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Venezuelan president called a ‘Grinch’ after seizing nearly 5 million toys

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S

Syriel

Member
Venezuelan officials have confiscated nearly 5 million toys from a toy distributor, accusing the company of planning to sell them at inflated prices during the Christmas season.

Critics say the consumer protection agency, which targeted the toy warehouse this week, has become “the Grinch that stole Christmas” because many families won’t be able to buy the confiscated toys for the holiday.

Agency head William Contreras disputed that, saying executives at toy distributor Kreisel-Venezuela, the largest of its kind in the country, “don’t care about our children’s right to have a merry Christmas.”
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Venezuelan Chamber of Commerce President Francisco Fernández told CNN the government is “acting in an irresponsible way,” discouraging job creation and endangering private property.

“This was plundering of inventory. The government didn’t even respect the company’s right of due process,” Fernández said.

Venezuela is experiencing a deep economic crisis that has seen inflation skyrocketing to a whopping 500% this year, according to the International Monetary Fund. The IMF says it may reach 1,660% in 2017.
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If Maduro keeps confiscating all private property, eventually there won't be anything left to take.

And what business will want to invest in Venezuela in the future if the government is just waiting in the wings to confiscate it all?


Source:
CNN Wire via http://pix11.com/2016/12/11/venezue...a-grinch-after-seizing-nearly-5-million-toys/
 
S

Stinkles

Clothed, sober, cooperative
kingkaiser said:
Welcome to Socialism.

I guess at least the party barons' children will have a nice Christmas.
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Incompetent authoritarian theft isn't actually socialism. Maduro would be a dumbass regardless of his political philosophy. And suck at it.
 
H

humansarehorses

Member
Gotta love these interventionist governments. Protecting people from the consumption choices they actively make.

daviyoung said:
well in an actual Socialist state the factory wouldn't have been allowed to get that far in the first place
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Then they still wouldn't have supplied those toys to children who want them because they wouldn't have been produced.

Sounds wonderful.
 
J

jakonovski

Member
All these cries of "that's what you get for socialism" is as correct as similarly decrying capitalism for Trump.

Which is to say, a gross simplification of an ideology that has many dimensions across the globe.
 
Nikodemos

Nikodemos

Member
It's painful to watch how a reasonably prosperous country ended up as America's Zimbabwe in one and a half decades.
 
D

daviyoung

Banned
humansarehorses said:
Well, that's completely wrong. Demand is not a function of supply. It exists irrespective of whatever happens on the production side.
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thanks for the lecture, but I have no idea how it's relevant to what I said

the company bought the toys, stockpiled them and the suspicion is that they were waiting to sell them at a high price

that entire chain of events wouldn't have happened in a Socialist system
 
A

A Link to the Past

Banned
Fj0823 said:
Its the same awful excuse people always give.

But hey, the 300th is the charm!

It blows my mind that countless people suffering is not enough proof that socialism is never going to work
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Really? People just say those two lines? That's it?

I mean, what's the alternative, capitalism? A system that's working super well in our society?
 
J

jakonovski

Member
Fj0823 said:
Its the same awful excuse people always give.

But hey, the 300th is the charm!

It blows my mind that countless people suffering is not enough proof that socialism is never going to work as intended
Click to expand...

Like the hellhole that is Nordic social democratic countries?
 
D

daviyoung

Banned
humansarehorses said:
This is wrong. Completely wrong. Demand is not a function of supply. Doesn't matter what happens to the producer side of things, demand does not change because of it.
Click to expand...

I'm not talking about supply and demand, I'm talking about those toys never existing in the first place

how can you want something that doesn't exist?
 
P

pa22word

Member
A Link to the Past said:
I mean, what's the alternative, capitalism? A system that's working super well in our society?
Click to expand...
Until you solve scarcity socialism is never going to work as a form of government. Considering it's arguable whether or not that's even possible period as anything but a pipe dream and we still do in fact live in a scarcity driven, supply and demand world economy, then yes, capitalism is not just a better alternative it is functionally the only alternative.

Does capitalism suck in a lot of ways? Yeah, but it's what we're stuck with. Better to play the game and try to curb its nastier side when and if possible than chase a fantasy.

jakonovski said:
Like the hellhole that is Nordic social democratic countries?
Click to expand...

Despite the nice pr lingo, none of those countries are anything remotely approaching socialist. They're just as capitalist as america is.
 
D

daviyoung

Banned
humansarehorses said:
...yes, yes you are. You even talked about demand explicitly.



Are you talking about the units or a type of toy? If you're talking about the units, the quantity of a good, again, the demand would be there irrespective.
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you got triggered by the word demand, and now you're stuck in some loop

I'm talking about the fact that this factory is allowed to operate as a Capitalist venture inside a supposedly arbitrary Socialist system

please stop ignoring the rest of my posts to you and only quoting your selected "supply and demand" parts when I'm making my intentions abundantly clear
 
M

Mugy

Member
Why always GAF care about the context of if true or false socialism? WHO THE SHIT CARES

You people should be complanin about how this is STEALING THE PRIVATE PROPERTY OF A COMPANY, not about about if this action is true or false socialism.

This is something bad. This is a crime, you people don't get it.
 
