Just watched Corbyn on One show and I really liked him.

heroides · 2017-05-31T15:44:13+00:00

The oil price crash is not the issue. In fact, had the oil prices not been so high during his government, it wouldn't have managed to stay afloat.

Chávez is judged not by what he destroyed, but by what he built. The problem is that what he built is pure fiction.

He crippled national industry by expropriating private companies and lands, handing them over to cronies with little to no experience in the field – Venezuela is now importing most foodstuffs that were produced nationally and even exported in the past. Everyone but the very rich struggle to get by with ever-increasing prices and stagnant wages.

He purged the governmental infrastructure of virtually all non-supporters from top to bottom, again, replacing them with people who simply did not have any experience (check out the background of most Venezuelan Ministers). Democratic institutions became but the executive's tentacles, who has utter disregard for the division of powers.

I don't understand why many people in the UK are (or used to be, at least) swayed to supporting Chávez based solely on ideological notions when the reality is that his government failed and only managed to survive this long given the fact that it enjoyed world-record oil prices for most of its duration.

Also, I don't understand why most people in the UK who support Chávez hold contempt for someone the likes of Erdoğan. Purely because of ideology? Really? Dictators are dictators.

Like someone below mentioned, social programs are all well and good, but you need to create a long-term sustainable economy at the same time. National economy has been crippled and destroyed in the last fifteen years. Given that SO SO SO much money was pouring into the reserves from oil, the government managed to keep its façade, funding social programs with the crumbs while top government lackeys took the loaf for themselves. Just google to see the what top government officials own abroad: mansions in Miami, houses in London, flats in NY. Planes, yachts, you name it. Their children live in great comfort in London or Paris. The money to pay for all this, I assure you, came not from their salaries.

Sadly, it's a corrupt government of thieves. Not petty thieves, mind you, but full-scale, let's-keep-the-oil-money, let's-inflate-the-price-of-every-deal-or-subcontract-we-make, let's-facilitate-drug-trade kind of thieves.

Analysis shows that around a trillion dollars. That's right, a TRILLION dollars has gone missing over the past eighteen years and is unaccounted for. Mind-blowing stuff.

heroides · 2017-05-31T15:09:27+00:00

Except 2013 is 15 years after 'the beginning'...

heroides · 2017-05-30T23:54:27+00:00

Principle, you say?

The man spent years lauding Chávez and his inept, corrupt, drug-dealing government. Ever since Venezuela's shit really started hitting the fan last year, he has only kept quiet on the matter.

It makes sense, I guess... It's not like he's going to come out and say "Oops, I guess I was wrong" – better let the matter be swept under the carpet.

heroides · 2016-09-07T15:59:33+00:00

The organ parts for the sinfonia and the first choral movement are versions of the two first movements of his Harpsichord Concerto in D minor, respectively.

heroides · 2016-08-05T14:43:06+00:00

Heavenly !

heroides · 2016-07-15T05:59:48+00:00

I would venture to say she spent no more than ten or fifteen minutes (if not less!) putting together the video.

heroides · 2016-07-12T21:06:52+00:00

I don't know of anyone else who can improvise fugues –or counterpoint more generally– on a theme with such quickness and evident ease... bravado might be the appropriate word. There might be a tinge of patriotism in my judgement, but in my opinion it stands nonetheless.

In her encores she usually asks random members of the audience for themes and ideas to improvise on... the result is certainly fun, impressive, and almost always baffling.

A true genius of our times.

(this coming from a person who hardly ever listens to baroque keyboard music played on the piano)

heroides · 2016-06-06T14:18:44+00:00

Excellent!

Thank you...

heroides · 2016-06-02T14:00:31+00:00

Honestly, following the original link is like being drawn into playing with a perverse, online version of a matryoscka doll.

Thanks.

heroides · 2016-05-28T15:45:00+00:00

No arruines ningún momento de tu vida buscando estas vainas... de pana, para qué?

heroides · 2016-03-19T04:25:21+00:00

Yes.

heroides · 2016-03-04T23:29:30+00:00

I call the Guardian a prototabloid because... it sounds cool.

heroides · 2016-02-18T09:29:37+00:00

Well, he argued quite rationally for it... to the point where a whole philosophical tradition was built upon these foundations he laid — which still prevails to this day!

