4bars
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- Feb 10, 2016
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That's all and well, but shows his lack of understanding. The narrative, that Chavez was the good guy and things turned bad with Maduro and a collapsing oil price, is false. There was essentially no sustainable economic development under Chavez. Consumption increased due to increased income from rising commodity prices, but the country didn't develop any industry, that would boost gdp/productivity. On the contrary, he managed to destroy the little there was.
There seem to be many ways to skin the cat. China, India, Peru or Ethiopia (+another 20 countries) do things in their unique way to grow their economy. For all the differences in strategies to develop emerging markets, one has to accept globalization and show the willingness to integrate at least some important sectors into global markets. Countries that reject this, will never have long-term success, because they will not develop a large middle class.
Not in hindsight but during the boom of the 00s, enough people pointed out that Venezuela is on a bad path. They were on a bad path, because they didn't invest their wealth to build something, but used it for consumption. That was out there for everyone to see. If you live by ressource rents, you die by ressource rents. Nobody would say a bad thing about Chavez, if would have turned Venezuela into Norway. His policies weren't designed to do that.
Being agree with what you are saying, what other people of the capitalisminfluence area said about Venezuela I would not care much. Specially after they prove with a coup (supervised by Abrams (or is what I read lately) in 2002. Venezuela is not capitalist and doing things right or wrong would be always wrong.
What I can guarantee is that before Chavez, the governments developed the country the same way but they enrich themselves. At least Chavez, being because he believed on it or because of populism, took millions of extreme poverty and raised many developing indicators aiming the least priviledged. And again, Chavez did many things wrong, he purged the state owned company from workers that where not aligned with the party, he censored a lot of the media that went against him, he actually attempted a coup before he became a president, he did not developed the industry as you point it out, but he did many other things right and benefited the poorest layers of the country.