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Venezuelans Flock To Cryptocoins Amid Spiralling Inflation (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Bloomberg:
Demand for digital coins is soaring in Venezuela amid an escalating political crisis that has protesters demanding that President Nicolas Maduro step down. Inflation has spiraled to the triple digits, debasing the bolivar and depleting savings, while citizens struggle to find everything from food to medicine on store shelves. "If you're going to be in something volatile, you might as well be in something that's volatile and rising than volatile and falling," says Ryan Taylor, chief executive officer of crypto currency Dash Core, the third-largest digital coin by number of transactions... Bitcoin trading volume in Venezuela jumped to $1.3 million this week, about double the amount that changed hands two months ago, according to LocalBitcoins.com...
Venezuela's currency has become nearly worthless in the black market, where it takes more than 6,000 bolivars to buy $1, while bitcoin surged 53 percent in the past month alone. But it's not just about shielding against the falling bolivar, as some Venezuelans are using crypto currencies to buy and sell everyday goods and services, according to Jorge Farias, the CEO of Cryptobuyer.
Venezuela's currency has become nearly worthless in the black market, where it takes more than 6,000 bolivars to buy $1, while bitcoin surged 53 percent in the past month alone. But it's not just about shielding against the falling bolivar, as some Venezuelans are using crypto currencies to buy and sell everyday goods and services, according to Jorge Farias, the CEO of Cryptobuyer.
Never change, snowflake.
including money
It's only a matter of time now. Maduro has armed tens of thousands of militia gang members. The criminals are also armed and looting and killing at will. People are starving to death and will eventually face a choice between a slow lingering death or going down fighting. It will happen quick once it gets started. Mobs will break into the arsenals and loot the weapons. Military units will face a choice of whose side to join, as they did in Syria. Maduro has made many enemies who will take the opportunity to settle scores and lots of hungry young men with nothing to do and no prospects will relish the chance to bleed the elites. All that's needed now is a spark and Maduro is sure to bungle into one sooner or later.
I am a Venezuelan and I do use it, and know others using it. It depends on what your circle of friends is like.
If only Pinochet could help them...
No, this is the point where you use basic political science definitions and point out that the thing that shitty governments tend to have in common far more than economic leanings is being authoritarian. Venezeula isn't shitty because they have universal healthcare, they are shitty because they have a dictator, and with a dictator, you tend to not actually fall within the ideals of any popular economic model.
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I found the "Election Denier".
Right now a lot of people use Bitcoin as a gold substitute. It's valuable because it's (relatively) secure and rare, exactly why people used gold for so long. But like gold, it's not actually practical for using as an everyday means of exchange.
Currency exchanges take too long to verify (half an hour or more), cost too much to do so (minor transactions can cost more to verify than exchanged hands), and the whole system sucks up a lot of power. While cryptocurrency as a valid backstop against incompetent governments is a great idea, a more technically proficient cryptocurrency, better designed for everyday transactions, would be a huge boon.
Except authoritarians ruling capitalist countries tend to do far better economically than authoritarians ruling communist countries. Examples: Pinochet's Chile, Nazi Germany, modern day China.
Authoritarianism is bad.
Communism is bad.
But the combination is even worse.
Communism will work! The only reason it hasn't happened so far is because reeducation hasn't ever gone far enough. You need to stop greedy citizens from trying to hold on to their possessions. All a person needs is a small portion of food, clothing, and shelter, and nothing else. If we could just properly teach them to give up all else, then all wars would end!
There are always crazy Venezuelan gang bangs on chaturbate. They must be really desperate.
Venezeula isn't shitty because they have universal healthcare, they are shitty because they have a dictator
Is Maduro a dictator? IIRC he was regularly elected. Now he refuses to step down from presidency after opposition won majority in parliament, but the consitution allows that: his opponents will have to win the presidential election to kick him out.
An economic model is not supposed to be popular, if it is a popular one it means it is one that gives government power, removes power from individuals and all of this is done either for 'the good of the public' or for 'the good of the nation' (socialism/communism vs fascism/nazism), pick your hemlock.
