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Are the Beauty Pagent Academy and Telenovelas contribuited to the failings Venezuela? I've read and watched newsfeed relating to the recent social unrests in Venezuela (And analysis largely said that this downfall was due to the collapsing Petroleum Economy (due to.. in turn the rise of alternative automobile fuels and prime movers), and also (and related to) Hugo Chavez's Socialism (and Anti-Americanism) policy. Not many added more x-factors relating to this. none even bothers to cite that the famous Venezuelean Beauty Pageant Academy (ies) that churned out numerous Miss Universe and Miss World with Venezuelean nationality. and even less so... the Telenovelas -- Hispanic style soap operas but quite similar to thai Lakorns.

http://nypost.com/2015/01/25/inside-the-beauty-pageant-mills-of-venezuela/

Is it possible that the two factors also contributed to what happened in Venezuela? do these factors worsen the already bad situations there?

No Socialism and corruption are the downfall of Venezuela, and focus on oil income exclusive to other businesses in the 1st H of the 20th century.

 Frazzled wrote:
No Socialism and corruption are the downfall of Venezuela, and focus on oil income exclusive to other businesses in the 1st H of the 20th century.

Bingo. Fail to diversify your economy and allow those in power to hoard the wealth, and you'll collapse 100% of the time. Rely on heavy socialism to keep people dependent upon government money and they'll turn to any means to support themselves when that fails.

Not socialism nor corruption. Many countries have been running just fine for years with both of those.
Their problem was an economy that relied completely on oil. When their oil trade collapsed, so did their economy. And collapsed economies do not make for happy countries regardless of political system or who is in charge.

The lesson to learn here is that you always need to diversify your economy.

Not even that - it's that the oil supported economy collapsed, and the government is completely control by head-in-the-sand lunatics, who blame all the problems on nebulous 'enemies of the state trying to destroy us because they hate how amazing and awesome we are,' instead of doing anything to fix them.

If there were people in power whose heads were marginally less crammed up their own ass, things might be a little better. At least it wouldn't be 'beatings will continue until morale improves' style leadership.

 Lone Cat wrote:


Is it possible that the two factors also contributed to what happened in Venezuela?

No? How is this even a question?

Do you think people are starving to death because they're too busy watching tv?

I'm pretty sure Venezuela's downfall is due to the fact that it's a socialist state.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Not socialism nor corruption. Many countries have been running just fine for years with both of those.
Their problem was an economy that relied completely on oil. When their oil trade collapsed, so did their economy. And collapsed economies do not make for happy countries regardless of political system or who is in charge.

The lesson to learn here is that you always need to diversify your economy.

Completely agreed. Why people pin this on socialism is a mystery to me. Plenty of capitalist countries having gone through the exact same problem. Other OPEC countries are feeling the sting as well, unless were seriously going to argue those are socialist too? Suriname for example is also facing these issues and its run by a not so socialist dictator.

Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, all have some hard-core socialist politics. Very high public spending, high taxes, and a strong welfare state.
The difference is that they know what to do with their Oil and how to run a functional state

What Southamerican state is not a fail of state? Puting the finger in "Socialism" is as absurd as puting it in "Capitalism" with how bad Argentina is, or Mexico, or Puerto Rico, etc, etc... and as a Spaniard I know about hispanics and how they love to ruin their own countrys. We have been doing that long before even Capitalism or Socialism existed

Maybe is because we have the latino fire running through our veins...

 Bookwrack wrote:
Not even that - it's that the oil supported economy collapsed, and the government is completely control by head-in-the-sand lunatics, who blame all the problems on nebulous 'enemies of the state trying to destroy us because they hate how amazing and awesome we are,' instead of doing anything to fix them.

If there were people in power whose heads were marginally less crammed up their own ass, things might be a little better. At least it wouldn't be 'beatings will continue until morale improves' style leadership.

 Lone Cat wrote:


Is it possible that the two factors also contributed to what happened in Venezuela?

No? How is this even a question?

Do you think people are starving to death because they're too busy watching tv?

