In Venezuela, 'Cutting-Edge' Cryptocurrency is Nowhere To Be Found (reuters.com) 129
Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro has made ambitious claims that the nation's petro cryptocurrency is backed by 5 billion barrels of petroleum reserves. But when reporters of Reuters conducted a months-long investigation, they found that petro is getting little to no traction in the nation or elsewhere. Reuters: Located in an isolated savanna in the center of the country, Atapirire is the only town in an area the government says is brimming with 5 billion barrels of petroleum. Venezuela has pledged those reserves as backing for a digital currency dubbed the "petro," which Maduro launched in February. This month he vowed it would be the cornerstone of a recovery plan for the crisis-stricken nation. But Atapirire residents say they have seen no efforts by the government to tap those reserves. And they have little confidence that their struggling village has a front-row seat to a revolution in finance. "There is no sign of that petro here," said homemaker Igdalia Diaz. She launched into a diatribe about her town's crumbling school, pitted roads, frequent blackouts and perpetually hungry citizens.
It turns out that Venezuela's petro is hard to spot almost anywhere. Over a period of four months, Reuters spoke with a dozen experts on cryptocurrencies and oil-field valuation, traveled to the site of the pledged oil reserves and scoured the coin's digital transaction records in an effort to learn more. The hunt turned up little evidence of a thriving petro trade. The coin is not sold on any major cryptocurrency exchange. No shops are known to accept it.
It turns out that Venezuela's petro is hard to spot almost anywhere. Over a period of four months, Reuters spoke with a dozen experts on cryptocurrencies and oil-field valuation, traveled to the site of the pledged oil reserves and scoured the coin's digital transaction records in an effort to learn more. The hunt turned up little evidence of a thriving petro trade. The coin is not sold on any major cryptocurrency exchange. No shops are known to accept it.
Neither is food. Yay late-stage socialism! (Score:5, Insightful)
Venezuela has run out of other people's money.
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Re:Neither is food. Yay late-stage socialism! (Score:4, Insightful)
Sweden == capitalism
Sweden didn't nationalize companies/ other peoples equipment, try to force farmers to produce under the cost of production, heavily regulate internal prices outside of market value, centrally govern production/distribution.
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nationalization is not a requirement of socialism
That's just one way to steal property.
Socialism [wikipedia.org] is a range of economic and social systems characterised by social ownership and workers' self-management of the means of production[10] as well as the political theories and movements associated with them.[11] Social ownership may refer to forms of public, collective or cooperative ownership, or to citizen ownership of equity.[12] There are many varieties of socialism and there is no single definition encapsulating all of them,[13] though social ownership is the common element shared by its various forms.
A prerequisite of socialism is the appropriation of private property from it's original owners - nationalization is just one way of doing that taking.
Of course, that means another prerequisite of socialism is authoritarianism - a socialist society has to force unwilling private owners to give up their property.
Re:Neither is food. Yay late-stage socialism! (Score:4, Interesting)
This definition means that all of the democratic socialist spouters are wrong and that no European country is actually socialist in any form.
No, it means that larger portions of their economy utilize socialism, but that portions remain capitalist. Many countries (including the United States) can be considered such a mix.
And communism isn't socialism. Communism believes in effectively abolishing the state and going to pure shared ownership. No country has achieved communism.
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But communism as defined by Marx has never occured in any country. You can't just change the definitions of words to make your point.
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marx defined communism as a single monopoly on all things economic and political. The USSR achieved that.
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You can have "social ownership" without appropriation of private property. You can have socialized medicine; sure, it's paid for by taxes but only a moron would call all taxes a form of socialism.
Private property, by the way, being a relatively new concept for those who aren't monarchs. If private property were sacred, we'd have given it all back to the native Americans we stole it from originally. So taking of private property by conquest is ok? Private property only exists in the US because it was gran
Re: Neither is food. Yay late-stage socialism! (Score:1)
Left vs right is a false dichotomy. So all arguments based thereupon are bound to be at least a little incoherent.
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nationalization is not a requirement of socialism
Yes it is. Socialism means government ownership of the means of production (capital). That is all it means.
Socialism does not mean "capitalism with healthcare". A better word for that is "progressive" or "social democracy".
All countries are a mix of capitalism and socialism. In America, the government runs a massive advertising business that delivers garbage to everyones mailbox. In Sweden, the post office is privatized, but healthcare is not. They are about equal on the capitalism/socialism scale wit
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No true Scotsman then?
