I really don't get it. This sentiment always pops up on here when Venezuela is discussed. In the Chavez era, the ruling party pushed through rule by decree, suffered a military coup, purged the opposition, tried to set up their leader as dictator for life... and the lesson we should take away from the resulting chaos is that big spending on social programs doesn't produce long-lasting benefits?

Are you sure you don't get it? This stuff pops up because some of the community here are ideologues trying to score "points" off of this, regardless of whether or not it is appropriate of the situation being discussed. Any excuse to push for more tax cuts.

I guess I either assume they're sincere, or if not then they should at least be aware enough to realize that it's a bad argument. I realize this assumption may not be very well supported, but it can be hard to adjust.

Propaganda doesn't have to be a good argument.

Yes points. And perhaps there's a larger discussion about what the role of the federal government should be is now discussed in our daily lives, not just hacker news, with such topics as student aid debt forgiveness, basic income, mandatory health care, etc.

And also maybe it's an example how power can be purchased with social programs.

Also points. Gotta get those points. I hear someday I'll be able to cash them in for bad karma debt forgiveness.

valid things to discuss. while doing so you might want to start form the point of having an actually relevant example to draw from? why would you attempt to use Venezuela for that discussion? Are you honestly trying to assert that Venezuela's social safety net programs are _really_ what went wrong there?

At what point did my comment switch from being my personal opinion to propaganda?

at the point you said this

> an example of why spending big on social programs doesn't produce long-lasting social benefits.

which is not a statement of opinion, but rather, is an unjustified assertion that conforms with your ideological agenda.

an opinion would have been something like "I prefer to vote for politicians that are fiscally conservative because I don't think the government has a good track record of implementing positive social change with spending programs"

but that's now what you said or how you said it. instead, you implied that social programs ANYWHERE AND EVERYWHERE are comparable in some meaningful way with a failed state that collapsed under the weight of corruption and authoritarian dictatorship.

And the economic policies were tremendously popular and would likely have persisted in a carefully designed democracy that did not specifically prohibit them. I don't see the authoritarian nature of the government as being a root cause. Democracy doesn't automatically make price controls (including currency controls) less disastrous.

That just seems to lend weight to the idea that there was a lot more going on and blaming it all on social programs doesn't make sense. Unless you're lumping price and currency controls into the "social programs" category?

I don't think anyone in this thread is blaming it all on social programs. Even the opening post mentioned that corruption was largely to blame.

If you want to get into discussions on socialism, one might ask the question whether nationalization of industries presents an opportunity for corruption or if socialist ideology can present a cover for kleptocracy. It looks a lot like that's what happened in Venezuela.

You're right, it's not all. Still, I don't get why it's even brought up. Seems like authoritarian government, nationalization of industries, and general screwing about with market forces would be far more important.

Or are people just equating nationalizing the oil industry and making it illegal to get money out of the country with "social programs"?

"Seems like authoritarian government, nationalization of industries, and general screwing about with market forces would be far more important."

I'd agree, though I think you could describe land redistribution as a 'social program.'

I would describe land redistribution as radical revolutionary upheaval of established order. In my view this is not worth the damage to the social fabric it causes. It's an intrinsically violent thing to do, even if no shots are fired. It can only ever occur under conditions of extreme duress. "Give us your land or we kill you". Not a good approach to positive social change.

Taxation is the more reasonable way to do this. It is also confiscatory but it does so in a way where the level of duress is much reduced, and representation, agency, and participation are possible.

I would offer a provisional definition of a social spending program as a program with humanitarian goals that is funded by taxation. Land redistribution is not taxation (just pure confiscation) and so doesn't meet my definition of social program.

Maybe you think I'm just making a semantics argument and splitting hairs but I think its a meaningful difference. Land redistribution is the classic case of "peasant uprising gone bad".