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'World of Warcraft' Game Currency Now Worth More Than Venezuelan Money (theblaze.com)
schwit1 quotes TheBlaze:
Digital gold from Blizzard's massive multiplayer online game "World of Warcraft" is worth more than actual Venezuelan currency, the bolivar, according to new data. Venezuelan resident and Twitter user @KalebPrime first made the discovery July 14 and tweeted at the time that on the Venezuela's black market -- now the most-used method of currency exchange within Venezuela according to NPR -- you can get $1 for 8493.97 bolivars. Meanwhile, a "WoW" token, which can be bought for $20 from the in-game auction house, is worth 8385 gold per dollar. According to sites that track the value of both currencies, KalebPrime's math is outdated, and WoW gold is now worth even more than the bolivar.
That tweet has since gone viral, prompting @KalebPrime to joke that "At this rate when I publish my novel the quotes will read 'FROM THE GUY THAT MADE THE WOW GOLD > VENEZUELAN BOLIVAR TWEET.'"
That tweet has since gone viral, prompting @KalebPrime to joke that "At this rate when I publish my novel the quotes will read 'FROM THE GUY THAT MADE THE WOW GOLD > VENEZUELAN BOLIVAR TWEET.'"
Can you define "leftism"? Some of the most successful economies in the world could be defined as "leftists" if you include social Democrat nations like Sweden and Germany.
The Chavista regime certainly can be defined as leftist, but a more accurate description would be a kleptocracy.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Right, the CIA. I am Venezuelan. I know how this came to be. I saw it happen. If it wasn't for your signature I would have accused you of being a communism apologist coming up with another explanation that excuses the Venezuelan people for repeatedly and obstinately choosing an administration hell-bent on turning the the country into a communist utopia.
I thought the target was Saudi Arabia. Drive down the price of oil, so that they are forced to dip into their savings and rainy day funds. It might take a few years but eventually they will be living hand-to-mouth in terms of bringing money into the country.
The side effect was that Venezuela also suffered a loss of earnings from the oil industry. There was a national strike, the government punished those oil workers that supported the strike, froze wages and fired experienced workers like geologists. Now with that knowledge lost, the replacements make mistakes when drilling which causes damage to machinery. which causes further loss of productivity. So oil production is in decline.
An international web site called Oil Pro is actually shutting down: www.oilpro.com
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
It's important to remember that "socialism" (public ownership of resources and the means of production) is not NECESSARILY synonymous with "leftism" (belief in equality of outcome, etc).
There IS one scenario where non-leftist socialism can (and does) work: when the country
a) Has substantial, valuable natural resources with a large, robust international market, and
b) Is willing and able to limit the ability of "outsiders" to become citizens with an equal right to their share of those resources.
By almost any observational definition, Saudi Arabi is a de-facto socialist state... every Saudi citizen, as a matter of birthright, is eligible to receive tens of thousands of dollars per year from the Saudi government. Free money. With bonuses for things like giving birth to a Saudi child, getting married, etc. Ditto, for countries like Kuwait, Bahrain, and other oil-rich countries.
Norway is similar. Norwegians pay high taxes, but they also get a metric crap-ton of free services (on top of a generous social welfare system) to make up for it. Just check out the new road tunnels that have gotten built throughout Oslo (and elsewhere in Norway) over the past 20 years or so. Those roads were STAGGERINGLY expensive to build, but are really awesome if you're living in Norway. By American standards, even *poor* Norwegian citizens are pretty damn affluent. HOWEVER... the need to limit eligibility for social welfare services is a major reason why Norway can't join the EU. If it joined the EU and retained the same social welfare system it has now, two things would happen within 20 years: a) Norway's population would explode to 100 million, and b) Norway wouldn't be able to profitably extract and sell enough oil to maintain those benefits, and its ability to fund them would eventually collapse.
Imagine, for a moment, if the US Government, which currently owns most of the land in Alaska, were to go into overdrive and start profitably drilling for oil everywhere in Alaska it could. It might destroy Alaska's natural environment, but it would also mean that anyone who was born or naturalized as a US citizen would get a few thousand dollars per month for free... augmented by a veritable army of guestworkers who could never become American citizens, but would end up doing the jobs Americans had no incentive to do themselves. Imagine an America where even a (relatively) poor (but American) family could afford to own a house, pay immigrants to do their yardwork, and live in a neighborhood with the look & feel of a wealthy gated community... a gated community that NEEDED those gates, to keep them safe from the shantytown packed with dirt-poor immigrant guestworkers on the other side (kind of like any big city in Latin America, where you have skyscrapers with million-dollar residences that LITERALLY have tin-roofed shacks sprawling for 5 miles behind them on the other side of the parking garage).
In this case, "socialism" != "leftism" -- Saudis might be de-facto SOCIALIST, but there's little public support for expanding the number of Saudi citizens, or improving the lives of Saudi Arabia's guest workers. An average Saudi might feel a bit of distaste for treating foreigners like shit, but would instantly draw the line at doing anything that might reduce THEIR OWN way of life and standard of living.