Venezuela Unofficially Enters Hyperinflation

[Yeekim]

Perhaps the UN could play a role in assuring that elections in dubious democracies are kept up to a minimal quality standard.
Ofc only possible if there is a UN qualified majority and no veto's.

What happens now is that after the mess is created we all look at the mess.

When the regime in question is uncooperative, it is obviously not possible to "assure" anything without applying actual force.

 

[Hrothbern]

When the regime in question is uncooperative, it is obviously not possible to "assure" anything without applying actual force.

agree
and there is not that much the UN can do to make a sitting regime more cooperative, because most kind of actions will mostly affect ordinary people more than the clique around the sitting regime.

If self preservation of the sitting regime is their main objective, hitting exactly there is I think the most effective way to deal with them.

In many of the "wrong" governments the key people, enriching themselves at the expense of their country, will not like when their personal assets are frozen in foreign countries, and trade sanctions could be restricted to very luxury goods only, affecting mostly the ruling class.
Such actions could get into place long before new election dates, getting a much more pre-emptive and preventive character.

And it will in general be difficult to shield the population from getting informed that a majority of the international community, indirectly or directly backed by super powers, wants fair elections.
North Korea for example will have no issues there, but a Venezuela will face a population that gets official support from the outside world.

 

[luiz]

There is no question that Maduro's election was a complete fraud. It was not recognized by any important Latin American country, the Organization of American States, by the US, Canada, the entire EU, Japan, Australia, etc. It was only recognized by the usual suspects such as Cuba, Nicaragua, Russia, Jeremy Corbyn, etc.

The Bolivarians have turned Venezuela into a pariah state where people starve, flee in hordes, and have no medicine nor toilet paper.

It's important to learn lessons from this current catastrophe so that all this suffering is not in vain. People who promise paradise on Earth only deliver hell, every single time. People's lives are too precious to be treated as lab rats in some grand socio-economic experiment. It's much better to stick to slow, gradual progress than to try and "revolutionize" everything, only to break everything and leave a trail of destruction and suffering.

It will probably take *decades* for Venezuela to fully recover from the destruction that 21st Century socialism caused.

 

[Traitorfish]

21st Century socialism

For somebody who would cry foul if Maduro claimed that the sky is blue, you seem awfully willing to take the Bolivarians at their word on this part.

Thinking of it... which dictators we know of, who did not attempt to establish a veneer of legitimacy through (manipulated) elections?

Franco would be the first one that springs to mind. Fascists tended to abandon elections after consolidating power- that whole "cult of action" thing- and as Franco seized power directly by force of arms, he was able to skip directly from "fringe weirdo" to "supreme leader" without having to exploit the constitutional order first.

The prevalence of dodgy elections in modern dictatorships is less a characteristic of dictatorships as such, and more a reflection that most of those dictatorships are nominally grounded in some sort of liberal or socialist nationalism. There's an assumption that accountability to the people needs to be institutionalised in some way, whether simple presidential elections or a full parliamentary pantomime. When an ideology like fascism comes along, which presents a logic of popular nationalism without the need for formal accountability to the public, even staged elections become unnecessary.

That all depends on whether we think of referenda as elections, though, because the fascists maintained a weird sort of soft-spot for them. I suppose the idea that the Leader just knows what the nation wants is a bit of a hard pill to swallow for anybody outside the active movement, so there's a value in at least going through some of the motions of formal democracy, so long as the populace still remembers free elections (or, at least, more artfully staged elections).

 

[luiz]

Franco would be the first one that springs to mind. Fascists tended to abandon elections after consolidating power- that whole "cult of action" thing- and as Franco seized power directly by force of arms, he was able to skip directly from "fringe weirdo" to "supreme leader" without having to exploit the constitutional order first.

The prevalence of dodgy elections in modern dictatorships is less a characteristic of dictatorships as such, and more a reflection that most of those dictatorships are nominally grounded in some sort of liberal or socialist nationalism. There's an assumption that accountability to the people needs to be institutionalised in some way, whether simple presidential elections or a full parliamentary pantomime. When an ideology like fascism comes along, which presents a logic of popular nationalism without the need for formal accountability to the public, even staged elections become unnecessary.

The Nazis loved staged elections and plebiscites, though.

There is always a certain allure in claiming to speak "for the people".

 

[Traitorfish]

The Nazis loved staged elections and plebiscites, though.

There is always a certain allure in claiming to speak "for the people".

Plebiscites, sure, I address that in their post. But after 1933, they didn't bother with anything that could really be described as even a staged election: in 1936 and 1938, voters were simply asked to approve or disapprove the Nazi list. It wasn't even a single-party ballot, it was essentially a referendum on the Nazi leadership appointing their underlings to the Reichstag. They were only "elections" in the very loosest sense in that they concerned the composition of the (nominal) legislature. There wasn't the sort of fussy pantomime of parliamentarianism that the Soviets engaged in.

 

[innonimatu]

agree
and there is not that much the UN can do to make a sitting regime more cooperative, because most kind of actions will mostly affect ordinary people more than the clique around the sitting regime.

If self preservation of the sitting regime is their main objective, hitting exactly there is I think the most effective way to deal with them.

In many of the "wrong" governments the key people, enriching themselves at the expense of their country, will not like when their personal assets are frozen in foreign countries, and trade sanctions could be restricted to very luxury goods only, affecting mostly the ruling class.

I can assure you that my country has one such "wrong" government by people whose overriding priority is enriching themselves and their key backers. I suspect yours and most others also does. No one is proposing sanctions on them. No one is lifting a straw to put an end to the so-called "fiscal paradises". The current head of the European Union, chosen by its most influential states, is one of the "paradise men"...

