Thoughts on Venezuela

A year or so ago, I was posed an interesting question which was a bit out of my area of comfortable knowledge, but I think I managed to capture my understanding and perspectives fairly well… 

I have a question for you: what are your opinions on Venezuela and socialism? I am curious, because I know you are intelligent and I want some depth. Thanx!

Hm.

I have to admit, my knowledge of Venezuela and their ongoing issues is scant – I am going off one tab open on Messenger and another on the social behaviors of elephants, and I think it is interesting to answer this one with little research (as in sitting in front of the local coffee shop).

Venezuela, much like my understanding of many Latin American countries, is really having a difficult time with corruption. Socialism and corruption is much worse than capitalism and corruption in that the former leaves little option for change (absolute power), while the latter leaves change up to the individual (power through initiative). I couldn’t give you a detailed analysis of the societal, economic, and political disposition of Venezuela in the present, past, or where it will be in the future, but I think that… from what little I have read (and a conversation at the range with a Venezuelan woman who was very determined to learn how to shoot better than her American husband), Venezuela’s socialist government will fail… no… collapse horribly… for several reasons.

One reason is that socialism cannot sustain itself. Any nation needs to be able to produce enough financial momentum to provide the basic needs of the people. Some nations produce wheat, others produce oil, and those exports provide money for upkeep of the system. Socialism and communism can do the same thing, but usually their social programs for the people end up costing way too much to be sustained over the long haul. Think of it this way: if people are given everything for little effort in return, how long can they be given anything? There has to be a balance between compassion and responsibility… and people are horrible in maintaining that balance. We always want more of everything for less personal effort.

The other way it will fail is that the government will fail to keep up with the outrage “Whack-a-mole” that comes from the people being shafted while the leaders live in comfort. That’s how the Russian Revolution started (twice), that’s how the Weimar Republic gave way to the NSDP, and that’s the danger of our current outrage du jours that are fed by the media. Discontent equals major shifts, though never in the way that is intended or desired. In the case of Venezuela (again, from my limited research and reading into the matter), the government is on a very fast spiral to dissolution, and it will get much worse as people are promised everything and are willing to go with whatever placates their anger… at any cost. The rise of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan following the Soviet-Afghan War is a great example: the power structures in place are removed from the ability to restore order led to lawlessness and the rise of an organization that *seemed* to have the answers to safety, security, and other basic needs. However, we see how that turned sour pretty quickly and the result was a step backwards towards a level of control no one really expected or wanted but were left with.

(I had to transition to Word – this was turning into a much longer response than I anticipated.)

To sum up: I think that Venezuela will not get better any time soon. How could it? What would be the magical set of promises by the current government that would “make it all better”? What could socialism promise to do better that it hasn’t already shown it incapable of doing up to this point?

Any of the “-isms” in political theory look great on paper but fail in practice due to the basic idea that theories promptly go out the window as soon as the variables of human greed, apathy, and desire are factored into the mix. So, what we are left with isn’t a shining example of social perfection, but a botched collection of stories of individual success in spite of the obstacles of those political theories. Socialism and communism are two of the worse of the lot – they promise everything for the sake of total power over the individuals’ lives… for not much in return in terms of quality of life. Venezuela will be an interesting study in both the mechanism/process of collapse as well as how a nation that really should be much more successful than it currently is either rebounds or worsens – especially when viewed with what that means for the neighboring Latin American nations. After all – the destabilization of one country inevitably leads to refugees seeking safety and the meeting of other basic needs… stressing the economies of those destination nations.

Great question, and I may have plowed through my 812-word response, but I shall give it more thought…