Jason Y writes:
I think there is a chance a change in the environment could put the non-white and mixed people on par with the elite. However, at the present time there are so many problems, some caused by moral faults in the non-white and mixed people themselves, that it could explain some of the failure, as Tulio seems to suggest.
For instance, capitalism does seem to work in the USA for some average people, how can that be explained?
The Chavistas didn’t fail. True, a lot of the huge gains have been substantially reversed in the past few years, but that is due to the crash in the price of oil but mostly due to rightwing and US sabotage. The rightwingers sabotaged the economy and ruined the whole country. How does that boil down to non-Whites can’t do any sort of socialism?
They never had any socialism down there anyway. There was a lot of talk about building socialism, but to tell the truth, they never really got around to it. They just had a sort of a social democracy. The government didn’t produce anything. When you went to the supermarket, everything you saw there was made or imported by the business community. The government took over the oil industry, correct, but that is the case in many oil-producing states. How is that like the USSR?
Yes the government nationalized a few things like the cement, asphalt and maybe brick-making industries, but that’s not the stuff you go buy in the stores. How is the government running a few basic industries like that like the USSR? Governments the world over often run basic industries like that. It’s sort of hard to screw up making concrete. How do you mess it up?
The main “socialist” aspect of Venezuela was that the government took over the oil industry and used the oil income for massive social spending on the part of the poor. But that’s what oil producing nations the world over do. For instance, that is the model in the Gulf. Venezuela is about as socialist as Saudi Arabia.
You want to tell me how that is the same thing as the USSR? The Chavista haters are lunatics.
