Y amount of foreign currency," with the foreign currency usually being US Dollars. Ok, easy enough to understand, and generally the government is happy to sell you as much of their currency as you want at that rate. The problem is when you try to go the other way. The government won't buy their currency back and give you dollars. In and of itself that makes sense, governments generally sell their currency to other people, they don't buy it back, since they are the ones who generate and control it.
So you say ok, well I'll sell that currency on the foreign exchange markets. Ahh well here's where your problem comes in: Those markets don't value the currency the same as the government that sold it does. You have to give them a whole lot more of it to get the same amount of dollars (or other currency). So you have two rates: The real one and the official one. The real one being the rate things actually trade for on markets.
Well government who implement currency controls don't like this. That is why they are implementing currency controls, to try and fix prices (it doesn't work, but they are still trying). Hence they usually restrict or ban trading like this. That then of course leads to a black market, where things are even higher, since the people involved are skirting the law.
This is just the kind of thing that happens with fixed currencies/price controls. While it might seem to be workable internally, it doesn't work on a global scale since other countries don't value your currency the same and they don't sell goods directly in your currency.
Yeah, 35 billion is nothing. That's half the budget, annually, for California. If they have these reserves and pull them out then the country truly is at rock bottom. It will be heading there as the attack on Daka demonstrates only state owned stores will flourish and they likely won't have anything in stock because nobody wants to sell to Venezuela and be paid in toilet paper Bolivars. It'll be like the good old days in Soviet Russia - where you sell your neighbor for a pair of blue jeans.
Poor choice of words, or you haven't been paying attention. One of the biggest recent Venezuelan shortages was of toilet paper, so if they actually started printing Bolivars on real TP, it would probably serve to increase the value of the note!
Sorry, but you're wrong. Yes, in the '90s when those studies were done, it kinda looked that way. Since then, however, the percentage of single-parent homes has continued to skyrocket, only, funny thing, crime itself has gone way down. Read the above linked article, look at the graphs. Sure, some research says single-parent children may be more at risk for going to jail than those from two-parent households, but you can't explain the prison population that way, not without seriously cherry-picking your data.