A

Ac30

Member
Can we all just be sad for a minute for the suffering of the Venezuelan people at the hands of an idiot and not have any thread devolve into socialism vs. capitalism... both have problems, one is clearly working better and the best solution is a mix of the two. Straight socialism and straight capitalism are both terrible.
 
J

jakonovski

Member
pa22word said:
Despite the nice pr lingo, none of those countries are anything remotely approaching socialist. They're just as capitalist as america is.
Click to expand...

Let's compare health care, social security, homeless rates, vacation time, cost of education, things like that.
 
C

cryptosporidium

Member
We just gotta seize the means of production comrades. The exploitave chains of the bourgeousie will not conquer our children like they have our labour! Workers of the world UNITE
 
H

humansarehorses

Member
daviyoung said:
you got triggered by the word demand, and now you're stuck in some loop
Click to expand...

Yeah, I focus my replies on what the quoted poster actually writes. It's a real character flaw.

daviyoung said:
I'm talking about the fact that this factory is allowed to operate as a Capitalist venture inside a supposedly arbitrary Socialist system

please stop ignoring the rest of my posts to you and only quoting your selected "supply and demand" parts when I'm making my intentions abundantly clear
Click to expand...

You're ignoring what you previously wrote so that you can pretend that you're talking about something else. But yes, I do think that that intention is abundantly clear.
 
D

daviyoung

Banned
humansarehorses said:
Yeah, I focus my replies on what the quoted poster actually writes. It's a real character flaw.



You're ignoring what you previously wrote so that you can pretend that you're talking about something else. But yes, I do think that that intention is abundantly clear.
Click to expand...

in the Socialist system those toys wouldn't have existed, no unit, no particular toy, and even if they had existed they either wouldn't have been available in Venezuela at all or would have been produced under license of the goverment
 
B

Bronx-Man

Banned
Fj0823 said:
No, no.

You see this socialism wasn't true socialism!!
Click to expand...
Not a fan of this post, but it did inspire me to bust out this old gif.

HpDxJE7.gif
 
F

Fyrion

Member
Nikodemos said:
It's painful to watch how a reasonably prosperous country ended up as America's Zimbabwe in one and a half decades.
Click to expand...

Venezuela isn't a prosperous country, never was before Chávez and perhaps It never will. Is just a country incapable of producing sustainable wealth outside of the steady (yet declining) income that comes from selling Oil barrel. All thanks to mercilessly pushing forward all the socialist policies you can think about for decades.
 
J

jakonovski

Member
The problem here is of definitions. Group a includes "that which works" as a necessary part of their definition of socialism, while group b includes "that which doesn't work" as necessary.

In reality, socialism is varied enough to have both successes and failures.
 
P

pa22word

Member
jakonovski said:
Let's compare health care, social security, homeless rates, vacation time, cost of education, things like that.
Click to expand...

None of that has anything to do with whether or not a state is capitalist or not.

"Democratic socialism" of the nordic countries is nothing more than a nice way of saying "capitalist welfare state", just like America is. The only difference is that the Nordic countries choose to spend more on the dole as a percentage of their budget than americans do.
 
M

MUnited83

For you.
pa22word said:
None of that has anything to do with whether or not a state is capitalist or not.

"Democratic socialism" of the nordic countries is nothing more than a nice way of saying "capitalist welfare state", just like America is. The only difference is that the Nordic countries choose to spend more on the dole as a percentage of their budget than americans do.
Click to expand...
Nah, democratic socialism is democratic socialism, no matter how much Americans are irrationally scared of the word "socialism".
 
benjipwns

benjipwns

Banned
Venezuelan officials have confiscated nearly 5 million toys from a toy distributor, accusing the company of planning to sell them at inflated prices during the Christmas season.
Click to expand...
what other kind of prices are there in Venezuela?
 
P

pa22word

Member
BernardoOne said:
Nah, democratic socialism is democratic socialism, no matter how much Americans are irrationally scared of the word "socialism".
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Sure, democratic socialism is totally democratic socialism. It's just not socialism, no matter how much silly europeans who didn't pay attention during economics class want to believe that it is.
 
benjipwns

benjipwns

Banned
pa22word said:
Sure, democratic socialism is totally democratic socialism. It's just not socialism, no matter how much silly europeans who didn't pay attention during economics class want to believe that it is.
Click to expand...
But it's democratic. So it's different. Like democratic centralism.
 
E

Empty

Member
missed the part of the un charter that guarantees all children the right to a merry christmas. i'm going to retroactively sue my parents for violating this constantly by repeatedly inviting my horrible aunt, burning the roasties one year and buying me bad ps1 licensed games instead of what i asked for.
 
E

Eylos

Banned
About definition
Social democracy =/= democratic socialism

Democratic socialism:
Socialism that's democratic.
Https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_socialism

Social democracy:
Social, state intervention in a capitalist state.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy

originaly social democracy intend to do a pacific transition to socialism, the party who originated the bolsheviks leaded By lenin is the social democratic labors party for example.

Today the majority of the social democratic parties doesn't want a transition, and the bigger part of the left in the world adopts this vision...

Venezuela is a social democratic state.
 
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