An economic model is supposed to follow sound ideas of money being created by productive work, of people having to exchange the fruits of their labour in a free market where the prices are not dictated but discovered, where production is encouraged and not taxed, savings are encouraged and not taxed, where if you have to tax something it has to be on the consumption side, where interest rates are set by demand and supply in the free market, where money is created by the work of the people rather than on the whim of any government or a pseudo government agency, where prices are not fixed on neither products, nor labour, nor capital, where people are allowed to fail, where failure is not seen as something bad but as something cleansing. Where failure and debt restructured is the preferred way of dealing with failure rather than any form of a subsidy or a prop up by any form of government.
The health of the economy cannot be sacrificed in the name of any form of economic justice, any form of protection, any form of safety, any form of stability, the economy is a living, breathing, constantly changing organism that develops and evolves and survives because it is the best fit organism in the existing environment at any moment in time.
Individuals need to be free to create, to save, to work, to produce and to consume if they choose to consume instead of saving. Individuals make the weather, not collectives, individuals make the choices, not collectives, individuals make purchasing and selling decisions, not collectives, individuals own property and run businesses, not collectives, individuals trade with each other, not collectives.
Individuals do not need any form of protectionism, individuals do not need any form of a 'trade agreement', they just trade voluntarily for their mutual benefit (or at least for what they perceive is their mutual benefit) in the absence of an oppressive regime. Individuals must be allowed to fail, they must be allowed to die trying, they must be free. Individuals build economies, individuals set priorities, individuals make choices. Collectives must not be allowed to stand in the way of individuals.
You can't handle the truth.
It's the United STATES of America, not the United Large Liberal Cities of America.
In the USA the central bankers are now arguing that their so called '2% inflation target' should be raised to a higher number because in their NSHO the country 'has been suffering from a low interest rate for a while', so they are saying it is OK to have a higher inflation targe for a while to 'even things out'.
A bunch of modern voodoo black magic mambo jambo is being pushed from government propaganda channels, government has no idea what it's doing but of-course we cannot admit this, admitting this would finally mean the realization that government should not be manipulating the economy in the first place.
Inflation that is not driven by any free market forces but that is being imposed upon an economy and the world by the desires of the central bankers and various government branches is a plague and this one has the power to destroy civilizations. Inflation is destruction of the money, it is the expansion of the money supply and under a central planning system it normally comes about by the inability of the system to sustain the high maintenance government that it amassed so now the inflation tax (theft via depreciation of the value of money) is imposed upon all who hold government controlled money and bonds.
USA created so many dollars and bonds not backed by any form of production since the Federal reserve was given the power to monetize government debt that it caused a massive shift of productivity from its own shores elsewhere (especially China, but even Mexico and other countries), who absorbed USA inflation while building up their own productive capacity. USA was losing the productive capacity it built up while it used gold as money and had much smaller government than any other country of a comparable size back in the 19th century. Of-course once the pretence of any form of actual reserve behind the dollar was completely removed in 1971, when Nixon defaulted on the gold dollar the exodus of jobs and productivity accelerated by some enormous factor. This also helped to create the massive disparity between the wealthy and the poor, with the poor suffering disproportionately from the government inflation policy.
Of-course in the West today inflation is mis-characterized as 'rising prices', however the correct definition of inflation is expansion of the money supply. Rising prices may result from that expansion but rising prices are a consequence of inflation, they are not the cause of it.
I think the USA Federal reserve itself has fallen into its own propaganda trap, completely forgetting what inflation actually. The Fed believes it can control the economy via the monetary policy. In reality the Fed can only create more or less inflation and manipulate interest rates to a higher or a lower degree causing more or less damage to the overall economy.
Inflation is not a good thing in the contracting economy and USA is a contracting economy. Deflation is not a bad thing in a contracting economy either, it is correlated with mal-investment failures and restructuring, so it is perceived as bad because people lose their jobs, however deflation also increases the value of savings and lowers prices, thus both reducing the economic impact on people who lose their jobs while increasing the value of the capital that can be used to restart the economy.
