Liberty Alone

I little while ago I read an article likening Silvio Berlosconi to Hugo Chavez
Whilst I agree both are unsavoury politicians and I think both should be stood up to, the comparison falls down.
Firstly, Hugo Chavez first attempted to gain power through a coup, secondly Chavez’s links to the Communist terrorist group FARC.
The article seeks to play down suggestions of such links, but according to files from laptops seized by the Columbian Army from FARC members (in cross-border raids - a controversy in itself) show that Chavez actively helps FARC. The files also appear to have been confirmed as genuine by Interpol.

(I would also like to add that Raul Reyes was not an anarchist in any meaningful sense of the word despite the captioning of the picture of his body as such in the linked article)

Tim Worstall points outthis article.

Price controls, forcing banks to lend at a negative interest rate, state theft of farms and banks… Not long until it all collapses now I’m afraid.

All whilst our Dear Leader Mayor is buying cheap oil for one of the richest cities in the world from a poor country.

Dictator wannabe and darling of the anti-liberal left, Hugo Chavez, has been defeated in a referendum which would have granted him even more power.
I’m not sure whether to be surprised about this. The reports from Venezuela hint at growing unease with his rule, the Students are almost entirely united against him for instance. On the other hand, he still maintains large support from the poor due to his oil fueled social programs which whilst they do little, look like they’re doing a lot. The state has also gained a huge amount of control over the economy, meaning that so many are dependent upon it and they are afraid to dissent in case they lose their jobs.

The next question is whether Chavez will go quietly at the end of his term. Given his previous attempt at a military coup and his general disdain for democratic institutions and his habit of silencing opposition I don’t know whether he will.
I also expect more attempts at power grabbing, perhaps even going as far as an engineered crisis to enable him to grab power, although I for the sakes of the people of Venezuela I hope he doesn’t.

The tradition of destroying people’s lives that is.

Chavez’s brand of socialism* is destroying people’s lives by putting private business out of business. Price controls are stifling the market, huge subsidies to worker’s cooperatives** are adding to the pressure.
This is not the usual healthy competition of the market place in which some may get hurt but the systematic destruction of people’s livelyhoods through government policy.

Propaganda is also whipping up resentment against private farmers, they are made to feel like villains. How long until this becomes violence with Zimbabwe like scenes of ‘veterans’ evicting farmers only to let their land fall to ruin?

It may be true that in a market economy some businesses fail, but others are free to be created and those that fail will fail due to not being competitive rather than being hounded out of business by government, and competition drives up standards rather than encouraging the favoured methods of an elite (in this case ’socialist’ methods).

* not so different from other forms.
** not that there’s anything wrong with worker’s cooperatives - so long as they’re on the same legal footing as any other business.

Our dear leader mayor Ken ‘capitalism kills’ Livingstone and his bosom buddy Hugo ‘I <3 Castro' Chavez are engaging in a bit of wealth redistribution.

Unfortunately they seem to have get a bit confused. They're taking money from poor Venezuela and giving it to rich London.

Chavez also seems to have missed the point at home in Venezuela, inequality is getting worse not better.

Tim Worstall has more details.

I’m sure Pollyfilla would justify it by saying all the foreign aid to London is in fact government money so nothing is coming from the poor.

There is however some good news, the poor people of benighted Venezuela are more economically literate than Livingstone, Chavez or Toynbee - 72% agree that free trade makes most people better off, the highest percentage in Latin America.

Will the left ever stop supporting Chavez? Probably not, too many still support Castro…

In its seemingly unstoppable slide to totalitarianism Chavez has now decreed that critical foreigners are to be expelled from Venezuela.

His logic is that if you criticize Venezuela for not being free then you must be silenced because its not true. Somewhat self-fulfilling.
And of course whipping up nationalism and anti-Americanism.

I truly feel sorry for the Venezuelan people.

