[coliveira]

It is funny that people accuse the Venezuelan regime of being socialist, but then claim that the problem is that they didn't reshape the economy enough. In other words, their failure was in not planning the economy as much as their critics want! No standard capitalist regime would be able to do that anyway so you have here a clearly bogus criticism.

[padobson]

No standard capitalist regime would be able to do that anyway

I'm not entirely sure what you're saying.

If you're saying that no pro-capitalist government could have diversified Venezuela's economy, then I completely agree with you.

If you're saying that nurturing a market economy in Venezuela would have failed to diversify it's economy, then I have to disagree.

Markets tend to diversify on their own as entrepreneurs recognize new demand and respond to meet it. Because of the limitless variables that drive how this happens in different regions and industries in any given country, government administrators are not well suited to recognize and respond to such needs at a national level.

Government should instead cultivate market economies that produce economic surplus, and then tax some percentage of that surplus to provide the social programs their citizens request.

[coliveira]

This is unsupported by facts. China has a very tight control on areas that they want to develop or open to outside capital, and their growth has been stunning. On the other hand, undeveloped countries that have open their markets with little oversight have suffered tremendous economic problems, Mexico is a case in point. There is no correlation whatsoever between lax oversight of markets and robust economic growth, as most people tend to believe.

[CryptoPunk]

China's economy was rapidly privatised, starting with the privatisation of collective farms and legalisation of entrepreneurship in 1978:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2005-08-21/online-ex...

Much of the economic growth happened in special economic zones that were free of much of the state economic control present in the rest of China.

Also, tight control can be consistent with market freedom when it is targeted at controlling violent crime, kidnapping and extortion. This is one area where China has outperformed other developing countries.

[padobson]

If you'll notice in all of my comments here, I've been careful to say "markets" and not "free markets". I've also tried to steer clear of specific opinions about levels of regulation or taxation or the value provided by certain social programs.

If you want to discuss the merits of a specific regulation, tax or social program, I'm happy to do that, but I haven't addressed any of those things as of yet.

Since China switched to a market economy, a huge chunk of their massive population has escaped poverty. Some of those markets are highly regulated, but they are still markets. Nothing about China's recent growth is incompatible with the views I've expressed in this thread thus far.

[nerfhammer]

this is why the term "competitive market" better captures what may intended by the term "free market".

"free" would seem to exclude regulation that increases market competition but would not seem to exclude subsidies that might decrease competition. All of the benefits of markets come from competition, not "free"-ness.

[pessimizer]

> If you're saying that nurturing a market economy in Venezuela would have failed to diversify it's economy, then I have to disagree.

Then how would you explain the lack of diversification that survived through all previous regimes before the Bolivarians?

[scythe]

>but then claim that the problem is that they didn't reshape the economy enough.

Another way to express this which lacks the apparent contradiction is: their socialist policies inhibited the natural tendency of the economy to reshape itself.

However the real problem in Venezuela was not "socialism" per se nor a lack of diversification -- in fact several countries, particularly Brazil and Argentina, experienced problems when they tried to forcibly diversify their economies (Peronism/import substitution), whereas Chile went all in on copper, and while they've suffered downturns, their long-run growth has more than made up for it, making them today the richest country in Latin America. And precisely this pattern (comparative advantage) is how capitalism usually succeeds, and Chile today is diversifying at a natural/gradual pace. But in Venezuela the biggest problem was that Chavez appointed his friends to run the oil companies, and refused to cooperate with the previous administration and employees of the oil companies, which resulted in a lot of skilled people in Venezuela's oil industry taking their ball and going home. In other words, the problem was not that Chavez was a socialist but that he was a strongman who had no respect for democracy, the rule of law, or the desires of anyone but himself, which was also reflected in his later attempts to silence his critics in the media and to sabotage the Venezuelan Constitution and its legislature. I think this is why we've seen post-Chavez socialists like Mujica and Moreno taking a more measured approach to economic reforms and working with, rather than against, preexisting institutions.

[MarkPNeyer]

> their failure was in not planning the economy as much as their critics want

The argument for capitalism is that _no single entity can do this_ planning. It's not as if capitalist economies have a 'capitalist planner' who's better at planning that the socialist planner. Capitalist economies don't have one person - or agency - in charge of planning or shaping the economy. Bottom up, not top down.

[coliveira]

Since most capitalist economies have never fully developed (especially in Latin America), this cannot be traced something that Venezuela did of not. It is, again, a bogus criticism.