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Let's never forget what socialism is actually like. Historically speaking, running an entire economy is very hard to do. The more you nationalize, the worse it all gets.
They need to just start charging more for electricity. There will be less waste for sure. If people still use a lot and pay more, it means they need it and the money goes to building power generation. Very, very basic capitalism.
> Let's never forget what socialism is actually like.
The term socialism has no clear meaning, and trying to group failures together is just as unhelpful as trying to group successes.
The key is to find a balance. Europe has had some success with socialising things that make moral sense (e.g. healthcare) while leaving everything else to the private industry. That's still socialism, it just isn't absolute socialism.
Even China is experimenting with the levels of socialism they want. They've been moving towards a more capitalist-style market and they've found a more workable balance.
Socialism is a dirty word in the US, but is a complex word everywhere else. Hopefully with a self-proclaimed "democratic socialist" running for your highest office we'll see people's understanding of socialism expand.
In Europe the term 'socialist country' and to a large extend the term 'socialism' has a very clearly defined, negative meaning: only the former Eastern Bloc states called themselves socialist, and saw themselves as one step before communism. All of them ran their economy into the ground in record time. Nobody in their right mind would call (for instance) Sweden or Germany a 'socialist country', even though they have implemented a lot of socialist ideas more thoroughly (and more successfully) than the 'real deal'.
That's why I didn't say "socialist country," I said socialism. The person I replied to also didn't say "socialist country."
A more correct name for what happened in Western Europe is Social Democracy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy
> while leaving everything else to the private industry.
That's an exaggeration. Serious countries (France, Germany, even the US) employ "socialist" industrial policies in sectors that have nothing to do with morality (aviation, defense, tech research etc). Countries that don't do it at all are extremely rare in this day and age and usually don't end up well.
I agree with your overall point though.
This is not about electricity. This is about giving everyone a day of the week off to distract keep the people happy(-ish) in the face of a rapidly decreasing quality of life.
This isn't about socialism. This is about what is a dictatorship in all but name.
Sincere question: is there a way to implement socialism without major centralization of power and a disregard for the rule of law?
That's the idea behind democratic socialism. Socialist programs within democracies work all over the world in Europe and Canada (those countries are albeit more towards capitalist on the spectrum than socialist).
I'd also re-examine the degree to which our representative democracies centralise power.
I know Switzerland isn't a socialist country but for a very rich country they seem to implement a lot of socialist ideas.
Along with the usual social programs they use a very decentralized goverment and are or were thinking of a guaranteed basic income.
Look at the Paris Commune/Revolutionary Spain, the Ukraine Free Territory, the Zapatistas in Mexico, etc. There's lots of examples of socialism working on large enough scales to be relevant but so-called "socialist" Leninists have crushed successful, ground-up socialist movements time after time.
Everyone knows that pure socialism and pure capitalism is both evil. The good ground lies somewhere in the middle.
Do you consider Sweden to be socialist?
No, at least its never been done on a country level. Socialism requires group decision making and that can only be accomplished with a centralization of power. Of course the quote "The goal of socialism is communism" by Vladimir Lenin applies.
Twenty percent time as national policy seems like a way to foster innovation. Limiting commercial energy consumption to four days a week would seem to incentivize economic investment in efficiency in terms of industrial consumption and in terms of technology adoption in white collar workplaces.
It would seem to do so. It might be possible, if the people didn't have to spend hours in line for basic necessities.
Socialism is worker's control of the means of production. I don't see democratic councils of workers making these decisions. This is Leninist style "socialism" from above, ie., state capitalism and democratic centralism intermingled. Not socialism.
Here's Noam Chomsky talking about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfdnbMd9BiE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsC0q3CO6lM
Many socialists are critical of Leninist style socialism because it's not representative of socialism and it tarnishes the name.
You mean like France, Denmark or Sweden, where the government accounts for half or more of the GDP, and owns many corporations? But that's not socialism, right?
Heck, in the US, the government accounts for over 40% of GDP, and a higher figure than Venezuela...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending
Yes, some states run socialism worse than others. And some states run capitalism worse than others. Characterizing some states as 'socialist' but not ours (which does contain some socialist elements) isn't useful, because it's not always accurate.
The fact that US and Venezuela both spend about 40% of GDP from a government level is very insightful and new information to me.
I have a hard time calling the US' spending efficient (mostly military) so I think it's more complex than that we're doing socialism 'well'. But the US hasn't fallen apart yet. If both countries are doing it so badly with such a large part of our revenue, why are they failing? Maybe it's less about waste and more about making sure you don't screw up specific critical industries? The situation with California's cheap water even as they're running out is quite a bit like Venezuela's power. Why are we not rocked by such things more often? I'll have to think about this.
