Comments by "" (@shauncameron8390) on "From riches to rags: Venezuela's economic crisis | The Big Picture" video.

  1. Which is the result of the government controlling the food.
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  2. @ Mack Dog Democratic socialism is a codeword for communism. By the way, Vladimir Lenin coined that term.
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  3.  @hi-gf5yl  But socialism never was efficient to begin with. And there is only so much money and resources to go around to feed vast swathes of non-productive people that socialism inevitably produces. <In capitalism, businesses spend money advertising to make people buy obscene amounts of goods that they don't need, wasting resources that could have been better spent elsewhere or saved for the future.> As if socialism is known for efficient spending or saving or responsible management of resources given its legendary track record of mismanagement, misappropriation, misuse, neglect and waste summed up in two of its main features, chronic shortages and (intentional) famine. And what do you mean "make?" Are you trying to say that people are dumb and don't know what they need?
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  4.  @degamispoudegamis  What socialists/communists always say when their beloved model fails largely on its own.
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  5.  @degamispoudegamis  With that reliance on oil due to Chavez destroying all the other industries by nationalization and price controls in the early 2010's rendering it unable to support itself. Plenty to do with socialism. The sanctions are of little consequence as Venezuela collapsed 3 years before any sanction was imposed. Cope.
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  6.  @dg_96_7  And everyone is equal. Under the government jackboot, that is!
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  7. No. Due to Chavez decimating the private sector and replacing the skilled and productive personnel in the oil industry with political friends, Venezuela was set up for failure.
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  8. Too bad it costed the country its long-term economic viability.
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  9. LOL. Nice joke!
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  10. <Just because Maduro (and Chavez) wanted to give benefits to the poor coming from the oil revenues they are vilified and hated.> By having and keeping them dependent on handouts with money stolen from the intelligent and productive that Chavez and Maduro vilified and hated and chased out of the country. And unsurprisingly once that money ran out, the poor went right back to square one. No more vicious than Chavista propaganda.
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  11. That is the Venezuelan people who ignorantly voted for Chavez and Maduro.
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  12. Only to become an even bigger elite than the "elite" ever were serving as yet another example of why most revolutions are failures.
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  13. @ Robogren Canada's hardly socialist.
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  14. Because Venezuela destroyed its own production base with its government seizures of private enterprise.
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  15.  Jac Athif  Socialism is the reason. The government seizing the means of production and being no longer able to produce goods at all let alone efficiently relying on imports is standard socialist fare.
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  16. And apparently neither does Maduro.
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  17. On top of killing off whatever diversified economy it had with price controls and nationalizations resulting in capital flight and brain drain.
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  18. Guyana already did socialism under Jagan and Burnham in the 80's.
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  19. Many natural resources but don't have an educated and skilled populace to put them to good use, because in Venezuela's case, the government ran them out.
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  20. Not at all.
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  21. No. Chavez and Maduro did that.
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  22. BS! Like Michael Manley in Jamaica?
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  23. Exactly.
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  24. US sanctions didn't force Maduro to impose price controls forcing businesses to sell their goods at rock-bottom prices when he wasn't seizing private businesses and chasing out the entrepreneurs setting the country up for shortages.
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  25. It is because of bad leadership. And the only people that benefited from Venezuela's natural resources were the Chavez family, PSUV elites and the Cuban government.
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  26.  @jelbinmalungu9250  Which Venezuelans? Ordinary people or those on the PSUV payroll? Just like you're peddling Chavista talking points.
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  27. Look no further than the Black community in any major city run by Democrats.
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  28. LOL. The poverty rate for the US is 12%. So how does the poor make up 99% of the US population?
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  29.  @japanesus_  40 million out of some 330 million. There are far more Americans not in poverty than those who are.
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  30. They got exactly what they voted for. They should have the decency to live with the consequences for better or worse.
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  31. Yes they do. They just claim social democracy and democratic socialism to hide their true desire for total state control as it's not a popular thing to say anything good about socialism due to its rather unflattering track record. And it wasn't that long ago that venezuela was hailed as a socialist success when Chavez was alive and ran the show.
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  32.  Don Corleone  Exactly. Guyana, Madagascar, Romania, etc. didn't need any outside help in destroying themselves.
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  33. No. What you're really advocating for a global version of the Soviet Union to take place.
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  34.  @johnyohann6946  Social democracy is a communist idea and little more than way to whitewash communism/socialism's brutal track record.
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  35. None of those countries, China aside, are socialist. And China adopted capitalism in the early 1980's to avoid becoming what Venezuela is now.
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  36. @ hagmapama Exactly! And then you wonder why most revolutions fail.
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  37. In real-life practice.
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  38. No. All is happening because of Venezuela playing stupid socialist games and winning stupid socialist prizes.
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  39. No. It is inside forces that ruined the country like USSR, Venezuela, Romania, Yugoslavia, etc.