I don't think watching soapies once per day (or week) keeps a watcher away from workplace. but the contents presented in the Telenovelas might be. People might also get a national propaganda through these shows whether to slam the USA or dissidents or any Ideologies the government antagonizes.

don't forget that i've underlined the word 'also' in the previous quote now.. this means that whether do these factors added up to the more profound reasons like Heavy dependent on Petroleum exports (No one refutes, even I) and socialism misguided economy.

 Galas wrote:

What Southamerican state is not a fail of state?

Chile is the poster child of South America. Uruguay and Costa Rica aren't half bad either.

You can't compare the Scandinavian countries to Venezuela and expect to be taken seriously.

Norway, Sweden and Denmark do not have 'hard core' socialist policies, they are high tax social democracies. If the people of any of those countries voted in sufficient numbers for centre right parties, taxes and public spending would go down.

Social democracy is not the same as socialism, it's a political distinction, you can't use one in defence of the other. Norway. Sweden and Denmark are broadly free market economies, they just have left of centre fiscal policies. France's economy is way more tilted towards public ownership than that of any of the Scandinavian countries.

You shouldn't be comparing Chavista South American states to social democracies in Europe, it's lazy thinking.

jouso wrote:

 Galas wrote:

What Southamerican state is not a fail of state?

Chile is the poster child of South America. Uruguay and Costa Rica aren't half bad either.

Don't forget Peru.
Brazil was doing well for a decade but has hit hard times with the decline in oil prices.

 Frazzled wrote:
No Socialism and corruption are the downfall of Venezuela, and focus on oil income exclusive to other businesses in the 1st H of the 20th century.

Plus repeated destabilisation attempts by the CIA. The CIA backed several coups against Chavez, which failed due to lack of pupular support. Now his successor doesn't have popular support the public ere motivatable.

Venezuela has been set up to fail, once the government is pulled down and something more right wing is in its place the oil profits will flow out of the nation without touching the sides and those protesting today will wish they had what they are about to lose. Venezuela rightly adopted socialism* because its a poor country with one highly lucrative asset which was best used as a facilitator for as many people as possible. Wall St thinks otherwise.



* taken from the point of view of someone who normally would not advocate a left wing agenda.

You literally don't know what you're talking about. When Chavez took over the oil monies were siphoned to his cronies not to "the people", and he immediately started cracking down, at one point using Cuban security troops.

 Bookwrack wrote:
Not even that - it's that the oil supported economy collapsed, and the government is completely control by head-in-the-sand lunatics, who blame all the problems on nebulous 'enemies of the state trying to destroy us because they hate how amazing and awesome we are,' instead of doing anything to fix them.

There is some merit to this, Chavez successors have not got his charisma or vision, and have incumbent power.

However Venezuela cant realistically diversify, but could survive even an oil price drop, having an economy entirely reliant on petrochemicals when the petrochemicals have yet to run out has been proven to be viable. Again they are set up to fail, Premier Maduro has taken colossally bad advice on handling the population to the point where I wonder who advised the government to be heavy handed and why, and has the sloth of easily transitioned power, and reliance on the military for internal control.

Many of Venzuela's problems are endemic and cannot be attributed to any party's policy or failings. It is in the narco production belt, so full pacification is impossible.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Frazzled wrote:
You literally don't know what you're talking about. When Chavez took over the oil monies were siphoned to his cronies not to "the people", and he immediately started cracking down, at one point using Cuban security troops.

It is well known that the American right doesn't like Chavez.

Singling out Chavez over cronyism isn't fair in Central America, cronyism happens in every country on every day ending in a y. You will have to go a long way before that wont be the case.

He also had to crack down as illegal coups were started to remove him from power. Chavez survived because he retained a democratic mandate and the support of the majority of the populace. He also used Cubans because some force was inevitable and he didn't want to turn the situation into a civil war.
The Venezuelan people voted for Chavez and continued to want him, Washington didn't and supported several failed coups.

Chavez did introduce social reforms with oil monies, and while his government had the same siphoning common to nearly if not all Latin American countries the people got to see benefits and supported the government as a result.

 AlchemicalSolution wrote:
You can't compare the Scandinavian countries to Venezuela and expect to be taken seriously.