The government nationalizing everything and trying to run the entire economy while the price of their only export craters is not related to socialism.
> Very, very basic capitalism.
This the economics equivalent of a spherical cow [1].
The UK wouldn't have had its NHS without socialism.
I'm not naive enough to assert that socialism is a big bad evil straight out of the cold war.
This. So only the ones who can afford it can spend it. Capitalism at it's finest.
Just saw Maduro on tv telling women to avoid hairdryers, or at least, to use it in case of emergency
so , you had the TV powered on...
Those damn hair emergencies, always sneaking up on a person...
Bloomberg's headline leaves out the condition "in April and May."
At least it states the reason why in the first paragraph: hydro-generation is at risk because of a prolonged drought.
As I understand it, bad government is the reason; the drought just turned it into a crisis.
The chief reasons are artificially low pricing (it's almost free, so people have no incentive to conserve power, and the utilities are starved of funds for maintenance) and poor administration (this has been a long time coming -- brown outs and black outs have been endemic for some time).
I think you hit the nail on the head. Mismanagement, driving out the professionals, lack of investment and corruption have turned a very promising South American economy into a subsistence economy.
They are simply running the country into the ground thru mismanagement and negligence.
> the utilities are starved of funds for maintenance
That's all it is, tbh, without resorting to hyperbole. This happens even in capitalist economies -- companies have little incentive for maintenance at the best of times.
IMHO, when 40% of energy for the whole country is provided by one single plant (regardless of plant type), things will go wrong at some point. To overcome a situation like that you need money and vision to build a redundant system. Clearly the Venezuelan government lacked them.
What I don't understand is why they are so dependent on hydroelectric power. Venezuela sits on a shitload of oil and have a history of practically giving it away to their citizens.
That's pretty much exactly the problem. The usage of oil (gasoline) has been subsidized to ridiculous levels, which has squandered the country's natural resource wealth.
We all need to view our natural resources as a fixed and limited asset, to be used to boost ourselves up to sustainable energy production methods. But that is not politically expedient.
I don't understand the economics of this at all. Can't the country buy power from a neighbor? Or does that infrastructure not exist? Wouldn't the productivity supplied by those days recoup the cost of electricity?
Electricity is sold to consumers at a price lower than that at which it can be bought from other countries. This of course is the source of the overuse and failing infrastructure.
The country is communist, so the government has direct control over prices, and of course set them this low because it was politically expedient, not because it was sane.
One of the reasons. The other: nationalized industries are rotten with corruption.
That's imperialist and counterrevolutionary! Proceed to the nearest reeducation booth. Have a nice day.
An ironic thing to say given how staunchly you are defending capitalism.
> Can't the country buy power from a neighbor?
If they have good credit, which Venezuela doesn't.
I think neighbors are in the same situation regarding to electric energy because of the "El Niño".
Is this all because of the recent oil slump? Even taking that into account, Venezuela has the world's largest oil reserves. How can this happen?
Instead of working to make VZ better for everyone they took the course of vilifying one group at a time and confiscating the wealth which was then concentrated to those in power. They even did this to foreign companies which had made investments there.
Eventually they ran out of other people's money. While not the fault of socialist policies no government ever really executes them because those in power still see themselves above the people and refuse to live under the same conditions.
This is not a socialism issue, any government run by the corrupt can end up here. It is more a failed form of fascism which also occurs in the US
Their economy is way too socialist. $204 billion of expenses for $131.8 inflation adjusted billion GDP.
the vast majority of their reserves are "heavy" crude. Which is much more expensive to refine. The oil slump certainly didn't help, but Chavez nationalizing the oil company and replacing competent engineers with cronies is what really fucked them. That and the general socialization of most of private industry.
"competent engineers with cronies is what really fucked them"
That' cannot be emphasized enough. This isn't the type of oil coming out of Texas or ND. It requires more money, infrastructure, and expertise to refine properly. Canada has this problem with the oil sands, but they have all three to deal with it.
Because they nationalized their energy sector and bet everything on it.
Because their oil is expensive to extract.
If the price of oil extraction in Venezuela for a barrel is 60 dollars and the market price is 40(the price in Saudi Arabia is very low), you have a serious problem.
You will even have to LOOSE money in order to sustain a regular extraction, hoping the price returns to higher levels.
If you stop production, sometimes it is very expensive to restart it again, as geological forces over time close the things that you open, so you need to maintain some activity.