And it will in general be difficult to shield the population from getting informed that a majority of the international community, indirectly or directly backed by super powers, wants fair elections.
North Korea for example will have no issues there, but a Venezuela will face a population that gets official support from the outside world.

The " international community" is a fraud, PR deployed by the governments of the "great powers" of out day, the great power and its lackeys to be more exact, whenever it needs to create internal support for one of its imperial endeavors.

 

[Velegon]

Plebiscites, sure, I address that in their post. But after 1933, they didn't bother with anything that could really be described as even a staged election: in 1936 and 1938, voters were simply asked to approve or disapprove the Nazi list. It wasn't even a single-party ballot, it was essentially a referendum on the Nazi leadership appointing their underlings to the Reichstag. They were only "elections" in the very loosest sense in that they concerned the composition of the (nominal) legislature. There wasn't the sort of fussy pantomime of parliamentarianism that the Soviets engaged in.

Considering the Nazis banned all other political parties in July of 1933 - any pretense of democracy ended then and there in my opinion .

 

[luiz]

Considering the Nazis banned all other political parties in July of 1933 - any pretense of democracy ended then and there in my opinion .

Oh yeah, don't get me wrong, it was not even a pretense democracy. But like all modern political movements, the Nazis did claim to "speak for the people", which is why they organized sham referendums and would even have the nerve of accusing other leaders of despotism.

If we want to find leaders that were honest enough about ruling without giving a damn about what the people think, we'd probably need to go to the Ancient Regime. Charles I's last words, right before his execution, about what he considered to be freedom for the people, come to mind: "but I must tell you that their liberty and freedom consists in having government ... It is not their having a share in the government; that is nothing appertaining unto them. A subject and a sovereign are clean different things."

We won't find this level of honesty in a Maduro.

(nor will we find the level of courage he displayed on the scaffold when it comes the time for Maduro to answer for his crimes).

 

[Lexicus]

People who promise paradise on Earth only deliver hell, every single time.

Sadly this applies to the free marketeers and the liberal utopians as well...

 

[luiz]

Sadly this applies to the free marketeers and the liberal utopians as well...

I have not doubt that if some Randian group seized power and attempted to create their libertarian utopia, the results would be pretty hellish too. But none have so far.

 

[Lexicus]

I have not doubt that if some Randian group seized power and attempted to create their libertarian utopia, the results would be pretty hellish too. But none have so far.

Well, if we ignore the last two centuries of history I suppose we can claim it has not happened yet. It happened repeatedly in the 19th century and that ended with two world wars and multiple genocides. It happened in the former Soviet Union (much more obviously, on a much shorter timescale) and that gave us Putin. It is happening in the whole world right now, utopians routinely claim we are inexorably heading toward a better future but the world keeps getting hotter and guys like Trump keep turning up...

 

[luiz]

Well, if we ignore the last two centuries of history I suppose we can claim it has not happened yet. It happened repeatedly in the 19th century and that ended with two world wars and multiple genocides. It happened in the former Soviet Union (much more obviously, on a much shorter timescale) and that gave us Putin. It is happening in the whole world right now, utopians routinely claim we are inexorably heading toward a better future but the world keeps getting hotter and guys like Trump keep turning up...

Well at least we have enough to eat and toilet paper to clean our butts. The same cannot be said of our brothers in the socialist paradise of Venezuela.

 

[Traitorfish]

Well at least we have enough to eat and toilet paper to clean our butts. The same cannot be said of our brothers in the socialist paradise of Venezuela.

Who would have thought the bar was so low.

 

[Hygro]

Who would have thought the bar was so low.

That’s the intended horror of luiz’s point.

 

[Traitorfish]

That’s the intended horror of luiz’s point.

I frankly don't have the confidence in Luiz to believe that he would put subtext there on purpose.

 

[Hygro]

I frankly don't have the confidence in Luiz to believe that he would put subtext there on purpose.

It’s literally his next sentence...

 

[Traitorfish]

It’s literally his next sentence...

Who would have thought my opinion of Luiz was so low.

 

[bernie14]

Who would have thought my opinion of Luiz was so low.

 

[Lexicus]

I found this article about Cuba's healthcare system today.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/11/cuba-health/508859/

Cuba has long had a nearly identical life expectancy to the United States, despite widespread poverty. The humanitarian-physician Paul Farmer notes in his book Pathologies of Power that there’s a saying in Cuba: “We live like poor people, but we die like rich people.” Farmer also notes that the rate of infant mortality in Cuba has been lower than in the Boston neighborhood of his own prestigious hospital, Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s.

They've actually got a really good system:

It’s largely done, as the BBC has reported, through an innovative approach to primary care. Family doctors work in clinics and care for everyone in the surrounding neighborhood. At least once a year, the doctor knocks on your front door (or elsewhere, if you prefer) for a check-up. More than the standard American ritual of listening to your heart and lungs and asking if you’ve noticed any blood coming out of you abnormally, these check-ups involve extensive questions about jobs and social lives and environment—information that’s aided by being right there in a person’s home.


Then the doctors put patients into risk categories and determine how often they need to be seen in the future. Unlike the often fragmented U.S. system where people bounce around between specialists and hospitals, Cuba fosters a holistic approach centered around on a relationship with a primary-care physician. Taxpayer investment in education about smoking, eating, and exercising comes directly from these family doctors—who people trust, and who can tailor recommendations.

So I think folks who are saying the US can't provide healthcare to everyone without ending up like Venezuela are talking out of their asses.