Norway, Sweden and Denmark do not have 'hard core' socialist policies, they are high tax social democracies. If the people of any of those countries voted in sufficient numbers for centre right parties, taxes and public spending would go down.

Social democracy is not the same as socialism, it's a political distinction, you can't use one in defence of the other. Norway. Sweden and Denmark are broadly free market economies, they just have left of centre fiscal policies. France's economy is way more tilted towards public ownership than that of any of the Scandinavian countries.

You shouldn't be comparing Chavista South American states to social democracies in Europe, it's lazy thinking.

You are right and I was wrong for comparing both.
I could put here paraghraps about what points of a "fuctional" socialist state Chavez had wrong, because Venezuela was from up to bottom full of corruption, but really today I have not the time to that, I had to take an airplane . I have talked diary with people of venezuela from the last 5 years, ironically, one was a Chaves supporter and the other a ex-militar that was against him, so I have always receive a good ammount of both points of view in this matter.
The funny thing is that the Chavez supporter stop being one when the Goverment call back to his family the second house the had gifted to them years before.
Don't get me wrong, I had 0 intentions to defend Chavez regime, but one has to understand how that guy rise to power and the situation of the country. Personally, I think he did the right thing when he rise to power against Carlos Andrés Pérez Rodríguez. But obviusly, after that we all know how things goed. Goes? How all ended.

You'll have to cite support for any actual attempted coups by the US against him. I know he liked to make speeches about it, but it was his antics that directly imploded PDVSA and thus stabbed themselves in the face.

Corruption has been a long time thing there, but he took it to whole other level, draining funds from PDVSA to a level they could not even make maintenance capex.

I have to limit what I say further for business reasons, but this is well known.

Collectivism with the outright abhorrence towards Capitalism.

 Frazzled wrote:
You'll have to cite support for any actual attempted coups by the US against him.

I'm not sure how a lowly Dakkanaught is supposed to 'prove' the existence of a CIA-supported coup. Here is the most public profile I can find on CIA destabilisation operations in South America.

Case Concerning the Military and Paramilitary activities in and against Nicaragua (Nicaragua v United States of America) (Merits), Judgement of 27 June 1986

That's a case of a sovereign state directly approaching the International Court of Justice with documented greivances against the CIA operations in their territory and on it's borders in collusion with the neighbouring states. That's about as high-profile and concrete as you can get without the CIA out and out admitting it. With regards to Venezeula in particular, what kind of evidence would you require to be convinced that the US played a part in the attempted coups there?

 Galas wrote:
What Southamerican state is not a fail of state?

Uruguay.

 BlaxicanX wrote:

 Galas wrote:
What Southamerican state is not a fail of state?

Uruguay.

Did Colombia successfully left the Failed State status?

 Frazzled wrote:
You'll have to cite support for any actual attempted coups by the US against him. I know he liked to make speeches about it, but it was his antics that directly imploded PDVSA and thus stabbed themselves in the face.

Corruption has been a long time thing there, but he took it to whole other level, draining funds from PDVSA to a level they could not even make maintenance capex.

I have to limit what I say further for business reasons, but this is well known.

Considering CIA's long and bloody history in South America and the political situation in Venezuela it is all but guaranteed that CIA has been operating in the country for some time. Of course there probably isn't much hard proof for it right now, we will probably have wait 40-50 years before those archives are opened up.

 ulgurstasta wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
You'll have to cite support for any actual attempted coups by the US against him. I know he liked to make speeches about it, but it was his antics that directly imploded PDVSA and thus stabbed themselves in the face.

Corruption has been a long time thing there, but he took it to whole other level, draining funds from PDVSA to a level they could not even make maintenance capex.

I have to limit what I say further for business reasons, but this is well known.

Considering CIA's long and bloody history in South America and the political situation in Venezuela it is all but guaranteed that CIA has been operating in the country for some time. Of course there probably isn't much hard proof for it right now, we will probably have wait 40-50 years before those archives are opened up.

Of course. Dispite the connected world. There's still lots of very dark shadowy corners to hide in. Thr CIA is very at home in those places.

