How long does it take until people care? Venezuela and Japan show: DECADES
Really impressing.... looking at Venezuela I think the western world still can go on like this for decades... People who look at the statistics and economic developments say, that everyone should be panicking already for the last 10 years, as the developments were and are not sustainable.
The everyday-guy matters when it comes to Armageddon
Everything can be screwed up under the hood it will not cause the panic until the normal everyday guy starts to care and starts to look under the hood and understand the broken reality.
Right now he would have to understand how the system works... for the moment he only sees that the pensions are still being paid and that he can buy everything he wants at the supermarket, hell yeah, he even gets his electronic food stamp card refilled on time. The banks open still each day their beautiful branches in the best parts of town and let everybody withdraw their cash when they want to. Normal people do not understand shit regarding balance sheets and economic cycles...
But the thing is... Venezuela shows us, that even if he would not get his Cheetos and toilet paper, like in Venezuela, with a 12 USD monthly salary, he still would not leave the country or yell in the streets until the government changes their policy. I mean, the guy in the video had 30 relatives who had been kidnapped lately... while he was visiting Caracas his cousin was kidnapped as well... and people still stay there!! They could be killed... if the ransom is not being paid in a week or two the kidnappers there usually kill their victim...
And stuff is a lot cheaper in the western world than in Venezuela in the black (free, not regulated) market... For a monthly salary you can buy 2 packages of diapers. So everybody kidnaps everybody... for a 500 USD ransom or something like that... if they do not know that your family has more... in such cases prepare to pay a 100 times or whatever more... As a foreigner it must be extremely dangerous to visit that country.
I would say Venezuela should be empty by now... I mean, I would leave everything behind and just escape to Colombia if I were them. It might be that they hate Colombia, but they would not have to learn even another language. But if they chose to they could go to Brazil easily as well. Gas is almost free and nearly everybody has a car. At the border there are no checks at all regarding passports Visas and so on.
Japan
Or take Japan as another example... in 2011 I said to myself, the country is fucked... I would not want to live somewhere where I would have to do radiation checks on everything I eat... or worry that something worse happens the next day because of an earthquake with another nuclear plant.
Russian President Putin even offered Siberia to Japanese emigrants. I mean even he thought that this could be the end for that country. Having a 300% debt to GDP ratio, as a young person I would not like to make long term plans in that country for that reason alone.
In Japan they can never buy a home, or even if they could they would have to fear rising interest rates or a new radiation incident. And even nobody knows where the melted cores of Fukushima are.
The Japanese population belong to the brightest people the world has to offer, brighter than their counterparts in the western world... but at least they still have radioactive food and water to eat and radioactive toilet paper to clean their a...... Something Venezuelans lack at the moment and would love to have.
Conclusion
So seeing these examples of Venezuela and Japan, I think that with all the craziness regarding refugees, censorship, central banks financing governments through money printing and so on, we still could be 20 years away from a complete and utter collapse... it might sound unbelievable, but it took 20 years to put Venezuela into this situation. And a large chunk of the population (the majority) still stands behind their president and do not leave the country. And western countries have not yet expropriated all of the entrepreneurs and companies like Chavez did. The entrepreneurs of the western world still are in their countries trying to keep their companies alive... so perhaps I should add another 10 years until armageddon?? We would look at 30 years total...
I saw this great snippet of a visit to Venezuela:
saw that video and it was totally shocking for me :( Resteemed
Thanks for Resteeming! :)
Amazing post !
Resteemed to share this great content
Glad you liked it! Thank you very much for resteeming! :)
very funny...you should tag it as humor.
Hahaha... no, I am really a bit pissed off by everybody not caring or understanding the underlying problems... I mean, the exponential debt curve in the US, the demographic problems in Japan... Here on Steemit I know that people care and that they understand what is on the line... but my anger goes toward (almost) everybody who still is not here...
I see the problem that people who only look at the opinions of REAL experts like you can find them here, do live in a parallel universe compared to what the every-day guy sees and feels... So this article is meant to create awareness and not forget about the other universe...
oddly enough I know a few people (via the internet) who actually live in japan. They express no worry about demographics. It seems that the japanese don't consider it a problem..they consider it a feature. they have VERY strict immigration policies..and almost NO terrorism..
For some odd reason...outsiders consider the demographics to be a problem. Odd that.
Your remarks about radiation were precious....Nagasaki and Hiroshima have been completely rebuild...better than they were before the nuclear urban renewal.
Venezuela , on the other hand, is in DEEP kimchi. Oddly enough I predicted it would happen when JimmyCarter influenced the election allowing Chavez to win. Socialism NEVER works out well. It's only a matter of time.
Exactly right, great example! The Japanese do not feel the pain because they were able to increase the debt to GDP to 300%. The trust in their currency Yen, made this possible... my doubt is that this can grow to a 1000% debt to GDP without having them worry at some point...
Hiroshima and Nagasaki now have the same radiation as anywhere else on earth, but take into account that very little radioactive material was used, critical mass is about 20kg... now compare that to 3 missing molten cores in Fukushima, where perhaps 200.000 kg are somewhere (leaked outside in the earth??)... No one knows where they are...
I beg to disagree.
They know EXACTLY where the molten cores are...they are a puddle on the floor.
The only thing 'escaping' from the reactors is irradiated water..which doesn't amount to much.
Let's agree on that it could have come far worse if they had not been able to clear the pool on the roof of one of the reactors... this was really scary and we were lucky that no real earthquake happened before clearing it....
700.000 liters a day is a lot of water though... and the puddles close to the stored water on-site is sometimes so radioactive that it can kill a person... even the radiation on Californian shores is double what it used to be... agreed that double the normal level is very low still... but there is no safe-level of radiation... less is better always...
I fear it will happen to most of the countries, few months ago it was greece facing economical crisis
Do japan still have radiation check on everything ?? i don't knew about that
That is my point, nobody checks everything... so you are bond to take that up somewhere, sometimes... and than it stays in your body your whole live shooting electrons through your DNA...
Reading and watching the Venezuelans in this situation is really heart breaking @mexbit, you said it right why they just don't run away from there, how can they live like that with so much fear. And the whole world knows about who is behind these problems, really disgusting.
Wondering how will be the end of all these.
@progressivechef
I think this is a test-run for the western world in a few decades... here we can watch how resistant to change normal people are...
Really sad to see all these sufferings in the world @mexbit. If this can happen to Venezuela, it can happen to any country in the world.
My prayers to all those people in difficulty.
I don't know what's stopping them to flee, but if it was me, i would have long ago run away from this nightmare.
Thank you for this post.
@creativewoman
Thanks for reading! Exactly... people are very passive... like cattle... they have their fate in their own hands, but the majority chooses to starve...
the development are not sustainable at all lets see how people adopt to it
I think there will only be change if there is no alternative to change anymore... just look how everybody holds on to work they do not like... just for avoiding change....
I worked in the nuclear powerplant of belgium. And the falout in japan wil last for ages. And to be frank we should search for more reliable and less poluting systems!
They have almost finished with the Arab Spring, also those of Central Europe, so now they are attacking the South American Spring. The NGO McCain begins the work by placing pawns and the CIA ends it by triggering violence, bringing back to the front of memory the Ukrainian spring that will cover all the seasons ...
My take is different... these problems in Venezuela have all come to fruition because of central planning and destroying entrepreneurship... even with oil a wonder that it took so long to get to this point....