As Venezuela Collapses, Children Are Dying of Hunger

As Venezuela Collapses, Children Are Dying of Hunger(nytimes.com)

42 points by iKenshu 8 years ago | 39 comments

seibelj 8 years ago |

This made me so unbelievably sad. A country that was prosperous, educated, full of natural resources, gets destroyed by a corrupt and despicable political system. There is no reason this should happen.

_bfhp 8 years ago |

As Yemen Collapses, NYT Publishes Saudi Arabia Propaganda

pmarreck 8 years ago |

I don't know why this is flagged, but I do see a lot of hot air about socialism in here without much pointing to evidence

JonasJSchreiber 8 years ago |

That was so disheartening. Folks really need to jump off that sinking ship - emigrate - or Maduro needs to be ousted.

vhogemann 8 years ago | |

Already happening, thousands of Venezuelans are migrating to Brazil. Some towns near the borders are already having trouble to manage accommodating so many families.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/hungry-ven...

andrenth 8 years ago |

“The Venezuelan government knows, but won’t admit it.”

The NY Times cheered for the socialist regime, but won’t admit it.

pmarreck 8 years ago | |

Evidence?

thriftwy 8 years ago |

I used to think that economic collapse after the fall of Soviet communism was the worst outcome possible. Now it is apparent that crash with communism intact is much worse.

eugenerg 8 years ago |

Quoting someone else: "NY Times major piece on starvation in Venezuela.

Carefully avoids mentioning socialism. All the problems are passive voice ("as the economy collapsed," "as hyperinflation appeared") or exogenous ("oil prices collapsed").

Walter Duranty lives."

nitwit005 8 years ago | |

> The Venezuelan government has used food to keep the Socialists in power, critics say. Before recent elections, people living in government housing projects said they were visited by representatives of their local Socialist community councils — the government-aligned groups that organize the delivery of boxes of cheap food — and threatened with being cut off if they did not vote for the government.

It does, however, directly badmouth the Socialists.

toomuchtodo 8 years ago | |

It was government corruption, not socialism that led to the current crisis.

Socialistic Scandinavia countries that have sovereign wealth funds from their oil extraction prosper.

tomohawk 8 years ago | | |

All systems have corruption. However, when the government nationalizes food distribution and production, that corruption has a much larger impact.

spraak 8 years ago | | |

Genuinely curious and not trying to troll: how successful would Scandinavian socialism be without oil?

iyrkki_odyss 8 years ago | | |

None of the scandinavian countries are socialistic.

X86BSD 8 years ago | | |

That’s not quite accurate. They also have the US paying largely for their defense needs. That saves them a ton of money.

X86BSD 8 years ago |

Socialism ends this way every. Single. Time. “If only socialism was implemented correctly for a change!” The snowflakes chant. Ignoring history. Implementing more and more socialist programs at home. Sigh.

dang 8 years ago | |

Since we've asked you several times to stop posting ideological boilerplate and political battle to HN, and instead you do this, we've banned this account.

I suppose I should add that no, that's not because we're $ideological_flavor.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15947441 and marked it off-topic.

andrenth 8 years ago | | |

How was that post ideological boilerplate? It’s a description of facts.

oculusthrift 8 years ago | |

ah yes. we all know sweden and switzerland and norway are about to collapse and have people die of starvation on the streets.

tomohawk 8 years ago | | |

Since socialism is so successful, maybe they should nationalize food production and distribution too? It's gotta be better than using a capitalistic market economy for that, right?

holydude 8 years ago | | |

Except these countries are capitalist with a pinch of socialism here and there. And it is not all perfect over there. Besides their companies are often involved in corruption scandals wherever they operate. I call them hypocritical social democrats :-)

madengr 8 years ago | | |

Thanks to western democratic principles. You have conveniently ignored all their neighbors in the east block.

madengr 8 years ago | |

Yep, a track record of failure over the last 100 years.

X86BSD 8 years ago | | |

Sweden has a national debt of 42% of its GDP. You’re free to call that healthy if you wish but that’s redlining to most of us.

And again they also have no defense costs except toys to play with because the US pays for their defense.

So yeah.

frabbit 8 years ago |

The NYT crying crocodile tears over dying children is a bit hard to take.

Looks like the USA's determined to continue carrying out its coup after all:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Venezuelan_coup_d%27%C3%A...

eternalban 8 years ago | |

I don't read that rag anymore. Have they shed any tears for the children of Yemen?

Mikeb85 8 years ago | | |

Of course not. No one cares about Yemen because atrocities are being carried out by a US ally. It's plain to see when and where the media generates outrage.