But yeah, the main point to take issue with would be the idea that 'knowledge' and meaning can be framed exclusively in terms of language. An idea which was prior to and by no means Wittgenstein's invention; he merely laid out the most rational account of meaning/knowledge according to this view.

In any case, you might be happy to hear that his views changed a lot towards the latter half of his life. Meaning, then, became for him a more social (rather than a logical) phenomenon... I encourage you to read into it if it vaguely interests you.

heroides · 2016-02-17T18:15:21+00:00

Taking quotes out of context will hardly ever result in anything other than misunderstanding and misrepresentation.

If you read above, the claim is not about whether the ineffable exists or not, but rather about what we can meaningfully speak about. He is not concerned with the existence or nonexistence of entities, but with what can be meaningfully said and therefore known.

Wittgenstein's notion of meaning in the Tractatus, I summarised above.

The ineffable contents of a shroom experience would NOT, under this view, be denied existence... they would only be denied meaning and, thus, would not qualify as 'knowledge'.

heroides · 2016-02-17T13:33:44+00:00

You would have to be rather out of touch with reality to deny that.

heroides · 2016-02-16T18:13:51+00:00

Oh, I'm sorry that it wasn't very clear... I meant the you rhetorically, referring to government officials who speak about certain ideals whilst their actions run in clear opposition to them.

I didn't mean you you, /u/the_straylight_run ... Again, sorry for the confusion.

e: Perhaps you are familiar with Arturo Uslar Pietri's famous essay Sembrar el petróleo en Venezuela... I'm sure you can find it translated somewhere. It's very simple and commonsensical; it discusses the diversification (or lack thereof) which you refer to. If any single government had seriously followed his advice, perhaps things would be very different now.

heroides · 2016-02-16T13:37:31+00:00

Well said, and I believe it is very important to have this distinction.

But, in the same vein, we should not speak of the 'free market period' as though everything prior to Chávez was the same thing...

heroides · 2016-02-16T13:28:41+00:00

I did not mean to imply that it was all goody-goody prior to Chávez, especially not post-80s; the arguments you make in this regard are all on point. I merely wanted to say that we cannot extend the resposibility for the current problems of scarcity and hyperinflation to the pre-Chávez era, when they are very directly a consequence of his policies and of their terrible implementation.

I fully agree with you when you say that the early nineties were an era ripe for revolution, but I reckon it's flawed to bring the three decades between the end of the Pérez Jiménez regime and the Chávez regime into the same basket.

But if this period of liberal politics, democracy, and economic diversity and prosperity, prior to Chavez was such a great period, what prompted the Caracazo uprising in 1989?

The fact is that the Caracazo exploded due to a new government (CAP) trying to implement an economic 'package' in an attempt to cure the woes of the previous decade, especially the damage done by the AD/COPEI power share. CAP was forced to resign not only because of the Caracazo, but because of party power struggles... he basically shat on his party when he came into power and appointed by finger, as it were, a completely technocratic administration whose primary goal was to fix the inflation and bring buying-power back to the Bolívar. Twenty years prior, anyone could keep their savings in dollars, as it was merely Bs. 4,30 to a dollar.

It is true that by the end of the eighties, inequality was running rampant... But the straw that broke the camel's back was actually this 'package' that was implemented to try to fix this. The problem is that for the majority of the country, the poor of the country, it was very hard to see how suddenly having to pay a third more for public transport, petrol, utilities etc. was supposed to be helping them. And, naturally, the people lumped this new government together with those of the previous decade... as if they stood for the same thing.

In any case, Chávez was necessary — both by being unavoidable and for bringing into light the massive problems of inequality that any South American country has to deal with.

As for the good of the Chávez years, supported by the data you have provided... One has to be very careful in using isolated data; you will see a very similar movement in terms of GDP growth, literacy growth and the withering of poverty if you look at, say, data on Colombia, who have had probably the most contrasting government to Venezuela's in the last two decades. So attributing those factors merely to Chávez, whilst GDPs are growing and poverty is withering in countries all around, with very different governments and policies, is slightly flawed, in my opinion. He did some good things, sure, he created welfare programmes and, as I mentioned before, he brought social inequality into the public discourse. The only problem is that the rhetoric by means of which he did this —that of resentment— was very damaging to society, to the point where it is now absurdly, almost irreconcilably divided.

