Tag Archives: socialism

Venezuela

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Before I even talk about this Atlantic article on Venezuela, let me say that I don’t know enough about Venezuela to have much of an opinion on it or its politics. And the language in the article is not unbiased, but has an ideological bent. But here’s what it says:

What our country is going through is monstrously unique: It’s nothing less than the collapse of a large, wealthy, seemingly modern, seemingly democratic nation just a few hours’ flight from the United States.

In the last two years Venezuela has experienced the kind of implosion that hardly ever occurs in a middle-income country like it outside of war. Mortality rates are skyrocketing; one public service after another is collapsing; triple-digit inflation has left more than 70 percent of the population in poverty; an unmanageable crime wave keeps people locked indoors at night; shoppers have to stand in line for hours to buy food; babies die in large numbers for lack of simple, inexpensive medicines and equipment in hospitals, as do the elderly and those suffering from chronic illnesses.

Like I said this article is ideological, blaming the problems on “Chavez’s 21st-century socialism”:

A case in point is the price controls, which have expanded to apply to more and more goods: food and vital medicines, yes, but also car batteries, essential medical services, deodorant, diapers, and, of course, toilet paper. The ostensible goal was to check inflation and keep goods affordable for the poor, but anyone with a basic grasp of economics could have foreseen the consequences: When prices are set below production costs, sellers can’t afford to keep the shelves stocked. Official prices are low, but it’s a mirage: The products have disappeared.

When a state is in the process of collapse, dimensions of decay feed back on each other in an intractable cycle. Populist giveaways, for example, have fed the country’s ruinous flirtation with hyperinflation; the International Monetary Fund now projects that prices will rise by 720 percent this year and 2,200 percent in 2017. The government virtually gives away gasoline for free, even after having raised the price earlier this year. As a result of this and similar policies, the state is chronically short of funds, forced to print ever more money to finance its spending. Consumers, flush with cash and chasing a dwindling supply of goods, are caught in an inflationary spiral.

The Soviet Union taught us that there is such a thing as going too far with price controls, and such a thing as being overly reliant on oil revenues. Maybe leaders of this country missed some of those lessons of history and repeated some of those mistakes. But I also see another lesson here. The article talks about both the collapse in oil prices, which hit government revenues hard, and the severe drought caused by El Nino, which is causing both water shortages and electricity shortages because the country is dependent on hydropower. So whatever the decisions of political leaders, which I take no position on here, the country was clearly not ready for an external shock caused by environmental factors and changes in supply and demand of natural resources. It may be a microcosm for things to come on a larger scale elsewhere in the world.

Scandinavian equality

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Recently I wrote a post about how it seems ludicrous to blame the United States’s problems on an excess of democracy, if democracy is defined as equality. I also suggested that a reasonable definition of democracy should include a consensus building process, which is not just rule by majority vote, but a method to choose policies that almost everyone can accept even if they are not everyone’s first choice.

Well, the Scandinavian democracies at first glance seem to achieve equality, consensus, wealth, and peace. I want to believe in that, and to believe that we could learn its secrets and bring them to the United States. Here is a dissenting view though, in a new book about the Anders Breivik massacre in Norway:

After the Second World War, Scandinavia seemed to create model societies, free of corruption and intolerance, moral, compassionate and fair. The Danish people had bravely defied their Nazi occupiers throughout the war and saved almost all of the nation’s Jews. In 1944, the Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal published a groundbreaking critique of the racism faced by African-­Americans in the United States. Myrdal’s study, “An American Dilemma,” greatly influenced President Truman’s executive order to integrate the United States military, the Supreme Court’s ruling on behalf of school desegregation, and the creation of the modern civil rights movement. In 1964, Gunnar Jahn, a former leader of the Norwegian resistance to the Nazis, handed Martin Luther King Jr. the Nobel Peace Prize at a ceremony in Oslo. Jahn expressed the hope that “conflicts between races, nations and political systems can be solved, not by fire and sword, but in a spirit of true brotherly love.”

Today, the third-largest political party in Sweden has the support of racists and neo-Nazis. The leading political party in Denmark is not only anti-immigrant but also anti-Muslim. And the finance minister of Norway, a member of the right-wing Progress Party, once suggested that all the Romany people in her country should be deported by bus. In “One of Us,” the Norwegian journalist Asne Seierstad explores a dark side of contemporary Scandinavia through the life and crimes of Anders Behring Breivik, a mass murderer who killed 77 people, most of them teenagers, as a protest against women’s rights, cultural diversity and the growing influence of Islam.

I don’t necessarily buy this. There are problems in every country, and I think the countries of northern Europe (I would throw Germany and the Netherlands into the mix) have quite possibly done the most anywhere to try to solve them and create the best human societies they can. I don’t think they claim to be utopian, only to be striving for utopian ideals. Most impressively to me, they try to build consensus not by keeping outsiders at bay and trying to remain homogeneous, but by allowing diversity and then trying to deal with it, which is the harder path. Because they have chosen the harder but potentially more rewarding path, there is a visible right-wing backlash developing. I think something similar has happened in the United States – the intolerant minority has become more vocal and visible as we have become more tolerant and pluralistic overall. This doesn’t mean there aren’t vulnerabilities – if the intolerant element becomes large and active enough to gain real power, bad outcomes are obviously possible. Economic stagnation, violence and fear can all increase the risk of bad outcomes.

cynicism

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Poor Hillary. I voted against her last time, and I probably will vote against her again even though I think she would probably make an adequate President. The reason is that she is choosing the path of cynicism. When Bernie Sanders talked about how all other advanced countries provide health care, education, and child care for their citizens, citing Denmark as an example, Hilary said we aren’t Denmark, we are the USA. In other words, we can’t do it because we are the USA.

One night I tuned in to the Democrats’ presidential debate to see if they had any plans to restore the America I used to know. To my amazement, I heard the name of my peaceful mountain hideaway: Norway. Bernie Sanders was denouncing America’s crooked version of “casino capitalism” that floats the already rich ever higher and flushes the working class. He said that we ought to “look to countries like Denmark, like Sweden and Norway, and learn from what they have accomplished for their working people.”

He believes, he added, in “a society where all people do well. Not just a handful of billionaires.” That certainly sounds like Norway. For ages they’ve worked at producing things for the use of everyone — not the profit of a few — so I was all ears, waiting for Sanders to spell it out for Americans.

But Hillary Clinton quickly countered, “We are not Denmark.” Smiling, she said, “I love Denmark,” and then delivered a patriotic punch line: “We are the United States of America.” Well, there’s no denying that. She praised capitalism and “all the small businesses that were started because we have the opportunity and the freedom in our country for people to do that and to make a good living for themselves and their families.” She didn’t seem to know that Danes, Swedes and Norwegians do that, too, and with much higher rates of success.

That’s not logic – if every other country can do it, we are the exception, we are dysfunctional, and it is cynical to say we can’t do it when obviously it is possible. When Bernie hit her for praising Henry Kissinger, I think we was spot on. Henry Kissinger was a “realist”, a cynic, and he has the blood of millions on his hands. I would listen to arguments about how well-functioning markets could boost retirement savings, restore rational prices to our broken health care and education systems, boost growth and innovation, from Democrats or even from Republicans, but I am not hearing those policies from anyone. Instead, I am hearing intolerance and science denial from the Republicans, which I won’t entertain for a second, and “USA, no we can’t” from Hillary. I like what I’m hearing from Bernie on campaign finance, financial regulation and climate change. So go ahead and sign me up.