FP: The Sad Death of the Latin American Left (Not so sad, the implosion of Venezuelan and Brazilian cronyism is good for the world.)
Socialism is inherently crony. It is a system which is highly centralized and as such encourages the consolidation and then dissemination of wealth (such as it is) and power to vested interests, sometimes quazi-private, (as is the case with Petrobras) often within the government. This is the sad legacy of modern Venezuela and Brazil. (And pretty much all socialist systems.) That these two countries are now failing so spectacularly is to be expected. This is what crony systems do. They enrich the connected while the rest of the economy and society corrodes from within. We have seen it over and over and over.
(From Foreign Policy)To be sure, Chavismo’s damage is real, and deeply felt. But the government of Chávez and Maduro and the Bolivarian project have been marked more by incompetence, corruption, and criminality, than by ideological coherence. Today, the Venezuelan economy is the worst-performing in the world, with a GDP expected to contract by around 10 percent. Its people suffer from massive shortages of basic goods like corn meal and toilet paper, inflation rates that are expected to reach 200 percent this year, and the second-highest murder rate in the world……Today, Brazil is consumed by domestic trouble. After its economy grew by an average annual rate of 4.6 percent between 2005 and 2008 and by3.9 percentin 2011 following the global recession, it is expected to contract by close to 3 percent this year, the country’s greatest economic slide since the Great Depression. At the same time, the revelation of a massive corruption scam involving the semi-private, state-owned oil company Petrobras has implicated members of both the ruling PT as well as the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB), the democratic-socialist opposition party. More importantly, the scandal has stained many of Brazil’s private-sector icons, from Petrobras to the group of infrastructure companies involved in paying bribes to gain access to more than $23 billion in contracts from the company, such as Odebrecht and Andrade Gutierrez. Some of those kickbacks found their way to political parties including the PT, allegedly to finance Rousseff’s election campaign.
Socialism is a dead end. An intoxicant for the politically naive.
a sociedade civil tem tentado, desde Dutra, acabar com isso, sem sucesso. chegou a hora de todos fazermos isso para valer.
ResponderExcluirSe o PT não cair, não acaba. E ainda assim, isso continua até que chegue uma turma que se preocupe com o país e não com sua turminha ávida por poder, poder e só poder (e, claro, $$$, por consequência). Como disse Frank Underwood, "dinheiro é a mansão no bairro errado. Poder é o velho edifício de pedra"- que eles tanto querem. Mas isso tem que ruir até o chão, até esfacelar-se. Essa é a luta.
ResponderExcluirQuanto a Dutra, não sei. Devemos ser gratos ao Regime Militar por ter-nos livrado do Comunismo mas eles eram centralizadores e creio que praticaram o capitalismo de compadres também. Mas de um jeito que me parece ter sido mais moderado. O PT escancarou, fez do país o deleite dos grandes empresários. Mas Socialismo é isso... é pra vender o Estado, mesmo.