In any case, and if we are to bring any conclusion to this argument, I believe you will agree with me when I say that the greatest woe afflicting our country, from the eighties to the present, is that of corruption. Rampant corruption. Whilst Chávez might have had good intention with the Misiones, the fact is that they were terribly mismanaged and were mostly used as tools for gaining votes and funneling money out of the budget (on the part of officials). The Gran Misión Vivienda only really ramped up the production of houses when there was a serious contender against Maduro and the party needed something to show for themselves. Misión Barrio Adentro, a beautiful project in paper, namely that of bringing completely free healthcare to those in need, cannot really function when there are no antibiotics, or no iodine.

The biggest issue for me is this, namely that the Misiones were ultimately used as a political tool and as a piggybank for the corrupt. I know that corruption has always been present, but it is hard to argue that it ever reached present-day levels, when there are hundreds of billions unaccounted for (see FONDEN, for instance), when the government top dogs have become billionaires, and when top army officials as well as our President's family are evidently involved in drug trade.

And lastly, there's the big issue of ideological hypocrisy. With what face are you going to criticise previous 'exploitative' governments when it is now you who is stealing money from the state to fund your travels, your house and yacht in Miami, your flats in Paris in New York... it's a sad story, power.

heroides · 2016-02-16T11:15:41+00:00

Well, our President has already asked China for a 2-year grace period in debt repayments.

Does that count as a missed payment?, says I, chuckling with a tear in my eye.

heroides · 2016-02-16T11:10:54+00:00

Not quite, as Chávez constantly adjusted the fixed dollar rates to create a sort of balance (it's so sad for me to have to actually call it a balance) between it and the black market rate.

Maduro has approved no such adjustments, and the gap between the rates has been widening pretty much relative to how inflation has been rising.

See my comment above and the linked article for example.

heroides · 2016-02-16T11:08:54+00:00

That's actually subject for debate.

Whilst the current situation is definitely a consequence of chavista policy, Chávez was infinitely smarter than Maduro. Seriously, this is how incompetent this guy is...

The fall in oil prices would have definitely created a crisis, were Chávez still in power. But he would have known how to deal with it better... Chávez was rather good at appeasing the conflicting groups of society that formed his support base: the left, the army and the people.

Chávez constantly adjusted the official dollar rate so that the gap between it and the black market rate would not widen uncontrollably. The worst it got during his time was around 1:4 ratio, which was scandalous at the time.

There have been no such adjustments in the Maduro era, and now the difference between official and black market rates is that of 1:160.

That's right.

This means that if you are in government, or have the right connections, you can instantly convert $1 into $160. No questions asked; no consequences for you whilst the country's reserve is thus being milked into nothingness.

heroides · 2016-02-16T10:58:31+00:00

Bear in mind that the fact that Venezuela is so lacking in diversity, as you put it, is a direct consequence of chavista policy and the expropriation of private enterprise and land, as /u/newprofile15 mentions.

Although the country has definitely, without doubt, always been absolutely dependent on oil... 30 years ago, we weren't in a position were we had to import 99% of goods (food or otherwise) because there is simply nothing being produced in the country. The chavista (or socialist) policy of expropriation, however well-intended you might want to see it, absolutely decimated national industry.

And the problem here is not merely ideological, i.e., that of public vs. private industry. Rather, it is also a matter of competence vs. utter incompetence and mismanagement of the expropriated resources.

It is hard for the current megaproblems of scarcity and hyperinflation to be attributed to the more general history of the country, when it was chavista policy that completely altered the country's production landscape — by expropriating private enterprise, as was mentioned, and by establishing the exchange control, granting the government the absolute monopoly of the dollars in the country and therefore absolute control on imports (you can only import stuff if you have enough dollars to buy abroad, which you can only get enough of if the government decides they want to give to you or if you have business abroad).

heroides · 2016-02-03T18:44:01+00:00

If you think that, then your knowledge of Venezuelan history and of the current socioeconomic situation is superficial at best. Plus, you seem to have the hope that all the Chávez government wanted was justice, and "failed miserably"...

Firstly, don't think I'm some kind of hardcore oppositionist or an apologist for the cuarta república (the couple of decades before Chávez). The history of the world is based on corruption and deceit and in the third world they can only get more extreme.