Re:Neither is food. Yay late-stage socialism! (Score:4, Informative)
Norway basically nationalized its oil industry, but did so with some forethought and planning, creating a sovereign wealth fund with the intent of maximizing the benefit of oil revenues for Norwegians, rather than simply enriching oil companies and skimming royalties off the top. You can call that socialism if you like, but the fact is that Norway's sovereign wealth fund is now large enough to both pay for a fairly generous welfare state and sit there as a protection against what can be a fairly volatile international market.
What Venezuela did under the Chavistas is to use oil revenues to pay for its welfare state, but also to enrich the Chavistas and their generals, and try to buy influence with other Latin American countries (Venezuela basically underwrote the Cuban economy for years by selling oil to the country at what amounted to almost give-away prices). If Venezuela had duplicated the Norwegian model, it would actually have weathered the storm that came with the collapse of oil prices reasonably well. To be fair, it's not like previous right wing regimes were all that cautious, and certainly while Norway is a fairly advanced country firmly in the developed world, while Venezuela has much higher poverty rates, but still, looking at Venezuela is to see a socialist state that also basically functions as a kleptocracy, that managed to keep afloat when oil prices were very high, and the Chavistas gambled that that would always be the way.
To be even fairer, Venezuela was hardly the only petro-jurisdiction to squander the wealth. Up in my neck of the woods, Alberta had the Heritage Fund, with the idea that it would function like Norway's sovereign wealth fund, but has squandered much of it as well. North Dakota was similarly irresponsible.
Re: Neither is food. Yay late-stage socialism! (Score:2, Insightful)
And yet "failing late-stage capitalist" countries are absolutely booming.
We're drowning in prosperity, with our most poor dying from obesity more than any other cause, and with everyone employed who wants to be... Yet socialists spouting idiocy abound.
Bernie Sanders has three homes and made $3.6 million dollars last year, but whines about how awful everything is.
Leftists and socialists violently riot, demand our destruction, and claim that we're the worst hell hole on earth... Yet people are literally dying
Re: Neither is food. Yay late-stage socialism! (Score:5, Insightful)
....Bernie Sanders has three homes and made $3.6 million dollars last year....Leftists and socialists violently riot....
Bernie Sanders never said people shouldn't own their own homes or be able to make money. He's for "medicare for all" because he believes that health care is a human right and that the role of government is to guarantee some basic human rights. If you're politically opposed to the idea of health care as a basic human right, make an intelligent intellectual argument as to why healthcare is not a right and why the government shouldn't provide medical insurance, but don't just attack the man and try to paint him as a hypocrite for owning three homes or having a job. He's not against individual property ownership or private enterprise.
It wasn't leftists who rioted in Charlottesville last year and ran over a counter protestor. It wasn't a leftist President who regularly and openly encourages violence at his political rallies, then promises to pay the legal bills if his supporters beat someone. It wasn't a leftist who committed the most deadly domestic terrorist attack in our nations history. You're trying to frame the debate in your own terms.
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> He's for "medicare for all"
Sanders is for medicare for all because he does not believe people should be able to choose the healthcare that they want and should be forced to use an inferior government run system.
Sanders believes that "If you like your healthcare you can keep your healthcare" is a terrible idea and should never be allowed and outlawed.
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So, until and unless Medicare starts qualifying as a Obamacare Gold plan (good luck with that), we're not even talking apples to apples.
Bernie is as crooked a politician as the rest of them: says one thing, does another. He's no better than any of the rest of them but his
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As soon as socialist Bernie's master plan applies to EVERYONE then he's a hypocrite (like I said).
But it doesn't, never has and so he is.
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Bernie Sanders never said people shouldn't own their own homes or be able to make money.
But he has hammered the issue of wealth inequality. He's a hypocrite; he is the 1%. He can sell two of his homes so he only has one, and give the proceeds to those "in need". He doesn't need the government to relieve himself of his wealth to reduce "income inequality". Why doesn't he lead by example?
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Unless his amazing display of charity causes billionaires around the country to suddenly become far far more charitable it is an empty gesture.
How is it an "empty gesture" when the people receiving his wealth will actually benefit?
Working to fix the systemic problems is a lot more effectual.
Who says you can't do both? Bernie is a hypocrite who would rather keep his wealth.
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It's an empty gesture because he's not Bill Gates. His contribution wouldn't amount to more than a few weeks of relief on the problem.