Darling of the left, Hugo Chavez is now cosying up to holocaust denying anti-jewish President Ahmadi-Nejad of Iran.
There is an amount of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ and since both view the US as the ‘great satan’ it is perhaps understandable. However, this also comes hand in hand with increased fear of antisemitism amongst Venezuela’s Jewish population (who up until now have been benefiting from Venezuela’s remarkable absence of historic antisemitism).

President Chavez has attempted do distance himself from the antisemitic views of Ahmadi-Nejad, however these attempts are undermined by some of his rhetoric - for example he claimed that the “descendants of those who killed Christ” and the “descendants of the same ones that kicked Bolivar out of here” had “taken possession of all the wealth in the world”, although he later denied he was talking about Jews (perhaps he was talking about the Italians?)

As many as 1/5 of the Jewish population of Venezuela has left since Chavez came to power, those who remain are increasingly worried by a rise in antisemitism, fueled in part by Chavez’s anti-Israeli rhetoric, which includes comparing Israel with the Nazis, even if he is not directly antisemitic.

(source - FT.com)

Hugo Chavez is following in Mugabe’s footsteps and seizing land to ‘redistribute’ and install collective farming.

This policy has recently been tried in Zimbabwe and has been a spectacular failure, taking the country from being the breadbasket of Africa to being a country of rampant inflation and massive food shortages.

Of course, Zimbabwe isn’t the only country to have tried this. China tried it during the ‘great leap forward’. What were the results? Famine and death.
It was even tried by some early settlers in the Americas. They tried collective farming and almost starved, it was only when private farming and the ability to trade was introduced that they prospered.

Collectivisation and nationalisation is a recipe for disaster. The disaster may be staved off due to Venezuela’s oil wealth, but that will only serve to prop up a rich, corrupt elite and prevent the liberal reform which would disperse wealth more and provide opportunity for the masses.

I’m sure the left in the west will continue lauding Chavez, even as his errors become manifest, if only because he’s anti-American and claims to be standing up for the poor against the exploitative capitalist.

With the depressing situation in Venezuela (its so predictable, price controls mean that food shortages are arriving, Chavez is continuing his clamp down on opposition and his dictatorial measures), its good to see that Peru is embracing economic freedom and free trade to the benefit of the country and its citizens.

Along with Chile I hope that the sensible economic policies can be combined with social policies which will help the poor not hinder them and increase the wealth and opportunity of all. Hopefully they will then be beacons of liberty and prosperity in long suffering South America.

It is with great sadness that I look at the events in Venezuela, Hugo Chavez is taking more and more power, he now officially has the power of rule by decree (before he had to rubber stamp things through the parliament crammed with his supporters). He has abolished term limits, setting himself up to be dictator for life (I’m sure there’ll be ‘elections’ but the USSR had ‘elections’, even North Korea has ‘elections’).
He’s restricting free speech and the freedom of the press, he’s nationalising the economy.

The scenario of F.A. Hayek’s The Road To Serfdom is being played out again, before our very eyes.

The Social Democracy he once espoused has given way (as it must) to authoritarianism. A solution is ‘needed’ to the problems caused by his own policies, and he is that solution. He’s setting up a false enemy, calling George W Bush ‘Satan’ and making America into a scapegoat (I suppose at least its not an internal minority - although perhaps that’s still to come).
His rhetoric is the rhetoric of the fascist - ‘Fatherland, Socialism or Death!’,

Even through this, the left are still clinging to their new hero. They are claiming a golden age of socialism will arise in Venezuela, showing those evil Americans (who are authoritarian, Chavez clearly isn’t) what a mistake they’re making. They’re even claiming that the USSR didn’t fail because of its economy being fatally flawed and that somehow freedom will be expanded by reducing it.

I feel a great sense of pity for those who will be impoverished by the nationalist and socialist policies of Chavez, but I hold those who sit in their comfy, middle-class houses making pronouncements about the wonders of socialism, in the deepest contempt.