The government sees deflation as a scary thing that reduces its nominal GDP, reduces its tax base and most importantly is correlated to lower quality of life through fewer jobs and closing businesses, so the government never wants to allow deflation to work its way through the economy clearing bad debts and reducing the burden of all the mal-investment in the system.
All of these government fears find their way into the 'education' system (propaganda system) that teaches people the wrong lessons in history while destroying their ability to see reality and that's the real problem that we are facing today - a mis-educated population that doesn't understand anything related to economics.
An economically illiterate population is easily manipulated into voting for collectivist regimes that can only cause more damage and eventually.... "Venezuelans Flock To Cryptocoins Amid Spiralling Inlflation"
You can't handle the truth.
You merely reiterate the earlier point about projection. No-one can get the left to shut up, therefore you claim that the right do the same.
Socialism is necessarily totalitarian and dictatorial. You simply cannot have a society that is both free and socialist. Socialists acknowledge that by calling it a "dictatorship of the proletariat."
The route to freedom under socialism is the elimination of everybody who doesn't behave according to socialist ideals: work camps, secret police, and massive indoctrination.
So stop lying and pretending that Venezuela is some kind of aberration. You are deplorable.
An entire ocean separating them from Europe either, so they can't just go to Europe and call themselves climate refugees like the Africans either.
"If you're going to be in something volatile, you might as well be in something that's volatile and rising than volatile and falling," says Ryan Taylor, chief executive officer of crypto currency Dash Core..
Indeed. Just ask anyone from Zimbabwe, or Albania. (Disco Stu voice) "And if this trend continues... Eyyyyy!"
Chile collapsed so quick that Friedman had to cry that he meant to do that.
Bullcrap. Pinochet ruled Chile for 17 years, while the economy prospered, and then peacefully transitioned Chile to democracy. He was a brutal but competent dictator.
Germany and China had the benefit of being strong, economically robust states
More bullcrap. Germany was a basket case when Hitler took over. He immediately launched a massive Keynesian expansion that pulled not just Germany, but much of Europe out of the Great Depression.
Under communism, China was one of the world's poorest countries, and experienced the worst famine in all of history. Then in 1979, they switched to capitalism while keeping the authoritarianism in place. Since then, their economy has expanded ten-fold.
Look at the graph on this page: Historical GDP of China. Under communism, China's economy was flat for decades. Then in 1979 it was like turning on a light switch from "poverty" to "prosperity". There is a clear inflection point.
They use crypto-currency because their own currency sucks, they aren't allowed to use anything else, but they can't stop you using a crypto-currency. If a major country supported a crypto-currency it would quickly become a defacto world currency. Safe, can't be blocked easily, and you can avoid taxes/government control.
Is Maduro a dictator?
Yes. He is ruling by decree. He ignores the legislature, and has packed the judiciary with his cronies.
IIRC he was regularly elected.
Being elected doesn't make you a non-dictator. Hitler was elected. Maduro became president when Chavez died, and was re-elected soon after by a razor thin majority that is widely viewed as fraudulent.
his opponents will have to win the presidential election to kick him out.
Since Maduro controls the army, the judiciary, and the election infrastructure, that may prove difficult.
YOU...voted for this. No fucking complaining, OK?
Pre-Chavez Venezuela was one of the most unequal societies in the world. The dispossessed people that voted for him had little to lose (or so they thought). If nothing else, Chavez's legacy will be that the corrupt old order has been swept away.
...for a country as big as Venezuela, the 3rd largest oil producer in the world?
Their oil production has been dropping since the government takeover of the oil fields, and now they are #11 behind Brazil.
Venezuela is basically an example of how to run a country hard into the ground. "Dios es Venezolano" but he's face-palming right now.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The techniques failed, not the political philosophy.
This is Leftism in a nutshell. It is never the fault of the ideology when 30 million people starve to death, and a billion are impoverished. It is only because someone failed to tweak the "purity" knob on the policy dashboard. Whatever.