Oh, really? His most recent [vanityfair.com] house he bought for $600,000. What do you think his other two houses are worth? He personally makes over $170,000 a year, and is never going to want .
So what would happen if he gave away that wealth and spread it around? The median income for a full-time worker is around $30,000 per year. He could easily make a significant difference in the lives of a dozen of people if he chose to. He's a hypocrite that is unwilling to lead by example.
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Not mostly everyone who wants to be employed. We have a high unemployment rate in the US but the official numbers say otherwise because the government artificially ignores certain classes of people and implicitly implies that they aren't looking for jobs. We also have a huge rate of underemployment. We have too many homeless people living on the streets or in their cars who have no regular or reliable source of income and who are not counted as "looking for work". These are people who used to have jobs,
Re: Neither is food. Yay late-stage socialism! (Score:1)
The economy in most large areas of America has been in a deep economic depression for decades.
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Norway basically nationalized its oil industry ...
Norway did nothing of the sort. [norskpetroleum.no]
In May 1963, the Norwegian Government proclaimed sovereignty over the Norwegian continental shelf. ...
... Norway also established the principle that the state was to have a 50 per cent ownership interest in every production licence. [in other words, if you want to drill Norway's oil and gas - which is already owned by the state - Norway gets half ownership in the license to do so - hardly nationalizing anything]
In spring 2001, the Storting decided that 21.5 % of the value of the SDFI portfolio could be sold; 15 % was sold to Equinor and 6.5 % to other licensees. The sale of part of the SDFI portfolio to Equinor was seen as an important element in the successful part-privatisation of the company. Equinor was listed on the stock exchange in June the same year, and now operates in the same way as any other commercial actor on the Norwegian continental shelf. The state-owned enterprise Petoro was established in May 2001 to manage the SDFI on behalf of the state. In 2007, Equinor merged with Norsk Hydro’s oil and gas division.
Heck, it seems like Norway even privatized at least parts of the state's ownership stake in the actual oil/gas in the ground.
There's nothing socialist about a sovereign nation deciding to manage its oil and gas assets that way. In fact, it's quite non-socialist in its lack of direct government control and apparent privatization of portions of that control.
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Up until the recent changes from Congress, every single one of those countries had lower corporate tax rates than the U.S., and by a wide margin as well.
Up until the recent changes, the U.S. had the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world. Our corporate tax rate was higher than Cuba's.
Re: Neither is food. Yay late-stage socialism! (Score:1)
Isn't that just the headline tax rate, before loopholes. It's a jobs program for tax attorneys. Once they get properly lawyered up, most big American companies pay a very low effective tax rate.
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This is a constant source of hatred from Albe
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In Venezuela, being "politically reliable" was the only factor that mattered in being handed control of the expropriated companies. Actually having anything approaching a clue about running the business in question, or any business whatsoever, wasn't remotely a consideration.
This worked as well as it always does. Despots never learn.
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And this is an example of how conversations devolve when we absolutely insist on forcing everything into one label or another, even if it means redefining the thing.
There are middle grounds. In fact, there are only middle grounds in the real world. Take the extremist ideas back to philosophy class.
viva la revolution (Score:1, Insightful)
full communism sure is great
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full communism sure is great
Venezuela is not "full communism". Most small businesses are still privately owned and run. Only the big businesses that can be easily looted have been nationalized.
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Small businesses are still subject to price fixing ; which is one of the main reasons why farmers no longer farm much. This is pretty much a defacto nationalization of all businesses because they cannot effectively operate.
They are also subject to random spot taxes by local officials and military, and paramilitary gangs working for the government.
In short - there is little incentive to work beyond subsistence unless you can hide your wealth.
If you can set a business prices, control all its inputs, and loot
Oil in the ground just isn't worth that much (Score:4, Informative)
Oil in the ground ultimately isn't really worth that much when you can't extract, process, and ship it. And Venezuela's aging oil infrastructure has been struggling for years now. Case in point this article from Routers that reports that Venezuela's tankers have been banned from some ports because they're so poorly maintained that they leak unacceptable amounts of oil into the local area. https://www.reuters.com/articl... [reuters.com]
At the end of the day this really does show one of the weakness of socialist monoculture economies. If the one good you can sell starts too loose value you'll quickly find yourself in a pretty dire situation. Even more so if you're government is both corrupt and too incompetent to modernize your industrial equipment.
