4 Board Members of Enne Superstores Arrested in Venezuela for Food Hoarding

[Flatulo]

15. Well, in my relatively uneducated opinion, the government of VZ has taken a decidedly Marxist

tilt starting with Chavez. At least their actions strike me as Marxist. Collectivism, redistributionism, central planning of the economy, the vilification of private property owners and other capitalists, and expropriation and nationalization of major industries.

They seem to have a major flaw that other Marxist states have suffered from - idolization of the head of state. I know that is not a tenet of Marxism, but it always seems to take a powerful, if not outright totalitarian, figure to implement the wrenching changes needed to transition from a colonial society to a socialist or communist one.

This is not to say that all centrally planned economies are failures, or that there aren't some things that the government can't do better than the private sector. Some examples are air and water and possibly energy resources. But the private sector with its robust competition and strong profit motive is needed if you want to enjoy large screen TVs and iPods and BMWs.

I spent my entire career as an engineer working with people from the former Soviet bloc, and they all had very interesting stories to tell about how people devolve into uninspired drones under a system that guarantees them employment and basic resources for living but not much else, no matter how hard one strives. Shortages are a fact of life as fewer and fewer people produce beyond the bare minimum. It's an all-around pretty bleak and shitty existence.

I'm talking about colleagues from Russia, Poland, Serbia, Albania, Romania, etc. Now these were all educated people, so maybe they had more natural drive than others, but to the last one, they all loathed their homelands and considered themselves very fortunate to have made it to the States and would never return in a million years.

So that's my basic education on Marxism. If I'm wildly off-base, please educate me. But I've known enough expats to have formed a strong opinion about the matter.

Now, on the other hand, I've also worked with colleagues from Denmark, Finland and Germany, and they all loved their home societies. Strong private sector with high taxes and a good social safety net works well for them. They're also incredibly industrious people who work like maniacs until its time to go home, then they don't work another minute. They also poll as the happiest people on earth, for what it's worth.