Venezuela is basically a kleptocracy with an economy overly dependent on a single, resource based sector, and a government that has spent many years antagonizing the largest economic engine on the planet for domestic political purposes.

The consequences arent hard to deduce from there.

That said it is always amusing when the first thing people do when Venezuela comes up is point and yell "Socialism!" as if it's some cautionary tale against an economic boogeyman, but I dont think telenovelas or beauty pageants have much to do with it either

 John Prins wrote:
Bingo. Fail to diversify your economy and allow those in power to hoard the wealth, and you'll collapse 100% of the time.

Are you kidding? ARE YOU KIDDING? BECAUSE IT'S NOT FUNNY!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United_States

Ok, not true, it is funny if you are cynical enough and you find irony in people dying due to lack of health care in the world's biggest economical superpower .

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 John Prins wrote:
Bingo. Fail to diversify your economy and allow those in power to hoard the wealth, and you'll collapse 100% of the time.

Are you kidding? ARE YOU KIDDING? BECAUSE IT'S NOT FUNNY!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United_States

Ok, not true, it is funny if you are cynical enough and you find irony in people dying due to lack of health care in the world's biggest economical superpower .

Nobody is saying the US is some paragon of economic and social perfection, it's not , in fact it's amongst the worst of the developed world and getting worse every year in many of those respects, but it's better than Venezuela, as reflected by Gini coefficient measures, with a much stronger and more diversified economy.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 John Prins wrote:
Bingo. Fail to diversify your economy and allow those in power to hoard the wealth, and you'll collapse 100% of the time.

Are you kidding? ARE YOU KIDDING? BECAUSE IT'S NOT FUNNY!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United_States

Ok, not true, it is funny if you are cynical enough and you find irony in people dying due to lack of health care in the world's biggest economical superpower .

Nobody is saying the US is some paragon of economic and social perfection, it's not , in fact it's amongst the worst of the developed world and getting worse every year in many of those respects, but it's better than Venezuela, as reflected by Gini coefficient measures, with a much stronger and more diversified economy.

True, but one is not also running low on national supply of toilet paper a few years ago...
Guess which one.


They have economic issues for sure. And thr new president does not have the automatic loyalty of the last one.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Nobody is saying the US is some paragon of economic and social perfection, it's not

But it hasn't collapsed. Yet. Even though someone seems hellbent on making it happen .

 jhe90 wrote:

 ulgurstasta wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
You'll have to cite support for any actual attempted coups by the US against him. I know he liked to make speeches about it, but it was his antics that directly imploded PDVSA and thus stabbed themselves in the face.

Corruption has been a long time thing there, but he took it to whole other level, draining funds from PDVSA to a level they could not even make maintenance capex.

I have to limit what I say further for business reasons, but this is well known.

Considering CIA's long and bloody history in South America and the political situation in Venezuela it is all but guaranteed that CIA has been operating in the country for some time. Of course there probably isn't much hard proof for it right now, we will probably have wait 40-50 years before those archives are opened up.

Of course. Dispite the connected world. There's still lots of very dark shadowy corners to hide in. Thr CIA is very at home in those places.

If the CIA was that awesome we wouldn't suck so bad. The last 30 years has shown us the CIA is closer to Keystone Cops then Wet Works kill teams.
Same for the KGB.

The problem with Venezuela isn't as simple as 'socialism'. The problem is the particular brand practiced in Venezuela, it is a populist brand built around single leader who will solve the problems of the people, with no regard for law or process. On Youtube you can find some of the tv show Chavez used to host, people would call in with bad stories about their landlords or whatever else, and Chavez would declare some immediate, rough brand of justice to solve the problem, then move on the next caller. It was bizarre stuff. It was also the kind of thing that degrades lawful institutions, and kills business.

Of course, this terrible kind of government survived and worsened over time because the oil revenues propped up what was otherwise total economic disfunction. And before then that crappy government came to power largely because previous governments did little keep oil wealth in the country, helping the people. So in that sense it is all about oil.

But mostly the lesson, I believe, is one about the rule of law.