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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.'"
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).
The important phrase here is official rate. The bolivar is bullshit, and everybody knows it. That's why it trades at 10 times as many per dollar as the official exchange rate. Venezuela doesn't make televisions. They're imported, and the people who do make them price them in yen, RenMinBi, or Won, or perhaps dollars. The people who sell them are likely to want hard currency to pay for them. So the price in bolivars looks nuts. This is what happens when you peg an artificial exchange rate, folks.
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.
Sarcasm: Requesting permission to buzz the tower.
ArchieBunker: Negative Ghostrider, the pattern is full.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
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.
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.
The World Social Forum — yes, it is just what it sounds like, plenty of Ayn Rand detractors, to put it mildly — once declared Hugo Chavez a "guest of honor". Yeah, they would support just such a government. Of course, when the take-overs (a.k.a. confiscations) begin in earnest, the weaker among them will try to forget it and lament, how this particular attempt at Communism "was not done right either" and how the next one — the one they'll undertake — will finally show the whole glory of the new order.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
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.
Oh, they will... Take it from a USSR survivor, there will be two groups of importers: official and otherwise.
The officially-imported electronics will be available in the government-run stores — for Sean Penn and other supporters of Socialism to see. No, ordinary people would not be able to buy anything there — you'd either need to have a special pass to enter the store, or have hard-currency (or some sort of government-issued coupons). Though the prices will be denominated in Bolivars, you'll have to exchange your foreign currency right there — at the official rate...
The unofficially imported stuff will be sold on the black market, which the government will fight tooth and nail — thus providing law-enforcement with easy side-income (that is likely to exceed their official salary). The corruption will, well, corrupt the entire population — and the law-enforcement in particular — for generations to come. The actual businessmen bothering with such imports will be denounced as "speculators" — by contrasting their prices with those of the government stores (described above).
A grey area will be represented by people, who purchase their own stuff abroad. They would, probably, be allowed such items — perhaps, after paying some customs fee — and even permitted to sell them (used). As long, as of course, they don't attempt to profit from such sales...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
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.
The characters from Atlas Shrugged are two-dimensional cardboard cutouts. They're sock puppets for her political (and perhaps psychosexual) theories. She's terrible at character and conveying any emotion beyond juvenile petulance. So yeah, "people" said that and they're right. Now, that being said, I don't think Ayn Rand's theories are wrong. For example, the concept of enlightened self inter...
/coughs
/coughs again
I mean. Sure. She's a dry writer. Her prose alone should have sent her to a gulag but that doesn't mean that she didn't have some goo...
Sorry. I just can't do it. I know that sucking Ayn Rand's pole is a great way to ride the slashdot karma rocket (and a great way to make eye contact with Rand Paul) but no, she was a terrible hack whose only real skills were shitting out Cold War era odes to capitalism and giving the pretentious or privileged someone to blame their personal (and sometimes sexual) failings.
And really, Detroit? That's like blaming the Gulch because Galt got a better deal on property in Mexico.
What's funny is the ones who say communism is a good idea that just hasn't been done right never really pay attention to the times it has been done exactly according to plan and still failed anyways.
I like to cite the example of the Icarians in Nauvoo, IL. They had a whole town - facilities and all - literally just handed to them free and clear, and even got to cherry pick who would live there in their commune (picking only those who had a known good work ethic) and had a democratic policy making process. Things were going ok at first, but over time their productivity was on a steady decline. It soon got to the point where workers had to be forced to work harder (policies like no talking while on the job were enacted) and the once idealistic leaders became douches hell bent on seeing their commune succeed at any cost. In the end, people just got miserable and went their separate ways. Had it continued longer and that option not been available, an autocracy would have to have taken over to force people to go to work whether they liked it or not. This is what later happened in Russia, Korea, Vietnam, China, and others when communism was tried on a national scale.
In the early days, Russia even had a system in place where they even wanted to get rid of laws and codes and remove lawyers from trials...it failed miserably as without laws, going "against the betterment of the people" was so selectively enforced, so they discovered the hard way why rules are critical.
Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam originally wanted democracy, even having read the US declaration of independence and parts of the constitution in front of his followers as if that were ideal, only with communism for their economy. That too failed, requiring them to resort to indoctrination camps and effective slavery.
Capitalism sort of happens own (even currency does - in the absence of one, people tend to create one on their own - after the fall of the soviet union, Russian denizens replaced the ruble with cigarettes and vodka as their currency until a new official one came about.) Communism, however, requires force to implement. That fact alone should tell you why communism will never work, and this "not exactly communism" that Venezuela is doing is likely to result in the same (indeed, they are sending the owners of these electronics shops to jail.)
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
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".
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
I know what her _philosophy_ is because I've read scholarly publications on it,
Then you know what her detractors have to say about it. You yourself remain smugly ignorant of her actual philosophy.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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.
Under capitalism, man exploits man. But under communism, it's the other way around.
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