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  40. A guy whose parents fled the very same socialism/communism he supports.
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  41. Fascism is from the same socialist family tree as communism.
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  42. Exactly.
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  43. The same same sanctions that only started in 2017?
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  44. @ TrollBuster One problem, though. Not all socialists are communists as in the case of Maduro, but all communists are socialists.
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  45. Just like there's no mention from you about the wholesale nationalization by Chavez and Maduro gutting the private sector and turning Venezuela into a one-trick pony economy. Venezuela has the most oil reserves in the world, but mismanagement and neglect rendered it useless.
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  46. @UCepuStH7LDXDpeVrX_b9vgw Interestingly, Chavez became the 1% he so fought against dying a billionaire. No it doesn't. That oil was founded with private money.
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  47.  @dublinbay2362  Which is? No more than you are, typical Chavista. 2.5 million homes built for the poor, yet still hardly any better off due to having no economy after Chavez seized and shut down all the private enterprises turning the country into a one-trick pony economy. He was just fortunate enough to die before the oil prices collapsed and the one-trick pony economy came crashing to a halt.
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  48.  @muhannadals3349  Then go start your own business if you don't like following orders. What's stopping you? And under socialism, it's the same thing with the difference being your bosses are government bureaucrats in which you'll be lucky not to get thrown in jail for complaining about how following orders uncritically limits your creativity to what profits the Supreme Leader and his comrades as you don't have the option of starting your own business or switching bosses, because private enterprise is either heavily restricted or banned altogether.
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  49. How come Chile, South Korea and Ghana didn't get destroyed?
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  50. But socialism has a consistent track record of running out of money as it doesn't produce money on its own always needing capitalism to prop it up.
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  51.  @cornbisque  Scandinavia is a capitalist welfare state. And Sweden once had socialism only to abandon it for capitalism as it went all but completely bankrupt in the 70's.
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  52. If so, then how come Ethiopia, India, Eastern Europe, Mongolia, etc. were able to have socialism/communism without much outside meddling yet struggled and failed anyway?
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  53.  @richie3802  Yes it does. Central planning and one-party rule is the norm.
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  54.  @mikec4845  Only for the government to become the rich and everyone else gets some crumbs anyway at the end of it all. All socialism does is replace one control with another. Namely its own in the form of the almighty government.
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  55.  @SmellMyKKPP  And neither does socialism despite its claims of taking any humanity into consideration. There's a reason why the terms limousine liberal, champagne socialist, caviar gauche, virtue-signaller, ect. exist.
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  56.  @SmellMyKKPP  But socialism far exceeds what even the worst of capitalism can do.
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  57. What about the aforementioned food and medical supplies being seized and destroyed at the border by the Venezuelan army?
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  58. No. The Chavez and Maduro deserve 100% of the blame. After all it was Chavez's idea to seize and shut down all of the profitable private businesses in favor of the newly-nationalized oil industry, killing off a reliable source of income should anything happen to the oil industry.
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  59.  Don Corleone  Actually it's 102.5 years. But yeah!
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  60. @ Andres "The reforms and policies that will combat corruption" in a socialist country is often used as a weapon by the ruling party to silence any opposition to its power. One-party rule is the norm.
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  61.  @johnyohann6946  No it doesn't. Socialism is about state control as private enterprise is heavily restricted if not banned altogether.
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  62. Yaeh! When the revolutionaries and liberators become the new oligarchs and oppressors. History repeats itself, indeed!
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  63. No he didn't. He just threw money at the problem.
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  64. Really? How come that didn't affect the other Arab Gulf states much or even fellow socialist Republic of Congo?
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  65. Not really. Venezuela is more the next Zimbabwe.
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  66.  @Robak161  But the poor have little problem buying bread in capitalism.
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  67. It's hard to do that when the government seized the farmland.
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  68. Socialism created this. State expropriation of land/wealth/resources is par for the socialist course.
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  69.  Don Corleone  Even in countries that the US left alone or outright supported lik Ethiopia, India, Cambodia, Albania, Yugoslavia, Benin, Romania, Guyana, etc.
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  70. The typical excuses made when socialists and other leftist types run their societies into the ground largely without much opposition.
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  71. If that was true, how come none of the other oil-rich countries collapsed like Venezuela did?
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  72. Not really. Try 98% corruption and incompetence and 2% US sanctions.
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  73. It was socialism. <Additionally, not diversifying the rest of their economy when they had the chance.> That's because Chavez destroyed the rest of the economy upon reducing Venezuela to an one-industry country with price controls and wholesale nationalization of the private sector.
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  74. Yes it did. Price controls, state seizure of private businesses, capital flight, etc.
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  75. Venezuela has been independent since 1811. Until the early 2000's, Venezuela wasn't even on the US's radar.
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  76. Nah. Chavez was always an opportunistic POS.
