We haven't had a Venezuela thread for a while, but that's not because things are getting any better. The latest crisis: there aren't enough zeroes on the national currency to keep up with current hyper-inflation, so people have to carry around massive packages of notes in order to buy anything, and people weigh the notes instead of counting them.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...-a7443596.html

But don't despair, Socialist Brothers & Sisters!!! The Government are going to take decisive action to fix the problem. They're going to print more, higher denomination bills. That has always worked in the past.

http://www.dw.com/en/venezuela-to-in...maca=en-tco-dw

Here's a roundup of some previous Venezuelan crises. The beer crisis

http://www.dw.com/en/supply-shortage...ion/a-19226196

The clothes ironing crisis

http://www.dw.com/en/venezuela-resor...sis/a-19214450

The surgical gloves crisis

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...celona-caracas

There is some good news, though. Take the toilet paper crisis from last year - that has already been partly solved, if only they could afford glue to stick the banknotes together. Or staples would do the job nicely.

But don't worry, Comrades, all will come out right in the end and Bolivarian Socialism will triumph over these wicked plots!! Jeremy Corbyn says so!

https://twitter.com/jeremycorbyn/sta...992?lang=en-gb

And so does Diane Abbott!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBErk_QqRMo

Ah the socialist utopian nightmare, their dead president was a sleaze with no brains, a tellytubby would have been a better leader, at least he was not into shagging goats like a tyrannical President not far from European shores.

Every person I met so far with socialist values is actually pretty clued up so how the hell are the dumb and the stupid the ones that make it to the top.

"Venezuela is a market based mixed economy" is the usual response to this

Given that hyper inflation has happened in capitalist countries, and the vast majority of socialist countries haven't suffered hyper inflation, I think it's safe to blame Venezuela's unique situation and its lousy President, rather than socialism.

Is Owen Jones still praising this regime to the rooftops?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype..._Soviet_Russia

I think that's mainly because there's nothing to buy. Where are all these socialist countries, btw?

Well at least they aren't reduced to buying bread by handing the baker a note and he cuts out a shape the size of that note.

Probably because they haven't got any bread either.

Interesting point raised there. So the question is who are/were the socialist countries of whom you speak? Because in my experience when a socialist country fails amid economic collapse, stagnation and social unrest the stock response from the Left is "that wasn't real socialism" or some version thereof. And when pressed as to which countries are real socialism we get stock response number 2, which is "there has never been a socialist state" (or some version thereof).

It's therefore refreshing to find a socialist who seems to believe that there are-have been socialist states in the world. And not only that, but enough such states to qualify for a "vast majority" for comparison purposes. So in order to expand debate on this interesting topic do you care to elaborate as to which socialist states (country and time period) you believe have avoid hyperinflation? It is the vast majority after all.

Using people's suffering for political point scoring.

Classy.

Suffering which has been caused by an incompetent socialist government under Chavez and Maduro.

Truth.

Like you care about their suffering. Probably grinning like a child in a sweet shop every time a Venezuela story pops up on your news feed.

Yes, but how come all the world's socialists were loudly praising Chavez/Maduro up until the point when they started rationing bog-roll, about four years ago? What does it say about western socialists that they are unable to recognise that a country is on the high road to disaster until long past the point when disaster has actually struck?

Us right-wing knuckle-draggers knew as long as fifteen years ago that the brave Bolivarian Socialist Revolution was only being sustained by artificially high oil prices and that the whole country would end up like a cross between The Walking Dead and 1984 about a week after oil prices went down, so how come no Socialist realised it?

It's all gone very quiet. The last official communique on the subject to come out of the Sheffield Bunker, just over two years ago, blamed Opposition violence and rioting for the situation. Presumably the Internet has been on the blink round his way.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/10430

Hmmm. And what are you doing to ease their suffering?

Travelling to Caracas to organise a soup kitchen?

Raising awareness of the human rights abuses of the brutal repressive Socialist regime?

Raising money for the poor? (How much so far?)

Or caring.....

Drawing conclusions from one people's suffering to prevent other people making the same mistake, normal.

The crisis is nothing to do with socialism.

Oil revenues made up 95% of the countries exports. The price of oil collapsed and the government started printing money in response, causing the hyper inflation. The system of government is irrelevant. The problem is having an economy so reliant on a single product.

Well Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland all spring to mind. They all score very highly in lots of inter-country league tables especially on quality of life.

They've been in control for 18 years. At any time during that period when oil revenues were high, they could have reinvested the profits into other enterprises. Instead they used them to buy themselves short-term popularity with the urban working classes. In fact, they didn't even save enough money to keep the oil infrastructure in good nick, so now they have the quadruple crisis of declining prices, declining yields, more expensive extraction costs and people in charge who are utterly pig-ignorant of the basic principles of real world economics. And who suffers the most? The very urban working classes they pretend to be so concerned about.

Wait a second, you are just after saying that socialism can't be blamed for Venezuela's failure because it is so heavily dependent on oil. Isn't Norway, which you are now holding up as an example of successful socialism, also heavily dependent on oil?

I agree with you, but its nothing to do with the fact the government is socialist. Its to do with the fact the government is rubbish.

Norway is a largely socialist country and they saved a massive fund from their oil wealth.

The difference is Norway has used its oil wealth wisely. Again its not really to do with socialism, just economic competence.

Yes, I agree that the Bolivarian socialists have shown massive economic incompetence. But that is not what Western Socialists have been saying, is it? Up until three-four years ago practically all western socialists - Corbyn, Abbot, Jones, Ken Livingstone Thomas Piketty, Podemos in Spain, Syriza in Greece, our very own GreatGodPan - were all queuing up to say how brilliantly wise they were, how they were inspiring a new generation of radical ideas,

What does it say about the cream of western Socialists that they all so completely misunderstood what was in fact a slowly-unfolding humanitarian disaster?

I think they call it ideology, though it is a term they usually reserve for others.

Except that they aren't socialist countries, they have mixed economies.