ADSactly World: Expanding the topic on Venezuela and socialism
Introduction
This is the fourth article in this new series about Venezuela that I decided to write with the goal of discussing some of the socialists measures that caused the country’s collapse. So far, 3 articles belonging to this series have been published. We can find the links to those articles below:
Is Venezuela a socialist country? What about Scandivanian countries?
Continuing the discussion about Venezuela and socialism
Venezuela and its socialist measures
Today we are going to continue exploring some of the remaining Karl Marx measures and see if they were indeed applied in Venezuela, but first I think it is important to provide a little bit of coverage to a major financial announcement from recent days.
For those who read the third article, you might remember that I mentioned the tiny credit card limits that most banks can offer to their clients, most of the time these limits are less than 10 dollars which is very absurd for a credit card.
However, there are now some news articles that are reporting there is a plan to create a new payment method that would work independently from regular credit and debit cards. After the first few hours of this news being published, people were getting worried because it appeared that big companies like VISA or MasterCard would be prohibited from offering services in Venezuela, but eventually, this was cleared up and that’s not the case. Although I wonder how could the current government create a competitive payment method knowing they pretty much mess up everything they touch? I guess time will tell.
This new payment method will take several months/years to complete, so there is the hope of Venezuela regaining its freedom before all of this takes place.
Lastly but not least in other recent events, there is now a major shortage of gas with long lines of cars spending hours and hours trying to fill up their tanks with enough gas so they can use their vehicles. I will share 2 videos from a well known Venezuelan that originally posted them in his own twitter account:
I wanted to embed them but I don’t think Twitter videos can be embedded in markdown so I will simply share the links. In the first one we will see an extremely long waiting line of cars in the city of Valencia:
https://twitter.com/josetorohardy/status/1129505846940065793
In the second one we will see a long waiting line of motorcycles doing the same:
https://twitter.com/josetorohardy/status/1129773737870594057
It is incredible to see a country with the biggest oil reserves in the planet having massive gas shortages, but that’s what happens when a socialist model is implemented. Shortages of basic products are a matter of time and they become a regular occurrence.
In the following section, we will continue to explore the Karl Marx features that I have been writing about in the previous 3 articles.
Karl Marx measures
The last measure I included in the previous article was only half discussed because I only wrote about the means of transport. Today I decided to address the topic of the means of communication. The measure in questions says the following thing:
- Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State Source: in Venezuela this measure is half applied because there are both public media companies such as Telesur that serves as the propagandist arm of the government, and private companies.
However, want I wish to inform through this article is that despite the existence of private media companies, calling Venezuela a country with a free press would be a misconception.
For years the current narco regime has been persecuting journalists that are critics of the chavismo, and some media companies have been forced to close its doors. It has been reported that more than 60 media companies have closed since Chavez took control, and more than 2020 attacks against the free press have been documented so far. Source
One of the most famous cases of the government attacking media companies happened in 2007 when RCTV was forced to close its doors because Chavez didn’t like the way they reported the news and the fact the channel was a very hard critic of everything regarding Chavez’s socialist revolution.
This year, Maduro’s regime detained the international journalist Jorge Ramos because he showed a video of 2 young males eating from a garbage truck and the totalitarians didn’t like it:
Something similar happened with a lot of radio stations that were forced to close its doors, dozens and dozens of independent radio stations ended up suffering the socialist take over. This was even reported in international news sites such as Reuters.
There have also been cases of Venezuelan journalists being persecuted for their opinions and some of them such as Jesus Medina are still imprisoned.
The Venezuelan free speech organization Espacio Público reported that between January and April this year, 37 journalists, four photojournalists, and 10 other media workers -- including cameramen, technicians, and drivers-- were detained. This is nearly double from the same period in 2018. Source
It is also extremely normal to find websites being suddenly blocked and unable to be accessed by people inside Venezuela unless they use proxies. This is possible thanks to the existence of an entity called Conatel, that pretty much regulates and control everything regarding telecommunications. This allows the government to restrict access to information that they don’t like.
As we can see, it is dangerous for socialists to allow people to have free speech because the criticism would be unbearable for them, so their solution is to simply eradicate free speech and forbid any opinion that doesn’t agree with the socialist agenda. The means of communications are not entirely owned by the government, but life could get very hard for any media company or individual journalists that dare to adopt a position that is at odds with the socialist government’s.
