It seems most Americans would tend to be grateful for our social institutions. We have a wonderful interstate highway, food inspection with the FDA, safety standards with OSHA, and so forth. Socialism, therefore, is much like capitalism or communism when it comes to its relatively. Yet even in the United States, the word socialism remains charged. This is due in part to the hangover/stain of the memory of the Soviets and/or the current quasi-governmental/political media outlets decrying social programs for the sake of doing so, or their own gain.
Bearing relativity in mind, some Socialism does carry with it some real baggage. An iconic aspect of incredulous socialism is expropriation. Hugo Chavez and his United Socialist Party of Venezuela (or PSUV) has been holding sway over Venezuela for over a decade now. (“Venezuela “, 2010) . A quick sketch of the Venezuelan people, by way of the Hofstede rankings (Hofstede, 2009), seems to echo not so much a Chavez administration as a regime. And yet, a quick look at the 2010 happiness index finds Venezuela exceeding the United States with rankings of nine and 13 respectively. (Nation Master, 2010) However, this document has no interest in arguing one way or the other whether the ends justify the means.
So imagine you are Shell or Exxon Mobil and you have invested heavily in infrastructure in Venezuela. Everything is going quite fine, and then one day the government says, “Thank you very much for all these buildings and equipment. We hope you made enough money, and now it is time for you to leave. Oh, and by the way, we're keeping all the buildings and equipment.” And that is basically what happened. (Padgett, 2007) This may be very nice for the people of Venezuela and its economy, but it certainly was not for the petroleum companies involved. The sad thing is, it continues to happen; (“Chavez orders expropriation of brewer Polar’s prime land “, 2010) , which begs the question “why would anyone want to invest in Venezuela?”.
Chavez orders expropriation of brewer Polar’s prime land . (2010, April 28, 2010). FRANCE 24. Retrieved from http://www.france24.com/en/20100428-chavez-orders-expropriation-brewer-polars-prime-land
Hofstede, G. (2009). Venezuela [rankings / index’]. the Netherlands: itim. http://www.geert-hofstede.com/hofstede_venezuela.shtml
Nation Master. (2010). Lifestyle Statistics > Happiness net (most recent) by country [bar graph]. http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/lif_hap_net-lifestyle-happiness-net: .
Padgett, T. (2007, Tuesday, May. 01, 2007). Chavez’s Not-So-Radical Oil Move. Time. Retrieved from http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=5&sqi=2&ved=0CCgQFjAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.time.com%2Ftime%2Fworld%2Farticle%2F0%2C8599%2C1616644%2C00.html&ei=OpSCTOCXEIOC8gbHuOSNAQ&usg=AFQjCNGb8V29E6kcZ1-39f4QeIaqn4ommw&sig2=GBaATy0vv7oVjWcfaX4izw
Venezuela . (2010). Retrieved September 4, 2010, from https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ve.html
No comments:
Post a Comment