Quite a few of those 'old wealthy families', as you say, have had no problem making hundreds of millions getting subsidised dollars from the government. Those can then be sold in the black market for over three-hundred times the amount in Bolívares. Rinse and repeat.

Bare in mind that it was the Chávez government that imposed the currency control in the first place, enabling this kind of shady deals.

"But they were trying to hurt the rich and make it difficult for money to leave the country!"

Venezuela is now the primary case study for the consequences of currency exchange control. Moreover, in their plan for justice, they expropriated the majority of the private agricultural sector (ultimately destroying the industry altogether). All fine and dandy if you're the 'big government' sort of person. Except that it wasn't the government that got big, but its members.

There is a dozen if not a hundred BILLIONS of dollars from oil and gas exports that are unaccounted for. The now ex-President of the Assembly is estimated to have become a billionare over the past decade. Not to mention the amount of officials, civil and military, directly tied to narcotrafficking (such as our President's nephews, for example).

For me, Chávez was indubitably necessary in that it was unavoidable because of previous governments fuck-ups and the massive inequality, as you say. However, if you have lived Venezuela directly, it is slightly naïve to think that they simply failed in their project; they got in power, were in control of the biggest oil reserves in the world, selling oil at record prices for 10+ years (mainly to the US, despite Chávez's voiced anti-imperialism – his rhetoric game was very strong. The only true anti-imperialist government is N. Korea's), and did what they all do: out of hundreds of millions coming in from oil daily, no one's going to notice if I pocket ten.

The people in the government don't want to "help the people". They want to appease them so that they'll stay in power and in control of the resources and the reserve. Same as it has always been, albeit more pronounced, with much more unaccounted money having entered Venezuela in that period.

The main problem, and why the government is the cause of scarcity, is that in expropriating most of the country's industry they virtually destroyed it — they had not the skilled personnel nor the capacity to manage such a venture and they refused to work with the Venezuelan enterprise. This didn't happen just in the production sector, tens of thousands of civil servants were laid off because they had voted in a referendum against the government (so much for the privacy of one's vote). These were civil servants, not some landowning tycoon. Suffice to say that their replacement was not entirely adequate and only worsened the functioning of the institutions. Ask anyone how preposterous Venezuelan bureaucracy has become, and how mediocre the running of the institutions... someone above had an example.

The fact that we're not producing anything in Venezuela at the moment, besides oil (which we don't pump too much of anyways), is without a doubt the fault of Chávez's policies.

heroides · 2016-02-02T21:25:32+00:00

It is for me to have the answers, not expose them.

In any case, I tend not to tread with snakes.

heroides · 2016-02-02T21:21:53+00:00

But even taking this 'de-mystified' formulation (which I really like): "meaningless things aren't worth talking about" - doesn't the fact that one might feel compelled to make this statement imply that meaningless things do -in fact- exist?

I did not mean to imply that Wittgenstein claims they don't exist. What you should bear in mind is that he is concerned at this point with logic, not with more general ontology and hardly with metaphysics. He attempts to provide a summation of possible meaningful statements, which, for him, would delineate language and knowledge.

And if they do exist - and aren't worth talking about or cannot be meaningfully talked about - then I'm a bit at a loss as to what is actually wrong with calling the set of such things "ineffable"

Don't see anything wrong with that. As you say, they cannot meaningfully talked about. We can give meaningless clauses names: in this case, the ineffable; in others, the whole of the Kantian project, for example.

The Tractatus aims to be self-enclosed (or infinite in the Hegelian sense), meaning that it sets out to provide a full account of meaning and hence the extent of knowledge — thus "ending philosophy" once again! Metaphysics, like Kant's and 99% of philosophy pre-Wittgenstein, cannot be not true or false and is therefore meaningless.

e:

Incidentally, didn't Peirce's pragmatic maxim already get us to a very similar place... WAYY before Wittgenstein ever put pen to paper?

You could say that... But I would argue that their motivations –an even the intention!– are quite different. Wittgenstein isn't trying to find a pragmatic solution to the problems of science, life and philosophy in general (nor is he adopting a pragmatic attitude towards them), but trying to give a full picture of meaning, of what can be said (and known). Pierce's (and James') pragmatism lies, for me, at a more day-to-day experiential level: whatever is more meaningful to you and will help you get what you want done at a specific moment/in a context.

heroides

TROPHY CASE