>Communism will work! The only reason it hasn't happened so far is because
we keep running out of Other People's Money, for some reason.
"You're buying into the myth that it was an economic wreck"
And you are buying to a bunch of BS. They bankrupted themselves fighting WW1 and any German assets the allies could get their hands on was seized. The poor state of Germany's economy was the catalyst Hitler used on his way to power. He constantly blamed Germany's poor economy on the WW1 European Allies and built up the hate to the point where German citizens supported Hitler's military adventures.
And China is the US's most successful regime change in it's history. Nixon's started the ball rolling when he visited Mao in China. Up until then China was insular and had not been brought into the international economy. The US coaxed China a little each year until China's leadership finally realized the amount of money to be made by opening their economy. Of course one beneficiaries of China's entry into global economic and trade framework was the US. There is a reason the ruling party in China are some of the wealthiest people on the planet. Their wealth wasn't built by copyrighting and distributing their "Little Red" book. The US will always take a good trading partner regardless of their political ideology.
[Maduro is a dictator] He is ruling by decree. He ignores the legislature, and has packed the judiciary with his cronies.
The relevant question is: is that allowed by the constitution?
Being elected doesn't make you a non-dictator. Hitler was elected. Maduro became president when Chavez died, and was re-elected soon after by a razor thin majority that is widely viewed as fraudulent.
You should double check that Hitler became chancelor because of an election. And for the razor thin majority, did you called G.W. Bush a dictator?
Since Maduro controls the army, the judiciary, and the election infrastructure, [kicking him out of presidency through elections] may prove difficult.
Indeed it is always difficult to kick out a leader abusing its powers, but that has not happened yet. Given how polarized the venezuelian political landscape is, I agree with you the risk is there, but please wait for the fault before naming a culprit.
The article talks about massive inflation related to bitcoin as if it is a recent thing. The graphs in the article show interest started over a year ago, yet the traded value of the currency is on par with what it was this time last year after a brief 10% dip 60 months ago.
What gives?
That's fine, but what about corporations, limited liability and government granted intellectual property monopolies?. I take it you are against those as well?
The relevant question is: is that allowed by the constitution?
Constitutionality is decided by the judiciary. Maduro owns the judges. So the constitution means whatever he says it means.
You are talking about Communism when you say Socialism. There are less extreme versions of socialism that aren't dictatorships. Having the government build and maintain roads is socialism, so is a government run police department or army. Having the government subsidize farmers and the "War on Drugs" is classic Socialism straight out of Karl Marx but Republicans have no problem with those.
Post chavez Venezuela is still one of the most unequal societies in the world (check out the chick related to chavez who became a billionaire while he was alive). Just a lot hungrier.
I said "universal healthcare." Universal healthcare is not authoritarian, and the cries of 'socialism' in America are always about things like universal healthcare, infrastructure, public education, unions, and social safety nets. None of those are authoritarian, and they tend to increase the effective freedom of societies.
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What I meant by 'popular' was models that people will openly claim to advocate. Capitalism, democratic socialism, mixed markets, socialism, and even communism. Virtually nobody, and especially not economists, openly claims to advocate for fascism, cronyism, or oligarchy, but that's what authoritarian governments tend to have as economic models.
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The second biggest issue of our time is probably the recent world recession. Bush inherited a balanced budget (surplus even - from Clinton's small tax raise), gave out the biggest tax cut to the rich in who knows how long, and a few years later we had the great recession. If you want to get into details, there's multiple reasons for that, but the one thing it proves is that doling out tax cuts for the wealthy in America can't save the economy, not in our time at least. If you're pragmatic, you have to bet that it actually does a lot of harm.
The right is sooo idealogical. The left, sometimes talks ideology, but usually looks at every situation and tries to choose what's actually best for everyone, even the right. We've seen that trickle down economics, invented on a napkin by politicians, has failed miserably, so we don't believe in it. We've seen that starting stupid wars is ... stupid. People die (good people, a lot of righties even). If you're going to war, make sure it's for the right reasons.
1) You aren't describing universal healthcare, you are describing Obama/Romney/Nixoncare.