Conclusion
In today’s article, I shared some information about recent events regarding the current gas shortage, and I was also able to continue exploring Karl Marx measures and explain if they were truly applied in Venezuela.
As always, I invite everyone to share their thoughts about the information I shared in this article, and especially I invite fellow Venezuelans to share their experiences about living in the current socialist revolution.
Authored by @dedicatedguy
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Greetings @adsactly
The subject of Venezuela has a lot of fabric to cut, taking into consideration the issue of education or ideologies, going through public services, until the economic issue arrives. Arturo Uslar Pietri (1906-2001) stated many times that "oil should be sown". Indicated the need to invest in other areas, such as agriculture for example, the profits derived from oil sales, as well as gradually improve the Venezuelan education to get an individual act to efficiently manage the country's resources. Regrettably, this advice was not heard, since policies aimed at improving processes do not attract votes, only populist proposals are those that win elections, resulting in the socialist Venezuela we have today. Saludos @adsactly El tema de Venezuela tiene mucha tela que cortar, tomando en consideración el tema de la educación o ideologías, pasando por los servicios públicos, hasta llegar el tema económico. Arturo Uslar Pietri (1906-2001) planteo muchas veces que se debía "sembrar el petroleo". Indicaba la necesidad de invertir en otras áreas, como en la agricultura por ejemplo, las ganancias derivadas de las ventas de petroleo, así como mejorar paulatinamente la educación del venezolano para conseguir un individuo acto para manejar de forma eficiente los recursos del país. Lamentablemente este consejo no fue escuchado, ya que las políticas dirigidas al mejoramiento de los procesos no atraen votos, solo las propuestas populistas son las que ganan elecciones, dando como resultado la Venezuela socialista que tenemos hoy en día.Before I begin, as a Venezuelan, I must thank you for denouncing the dictatorship in Venezuela. In order to visualize an economic solution on the part of the government, I must say categorically that, after 20 years of economic improvisations, I doubt the efficiency of this government to solve any problem.
I read your text and I can't help recalling how in a post I read recently in steemit people were shocked to learn of the control and censorship that exists in China with the Internet. Not knowing that in Venezuela, a supposedly democratic country, similar or worse things are happening. There is the case of El Nacional and Tal Cual, newspapers against the regime that had to stop circulating because of the supposed shortage of paper. When we all know that in the end everything was a move by the government to get these newspapers out of the game. The same happens with pages, accounts, that denounce or that are not complacent with the chavistas, they can be censored, case of La Patilla or Dollar Today.
We all know that when in 2002, in front of the presidential network that sought to misinform and hide what was happening in the country, RCTV and other private channels dared to cut the screen in two to show the two sides of the coin, that day they signed their death sentence. Because this government, like mafiosi, acts like this: it does not confront, it only takes out of the way, it eliminates the one who confronts it.
What worries me most is not the censorship that the government has, but the self-censorship that exists in the media. It seems that the country is big and the fear is great. A hug, @dedicatedguy
I greet again your series, @dedicatedguy, on this issue so huge for us, Venezuelans, as the terrible reality of misery, institutional deterioration, political persecution and social and educational deterioration produced by the regime implanted 20 years ago. Particularly, about the problem of shortage and chaos in the supply of gasoline (and to a lesser extent, with gas) is truly a nightmare, unusual in a country that was one of the first producers of hydrocarbons and their derivatives.
With respect to the expropriation and appropriation of the means of communication and transportation by the State (I would say rather in our case of the regime), although it has not been completely given, it is not necessary, since in practice it is as if it were being complied with. Although there are few private media, they are subject to harassment and censorship -subtle or indirect, sometimes- that makes them remain silent; or they have simply closed them or made them disappear with their policy of paper restriction (in the case of the press), exorbitant fines or judicial persecution.
And as for the transport service, this has been reduced to a minimum almost non-existent in the case of the air and water (case of the ferry for the attractive island of Margarita), or they have simply taken it to the extreme of maximum deterioration to the point of only existing a few, old and ramshackle bus units, or their "alternative" in trucks and other vehicles of dangerous functioning and humiliating state.
We will continue to denounce and fight for urgent political change in Venezuela. Thank you for your post, @dedicatedguy, and @adsactly for allowing these issues to spread.