Re:Oil in the ground just isn't worth that much (Score:5, Insightful)
A lack of economic diversity is hardly limited to socialist states. Whatever the ideology, the temptation to assume that a boom in any commodity will last forever is a feature of many different kinds of governments. And because economic diversification is very hard, requiring voters to accept some bitter pills, politicians of all stripes don't have the nerve to actually do anything significant to wean their jurisdictions off of that particular commodity or industry. They'll also play into the "monorail" sales pitch (a reference to probably the most instructive Simpsons episode ever made), entering a race to the bottom with other jurisdictions to attract industries, which almost inevitably means the taxpayer pays for the industry to come in, without generating the commiserate level of economic activity to justify the significant investment. Every time I see a politician with a hard hat on, I shiver in fear.
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A lack of economic diversity is hardly limited to socialist states. Whatever the ideology, the temptation to assume that a boom in any commodity will last forever is a feature of many different kinds of governments
Well I don't disagree with you over the idea that monoculture economies are not limited just to socialist economies. But I'll still argue that this particular form of socialist economy is especially vulnerable to it, due to their lack of flexibility and tendency to just seize privately held busi
Socialism - a special kind of stupid (Score:1, Insightful)
In 1950, Venezuela had the 4th highest per-capita income on Earth. [nationmaster.com]
Venezuela has the largest known oil reserves on the planet. [wikipedia.org]
It takes a special kind of stupid to fuck that up.
I give you socialism.
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In 1950, Venezuela had the 4th highest per-capita income on Earth.
... and nearly all that wealth went to the top 1%.
Socialism has screwed both rich and poor in Venezuela, but the status quo ante wasn't exactly a utopia.
With growing inequality in America, and many young people looking to the left for the solution, maybe we should try to learn from what happened in Venezuela.
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This is not true.
I come from Venezuela's middle class and grew up in the 70s and 80s where there was still resemblance of an organized country. My parents were part of that middle class in the 50s and 60s, and most of middle class Venezuela benefited from this high per capita income. Saying that it all went to the top 1% is just not true.
It all started degrading in the 80s and 90s, starting with two coup d'etat in which Chavez participated in the first one, failing I might add since he surrendered because h
Re: Socialism - a special kind of stupid (Score:1)
"most of middle class Venezuela benefited from this high per capita income. Saying that it all went to the top 1% is just not true."
So you're saying all the income went to the top 5%?
Here's a hint: well run countries with reasonably equitable distribution of wealth just DON'T HAVE communist/socialist revolutions. That Venezuela's bourgeoisie still can't admit they fucked up is why they are still not worthy of returning to power.
Consider also in America all those smarmy Corporate Progressives who just cannot
Re: Socialism - a special kind of stupid (Score:1)
Thank you. I appreciate your thoughtful answer. I will think about what you said.
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There is a country where everyone has $100. They're all equally wealthy, but all equally poor.
There is another country where 90% of the people have $10,000 each and the remaining 10% have $10,000,000 each. There's vastly more inequality in the second country, but everyone is much better off. Further you could look at that second country 20 years later and see that 90% of the peo
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I give you authoritarianism.
FTFY. Authoritarian societies tend to screw over the people regardless of other factors.
Crazy talk; we're all a little worried! (Score:3)
You mean to tell me that citizens of the country who can't trust their country's own currency aren't trusting their country's cryptocurrency either? That's crazy talk.
Venezuelan citizens using a cryptocurrency like bitcoin is probably the most legitimate use of it.
Re: Crazy talk; we're all a little worried! (Score:2)
And they are definitely doing so.
https://qz.com/1300832/bitcoin... [qz.com]
It's an economic trick Brazil used (Score:2)
Also, I'm guessing Venezuela would be doing a lot better if the US would stop sanctioning them. There's no excuse for those sanctions. Especially when we back dictatorships like Saudi Arabia. I was trying to figure out why we bothered until I noticed our private corporations seized a bunch of oil fields owned by Venezuela when they defaulted on loans.
Always follow the money...
Re:It's an economic trick Brazil used (Score:5, Informative)
What saved Brazil was reforms that got government spending under control. Their new currency may have helped people put more faith in the currency, but it's not what stopped inflation. As Venezuela is finding out. Same thing nearly happened to Greece, except they were on the Euro. So their government over-spending ended up being paid for by other countries using the Euro. Which is why they banded together and gave Greece an ultimatum - adopt spending and economic reforms ("austerity"), or be kicked out of the Eurozone.