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  77. Socialism running its natural course.
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  78. None of those countries are socialist to begin with.
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  79.  @dchase9083  Largely due to mass immigration. Besides, since when did socialist countries, not like the countries he mentioned were socialist to begin with, have open borders?
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  80. They're just looking for people to make slaves out of.
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  81. India was stagnated by socialism for most of its post-independence history.
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  82. How is it not? The wrong kind of people?
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  83.  Don Corleone  I was referring to Venezuela and his claim that Venezuela wasn't socialist.
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  84.  @martymcfly5423  Exactly.
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  85. Yes it was. To the point of being the wealthiest country in South America.
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  86. Socialism already did the job in Africa. As for its countries not having oil.... Angola ROC Libya South Sudan Algeria Equatorial Guinea Nigeria
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  87. AAnd all you have to do is give up your FREEDOM!
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  88. And where exactly were you in 2014 when Venezuela went in a freefal?
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  89.  @blueskies133  Exactly.
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  90. It is not that hard to find. Albania, Romania, Cambodia, Yugoslavia, Guyana, Madagascar, Benin, Mongolia, etc.
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  91.  @lamarazmoe6438  And you're wrong on all counts. In Cambodia's case, its socialist experiment came to an end at the hands of fellow socialist Vietnam.
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  92. No. Maduro has barred foreign medicine and food from entering Venezuela.
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  93. What about removing the command economy of Cuba and Venezuela? Venezuela and Cuba have something in common indeed. They love to blame the US when their socialist/communist experiments run their natural courses leaving tyranny, poverty, brain drain, misery, etc. in their wakes.
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  94. Kuwait, UAE, Oman, Bahrain and Qatar are destroyed?
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  95.  @RoshanZ  Palestine is not a country. And for every Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, etc. there's Equatorial Guinea, the Republic of Congo, Trinidad & Tobago, Norway, etc. that the the US didn't destroy.
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  96. Norway has a thriving private sector. Venezuela doesn't and hasn't since 1998.
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  97. Not really.
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  98. So is Equatorial Guinea. Yet the 1% in control are the Nguema family.
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  99. These same poor people who happily voted for Chavez and Maduro who went on to bankrupt their country?
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  100. Like Russia and China?
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  101. Socialism is bad. The government would have gotten greedy anyway even if there was no oil like in Nicaragua and Zimbabwe.
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  102.  @sauln8451  <limiting of private property was the killer.> Which IS socialism as was practiced in the USSR, Zimbabwe, Cambodia, China, Cuba, etc.
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  103. LMAO. Chavez exploited the poor to lift up himself and was willing to bankrupt the country to achieve such.
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  104. Only to become the greedo and tycoon himself as he amassed a good fortune before he died. And now the Chavez family are the wealthiest people in the country.
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  105.  @fe1ip3  <Oil price decreasing> Coupled with a decimated private sector. <USA sanctions> 3 years after Venezuela hit rock-bottom.
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  106.  @sakulasakic2391  And what 3rd-world countries did Singapore, Chile, Costa Rica, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan exploit?
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  107. Namely leftists, feminists, union bosses and Argentinians.
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  108. The only sanctions being imposed on Venezuela is that of the Venezuelan government on its own people as it effectively killed off the private sector and domestic production of goods.
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  109. Whatever! And Yugoslavia was all but completely done for by the time 90's rolled in.
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  110. Just like you are blind to greater effects of wholesale economic nationalization as was done by the Venezuelan government. The sanctions are of little consequence.
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  111. Not really. Chavez was a virtue-signalling power-monger like most revolutionaries and freedom-fighters in history.
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  112. But decimated by price controls.
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  113.  @intihumala9087  AH! Portugal! A one-time colonial power turned poorest country in Western Europe.
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  114. I presume it's because it didn't come from TeleSur, right?
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  115. LOL @ Chavez being intelligent. If Chavez was intelligent, the private sector would have still been thriving and the oil price collapse wouldn't have tanked the country as badly as it did. Besides, how come none of the other oil-rich countries collapsed like Venezuela?
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  116. And it figures why. The poor are easier to control.
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  117. Chile, Japan, South Korea.
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  118. After destroying whatever diverse economy it had by the most socialist means possible. Price controls, nationalization, replacing skilled and productive personnel with political stooges, etc.
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  119. That has only been going on since 2017?
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  120. Isn't the Chavez family part of the rich elite?
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  121.  Jeannie Seibert  Plus, Sweden hasn't done socialism since the 1970's.
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  122. Socialism doesn't generate wealth, especially new wealth which is why it either lives off of aid from well-off countries or adopt capitalism to prop it up.
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  123. And replace it with what? Some old stupid whatever the Soviet Union had under Lenin and Stalin?
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  124. But poor in brains, work-ethic and skills to do anything with said natural resources.
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  125.  @johnyohann6946  Same difference.
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