#petro state

[legoclimatescientist]

[apocalypticwallpaper]

“Critics of the left, whatever the variant, may claim vindication of their own in Venezuela’s current predicament. But a more honest appraisal would see Venezuela’s crisis less as a function of socialism—which Chávez began to articulate only in 2005—than as a consequence of a petro-state dynamic that chavismo left fundamentally unaltered, rendering its achievements vulnerable to a boom-and-bust cycle that has befallen regimes of very different ideological stripes in the century since Venezuela’s first oil pump began operating. Of course, Venezuela’s woes offer a cautionary tale to progressives in the United States and elsewhere about how specific contexts and histories, more than general features, define what is and is not radical or revolutionary in any given setting.”

- Alejandro Velasco, Looking for the Left Turn

[chrisinmaryville]

The Pundits Still Don’t Understand Venezuela

The Pundits Still Don’t Understand Venezuela

By José Niño

Mises Institute

August 27, 2018

  The Pundits Still Don’t Understand Venezuela

  International analysts are not giving us the full story on Venezuela.

Political commentators have given their spin on the topic of Venezuela’s economic crisis. To their credit, some of them get the surface level details correct on the contributing factors to Venezuela’s collapse — destruction of civil…

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[venezuelablog]

Scott Tong included my comments in his piece on Marketplace yeterday (which you can read or listen to here). Above you can listen to a longer interview excerpt giving some background on the appeal of Chávez. (via David Smilde On Chavez And Chavismo)