Everything that's consumed has to be produced, so productivity is the true fundamental currency of an economy. The money you choose to use is just a representation of that productivity. If you manipulate your monetary currency only to the extent necessary to keep its value more or less constant relative to productivity (what governments do with a fiat currency), then it remains stable, leaving the economy free to operate on its own. But when you start screwing around with your money supply to try to fix other problems (like pay for massive government debt), it shows up as a deviation between your money's value and the value of productivity - the value of your currency changes by a large amount. Basically, manipulating your currency is like changing the markings on a ruler. It may change the number of your measurements (number of Bolivars needed to buy a dozen eggs), but the fundamental distance (productivity needed to raise chickens to produce a dozen eggs) does not change. All you do is create additional overhead as citizens have to spend more time and effort trying to keep track of and compensate for changing currency values (i.e. waste productivity on financial bookkeeping, rather than on producing actual goods and services).
U.S. sanctions have nothing to do with it. A healthy economy is mostly domestic - most trade happens inside the country (U.S. imports + exports are only about 20% of its domestic GDP), so can't really be hurt by foreign sanctions. U.S. sanctions end up hurting Venezuela only because its government has completely crippled its domestic economy with its boneheaded economic policies.
Um.. did we read the same article? (Score:2)
Austerity isn't the solution nor is government spending the problem. The United States had it's best years during heavy government spending. Hell, it was WWII and the Military Industrial Complex that got us out of our permanent recession. Government spending is essential to prevent kleptocrats from monopolizing everything.
Venezuela is in a temporary downturn due to the price of oil. They were never a 'h
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Venezuelan citizens using a cryptocurrency like bitcoin is probably the most legitimate use of it.
The problem is that to use a cryptocurrency one must (A) have a computing device that can run despite frequent blackouts and brownouts and (B) not be starving to death. Therefore Venezuela needed to start using a cryptocurrency twenty years ago; it's too late now.
Re: Crazy talk; we're all a little worried! (Score:1)
"Otherwise quantitative easing in the last decade would have caused inflation."
Yup, prices for most things at least doubled - but there's no inflation! Sure, sure... Is that what they call "ostrich economics"?
So you're telling me... (Score:1)
... that a shitty meme cryptocurrency was a giant bust? That's never happened before!
What petro? (Score:4, Interesting)
Venezuela has no petroleum industry anymore. No oil company can pay (or even feed) workers. They cannot maintain equipment. They cannot ship oil.
Unitl Venezuela undergoes a complete reboot, they have nothing and people will just flee. If I had Jeff Bezos level money I'd take over a hundred square miles or so of fertile farmland and start running my own country, you'd get endless waves of people happy to join your new country that had food and water and security. Then just slowly grow outward until you own all of Venezuela, by the simple choice of the people moving there. Call it "True Venezuela", to preserve national identity which still has value even if the country itself does not currently.
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....and then someone says, "hey X is rich! He owns all that land, let's take all the land off him and create a socialist paradise!" ...and you're soon back to socialist poverty again.....
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This.
The proposed system works well if you can pick up the means of production and move should the natives become restless. Not so well with land.
BTW, where do you thing Bezos will be setting up his new headquarters? Object lesson here, Seattle.
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Thankfully, you don't have Jeff Bezos level money. Dumbest idea i've ever heard.
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Haha you just invented sharecropping.
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You'd have to have your own private military force.
Well duh. That would obviously be part of it, much of it could easily be made up by the locals but you would start with a core of armed men.
You'd be forced to do dicey shit.
Rescuing a country is not dicey at all.
Death of journalism (Score:2, Interesting)
"...said homemaker Igdalia Diaz"
Great editorial work, Reuters! You probably just got Igdalia Diaz killed under mysterious circumstances.
Dashcoin and Venezuela - Who Rescues Whom? (Score:3)
no! (Score:4, Funny)
Really? A communist state whose people can't even get TP doesn't really have petro-backed cryptocurrency??
Next you'll be telling me that my pen pal bride just wants a green card! (sniff :( )
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Not to knock western journalism, but articles in the foreign press are saying Maduro was saying that the Petro will be used as an internal token of accounting within the state oil company. So, plenty of articles if you look it up state it wasn't *intended* to be traded to the public. The new Bolivar is pegged against the petro. It's still a clusterfuck, but the level of fact checking on Venezuela stuff is actually really poor.
finally! (Score:2)
Finally! A leftist regime with a tight monetary policy!
Socialism ALWAYS fails (Score:1)