2) The level of abstraction from violence is important in assessing whether or not something is authoritarian, or how authoritarian something is. Yes, anything enforced by the state is eventually tied back to the state's monopoly on violence, but there's an enormous gap between having to pay modest taxes, not doing so having a possibility of eventually resulting in prison time after exhausting a number of legal processes, and summary mass executions. There is a spectrum from anarchy to authoritarianism, and those are all minor elements. If we fucking trained our cops to do their damn jobs like other countries and ended civil forfeiture, and implemented all of the things I mentioned, we would have a net movement away from authoritarianism.
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Losing an argument? No problem, just change the subject.
I am not a Venezuelan, and neither is my wife!
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Under communism, China was one of the world's poorest countries, and experienced the worst famine in all of history.
That is a pretty missleading statement.
First of all China was poor before Mao, too. Secondly China was occupied by foreign nations before Mao. Thirdly the famine from 1958 - 1962 has nothing to do with communism. I suggest to at least read the relevant wikipedia articles.
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Hitler was not elected. /. myth ...
That is a american or
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
All examples you gave have nothing to do with socialism or communism etc.
They are classic examples of a governments responsibility.
Not having them does not mean you are 'capitalist' ( which is a market system and not a political system), it means you are in an anarchy.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
You said:
That's correct. You can have universal healthcare without being as shitty as Venezuela. Just look at Switzerland. See, contrary to what you believe, universal healthcare can be provided in many ways other than through government programs or socialism.
Venezuela is your typical socialist shithole, with the typical sequence of events that happen when socialists take power: dictatorships, economic collapse, violent oppression, secret police, refugees, etc.
That's the typical sequence of events because socialism is the political equivalent of young earth creationism and faith healing: it is an absurd, irrational set of beliefs that simply does not reflect reality and fails to deliver results.
Local currency is better than cryptocurrency
Casteism
"but there's an enormous gap between having to pay modest taxes"
But Venezuela isn't failing because people pay modest taxes, it's failing because it is actually socialist, with all the secret police, violence, oppression, poverty, corruption and economic failure that go along with socialism.
An economic model is not supposed to be popular, if it is a popular one it means it is one that gives government power, removes power from individuals and all of this is done either for 'the good of the public' or for 'the good of the nation' (socialism/communism vs fascism/nazism), pick your hemlock.
An economic model is supposed to follow sound ideas of money being created by productive work
Is it?
Or is the economic model supposed to provide for the people the best quality of life? Who cares about the top end of town, it is how well the bottom end of town lives that determines if a model is good or bad.
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Okay, you're an idiot, but the point is, countries like Venezuela are used in stupid arguments so America doesn't adopt Scandinavian policies, even though they meet the reality of the "American dream" by just about every single metric.
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No, the reason is simple. We just haven't found the right intelligent species. Once we find that, Communism will work great!
Of course, we still have to exterminate those pesky humans or find a system that kinda works for them.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Germany had a very strong industrial sector when Hitler took it over, and while it was hard hit by the Depression it wasn't a basket case. Nazi Germany policies kicked off a massive expansion based on borrowing from other countries. This wasn't going to last forever, which is why it was necessary to grab Austria and (more importantly) Czechoslovakia to avoid something of an economic collapse. Then Germany went to a war economy and got to loot a large part of Europe.
Not what I'd consider a sound economic policy, considering how it all ended.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Germany came out of WWI in pretty good shape, actually, although the whole reparations mess obscured that. Hitler blamed Germany's woes on a whole lot of things, mostly Jews and international bankers and such people. Hitler lied a lot.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Scandinavian style government means massive tax raises on the middle class, and a massive loss of individual liberties, both of which American voters are unlikely to support. It means giving up sovereignty and attaching yourself to big neighbors that take care of your defense and foreign policy, not an option for the US. It means a massive exodus of entrepreneurs and the wealthy. There is also lots of reason to believe that it is just not sustainable, bring largely based on intergenerational transfers.
Scandinavia itself is more than enough reason not to adopt Scandinavian policies.