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Old 02-14-2019, 06:41 PM
 
23,655 posts, read 17,467,969 times
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https://www.quora.com/What-caused-Ve...YxA4J3OPZdH7kw

"Venezuela has the world's largest oil reserves. But during the country's oil boom in the 1970s, Venezuela's politicians decided to keep all of the country's oil revenues instead of sharing them with the foreign oil companies helping operate Venezuela's oilfields."



Feel so sorry for the people.
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Old 02-14-2019, 06:43 PM
 
4,985 posts, read 3,941,543 times
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what is actually who.
the people caused it.
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Old 02-14-2019, 06:46 PM
Status: "I must be “really retarded”" (set 9 days ago)
 
19,995 posts, read 20,683,019 times
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The United States. That's who.
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Old 02-14-2019, 06:49 PM
 
9,329 posts, read 4,125,410 times
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There are a lot of aspects but, in general, any country whose major dependence is on oil has a strong tendency to self-destruct.
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Old 02-14-2019, 06:51 PM
 
Location: Chicago Area
12,687 posts, read 6,711,133 times
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Whenever any country pushes towards state enforced Socialism, you can start the clock right there on mass-starvation, mass-murder, mass-violence and the great big human catastrophe. In order to implement a system in which the government seizes the means of production, there are going to be people who disagree and you generally end up killing those people. Then the free-rider principal begins to take effect. Nobody works because nobody actually has to work. Then the government has to start forcing people to work and killing anyone who disagrees. That's the pattern.

Venezuela got away with a rapid move towards full-fledged Socialism for far longer than most nations do and it was because of all the money from their massive oil reserves. They rather stupidly borrowed massive sums of money under the assumption that oil revenue would continue at the same levels. Then the price dropped by more than half, and all hell broke loose. Then they started printing insane amounts of money, which only made everything worse. Most of your very educated and highly skilled people fled that hellhole a long time ago. It's a mess of their own making.
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Old 02-14-2019, 07:13 PM
 
Location: Earth
7,644 posts, read 6,445,620 times
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bad management
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Old 02-14-2019, 08:29 PM
509
 
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As somebody that was born in Venezuela.

Socialists have NEVER understood basic economics. Couple that with their tendency to KILL people that have disagreements with and you have a real mess. When I was in Russia in 1996, I complained to my translator about how dysfunctional the country was....and her reply was “what do you expect from a country, that took its best and brightest and KILLED them.”.

My comment....Socialism can work IF you have Republicans run it. I live in county where I get my electricity, water, cable TV, 1Gig internet, and phone service from the county. The county has been run by conservative Republicans for over 60 years now.

It isn’t about socialism or capitalism. It is about a government that looks out for the people. I mean really looks out for the people...not just slogans.

In some communities, capitalism works.....see Seattle. Yeah, I know they think they are left-wing, but they are owned by the Corporations like Amazon, Boeing, MicroSoft, PacCar, Weyerhaeuser....and so forth.

Over in eastern Washinton, socialism works, because local Government is the only one that can raise enough CAPITAL to make a difference. Yeah, I know they think they are conservative...but why do I get my electricity, water, cable TV, internet, and phone service from my local government.
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Old 02-14-2019, 10:48 PM
 
8,293 posts, read 3,783,843 times
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Poor management of money. Has less to do with their style of government than how the leaders mismanaged and hid the revenue from the public. The US has similar issues... if our GDP were to drop at a similar rate, we would hardly survive. We don't have the same level of corruption, but we aren't all that clean either.
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Old 02-14-2019, 10:48 PM
 
Location: Santa Monica
36,856 posts, read 17,304,172 times
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All States are failures.

Well, unless you fancy slavery.
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Old 02-15-2019, 01:52 AM
 
Location: Old Mother Idaho
29,198 posts, read 22,263,933 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by janelle144 View Post
https://www.quora.com/What-caused-Ve...YxA4J3OPZdH7kw

"Venezuela has the world's largest oil reserves. But during the country's oil boom in the 1970s, Venezuela's politicians decided to keep all of the country's oil revenues instead of sharing them with the foreign oil companies helping operate Venezuela's oilfields."



Feel so sorry for the people.
The biggest problem Venezuela has is the oil it has. Only American refineries can refine the thick, sludgy Venezuelan crude. All the other refineries in the world can't handle their oil.

So, being dependent on America's refineries makes Venezuela dependent on the prices Americans will pay for their oil. And since we pump a great big lot of our own oil, we aren't going to pay them more for theirs.

And since we are pumping as much oil as we're using, we don't even need Venezuelan oil right now.

The other half of Venezuela's problem is, like most of Central America and much of South America, they keep electing a strong man who swears he will cure all their woes. Once any of these guys gets in office, the first thing they do is strip out the Treasury and line their pockets and their crony's pockets.

Of them all throughout the 20th century, by far the most corrupt and the biggest looter of all was Hugo Chavez.

Chavez was also the smartest of them all. He spent the first half of his plunder on civic projects, schools, rural hospitals, and electrification, which made the citizens so happy he was allowed to take the second half of his plunder with no fear. The only problem he had was his cancer killed him long before he could spend it all.

Maduro, the guy who followed Chavez, was Chavez' hand-picked successor, and Chavez' popularity was still so high at his death Maduro swept in like a cool breeze. And then took the half that Chavez left and put it in his pocket. Around the same time that America quit importing Venezuelan oil.

So Venezuela never has the financial resources it needs to build their own huge refineries. It's too small a country. Who's going to invest in many Venezuelan refineries? No one but Venezuelans. Nobody else needs them. And now, they're so broke they can't build them in the foreseeable future.

Here in the U.S., not all our crude is so heavy, so our refineries were built to take whatever they were getting at the moment to refine. This happened at the very first of our oil business, so refining sludge is no big deal for us.

In the rest of the world, where oil is scarce, those refineries are still way too expensive, but since the Middle East, the British offshore fields, and other sources of crude all produce light, sweet crude, even if their crude costs more, it's still more economical to refine.

Venezuela is caught in a 3-cornered trap. It's too small to ever be an industrial giant, too poor to use it's greatest natural resource, and most of the nation isn't good agricultural land.

Now, even an all-genius leadership can't pull the country out of the trap.

The only way Venezuela won't become something like another Syria or another Bangla-Desh is if the rest of their neighbors in Central and South America are willing to sacrifice on Venezuela's behalf over theirs.

That's unlikely to happen for lots of reasons. It's much more likely that Venezuelan citizens who flee are more easily absorbed until the country's population drops to a level where subsistence living can be achieved.

Who will flee? Those who can. And those who can will be the most valuable immigrants because they have the most skills, the most intellectual, and the best trained. The ones with the most money, know-how, and means of escape.

The others will either have to get out any way they can or stay put.

So Venezuela will become the poor relative who invites itself to dinner for a very long time to come.

Don't expect peace is in any part of all this. Desperate times make desperate people.

The upside is we will all get to see what living in the 19th century was really like, not what we imagine it was like.
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