Venezuela

@Ooh-Rah that's not my emoji, that's an emoji propped up and selected through collusion and corruption. Much like the heart emoji the rightful will never be forgotten.

Recuerda Bolivar! Recuerda el corazon y la cara triste! Viva la revolucion! Viva Venezuela!
 
amlove21 said:
Sanction the fuck out of Cuba, and Russia for that matter. How many times are we going to blindly allow Russia to thumb their nose at us?

Send diplomatic aide- as much as possible- and stabilize the govt. Venezuela was responsible for 60k immigrants (legal and otherwise) at our southern border last year.

For the love of fucking Buddha, just play this one right.

ETA- and where the fuck are all the socialists on this one?!? Pretty quiet from Mr. Sanders and AOC.
Click to expand...


Ilan Omar complained a few months ago that we were backing a "right-wing dictatorship" by throwing our support behind Guaido. Considering the source, it's what I'd expect. AOC for once is keeping her mouth shut. I know this is hoping for the improbable, but maybe some of the socialists are actually starting to realize that socialism is not always a good thing.
 
Marauder06 said:
One of Venezuela's biggest problems is that it has so much oil, and its institutions weren't strong enough to deal with it. Some people refer to it as the Resource Curse.

Opinions are mixed on the "resource curse" theory, but it makes sense intuitively to me. If you have some kind of massive resource, usually but not always oil, you tend to base your economy exclusively on that. When times are good, you give away money and provide lavish government handouts and subsidies. You don't diversify economically, because your resource is so profitable you don't think you need to. You don't have a groundswell of demands for institutions and freedoms, because everyone is generally pretty happy. I mean, what's a little totalitarianism when I have a job, health care, and a low crime rate?

...but then something happens.

Maybe it's some kind of catastrophic natural disaster. Or the commodity price drops dramatically. Or the US sanctions you. Take your pick. Whatever the cause, eventually, you run out of "free money." Then, all of those great government handouts stop. You just lost your great government job. Your parents lost their great government pension. Because you had a one-commodity economy, there's nothing out there to pick up the slack. You can't find work. Services stop. Crime goes up. Inflation gets out of control. Very soon, you're broke as shit. EVERYONE is broke as shit. Well, everyone you know is broke. But SOMEONE has all the money. And the population starts looking for someone to blame.

But the people in power, want to stay in power. And because there was never any meaningful investment in institutions and freedoms, the ruling junta completely controls the executive, the legislature, most of the country's major businesses, the military, the police, the press, and the judiciary. And because the populace allowed themselves to be disarmed back when times were good, there's not a whole lot they can do about it.

If we really want Venezuela to be successful in the long term, then yes we will need to invest in some degree of violence to get the current rulers out, but what we will really need to do is to invest in institutions that can prevent this kind of thing from happening again in the near future. Because if we don't, the next ruler is also going to turn on the oil spigots and things will be good, again. Until they aren't, again.
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This is why people will follow you; both in AND out of uniform.
 

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