Comments

1. Posted by: Nate on 6/23/2010 2:15 AM
   
   Talking about "robbing from the rich and giving to the poor", her society exists. It's called Venezuela. Chávez took oil rigs and mining sites from the big oil and mining companies in his country, thus seizing them from their rightful owners. Guess what happened next?
   All the foreign investment dried up, firms shut-up shop and no new firms opened up – Venezuela experienced both massive recession and inflation.
   
   If private property cannot be guaranteed safety, there is no incentive to do business – ergo, the aggregate welfare of society is severely diminished. Shortages and unemployment run rampant. Of course, at this point, these wacky extreme-left leaders create token jobs which compounds the problem as expenditure fuels inflation, not to mention those jobs don't usually produce productive ends.
   
   A lot of people who argue for central planning and level-incomes tend to be of a "hand-out" mentality. They have no understanding about the finer points of the system they're advocating, nor have they any understanding about the critiques they level at capitalism. I suspect in this case the commenter is simply suffering for an unfounded sense of entitlement
   (i.e. rig the system to suit my purposes which I will deem 'moral' in this context).
2. Posted by: Mark on 6/23/2010 9:52 AM
   

   Talking about "robbing from the rich and giving to the poor", her society exists. It's called Venezuela. Chávez took oil rigs and mining sites from the big oil and mining companies in his country, thus seizing them from their rightful owners.

   
   
   As another example, how about the "Sympathy Deformed" article that I posted a couple of days ago:
   
   

   Nyerere wished the poor well; he was full of sympathy and good intentions. He thought that, being so uneducated, ignorant, and lacking in resources, the poor could not spare the time and energy—and were, in any case, unqualified—to make decisions for themselves. They were also lazy: Nyerere at one point complained about the millions of his fellow countrymen who spent half their time drinking, gossiping, and dancing (which suggested to me that their lives were not altogether intolerable).
   
   But Nyerere knew what to do for them. In 1967, he issued his famous Arusha Declaration, named for the town where he made it, committing Tanzania to socialism and vowing to end the exploitation of man by man that made some people rich and others poor. On this view of things, the greater accumulation of wealth, either by some individuals or by some nations, could be explained only by exploitation, a morally illicit process. The explanation for poverty was simple: some people or nations appropriated the natural wealth of mankind for themselves. It was therefore a necessary condition of improvement, as well as a form of restitution, that they no longer be allowed to do so and that their wealth be redistributed. So Tanzania nationalized the banks, appropriated commercial farms, took over all major industry, controlled prices, and put all export trade under the control of paragovernmental organizations.
   
   There followed the forced collectivization of the rural population—which is to say, the majority of the population—into Ujamaa villages. Ujamaa is Swahili for “extended family”; as Nyerere insisted, all men were brothers. By herding the people into collectivized villages, Nyerere thought, the government could provide services, such as schools and clinics. After all, rich countries had educated and healthy populations; was it not evident that if the Tanzanian people were educated and healthy, wealth would result? Besides, collectively the villagers could buy fertilizer, perhaps even tractors, which they never could have done as individuals (assuming, as Nyerere did, that without government action there would be no economic growth). Unfortunately, the people did not want to herd fraternally into villages; they wanted to stay put on their scattered ancestral lands. Several thousand were arrested and imprisoned.
   
   The predictable result of these efforts at preventing the exploitation of man by man was the collapse of production, pauperizing an already poor country. Tanzania went from being a significant exporter of agricultural produce to being utterly dependent on food imports, even for subsistence, in just a few years. Peasants who had once grown coffee and sold it to Indian merchants for soap, salt, and other goods uprooted their bushes and started growing meager amounts of corn for their own consumption. No reason existed for doing anything else because growers now had to sell their produce to paragovernmental procurement agencies, which paid them later, if at all, at derisory prices in a worthless currency that peasants called “pictures of Nyerere.”
   
   Nyerere blamed shortages of such commonplaces as soap and salt on speculators and exploiters, rather than on his own economic policies. He made the shortages the pretext for so-called crackdowns, often directed at Indian traders, which eventually drove them from the country. Nyerere’s policies were no more soundly based than those of Idi Amin, who drove out the Indians more brutally. Anti-Semitism, it has often been said, is the socialism of fools. I would put things another way: socialism is the anti-Semitism of intellectuals.

3. Posted by: goLookGoRead on 6/25/2010 7:45 AM
   
   Hi Nate
   
   From vague memories of my schooldays back in Spain, I thought that Venezuela's Nationalization of its own petrol industry, the PDVSA, was a success story for Venezuela. Nationalization happened under Juan Pablo Perez Alfonso in 1976 (before Chavez even became president of Venezuela).
   
   Venezuela was hit badly by the fall in the prize of crude oil during the mid 90s, which caused its currency to be devalued (an international crisis which also hit the UK). It was quite a political shock for Venezuela, because its entire economy depended on exporting petrol to America mostly. (Probably a similar type of dependency as we have here in the UK with our unhealthy dependency on the banking industry, too many eggs in one single basket sort of thing).
   
   Venezuela has been one of the few countries who secured an improvement from the contracts that were originally drafted by (and in) the US on how Venezuelan petrolium deposits should be exploited during 1918 to 1976. OPEC itself started life out as a special forum in Venezuela, with a Venezuelan politician as its secretary general at one time.
   
   Maybe it isn't just socialism by itself that can stifle a country's economy, but the innability to cope with a sudden change in the global economy?
   
4. Posted by: goLookGoRead on 6/25/2010 12:05 PM
   
   I've had to read up on Tanzania using Google:
   Tanganyika - A German colony 1885 to 1918
   Transferred to British military rule with the Treaty of Versailles 1919
   Former British colony. Independence in 1961 and member of the commonwealth of nations 1964.
   Julius Kambarage Nyerere - first president of a new republic called Tanzania 1964-1985
   received the Nehru award for International Understanding 1976
   He died in 1985, posthumously received the following honours:
   Lenin Peace Price 1987
   International Simon Bolivar Prize 1992
   Gandhi Peace Price 1995
   He also ousted Idi Amin from Uganda.
   October 2009, named World Hero of Social Justice (no idea who named him)
   I cannot dispute the facts that you have read about him, but clearly, he has received remarkable international recognition.
   
   Theodore Dalrymple, a physician, is a contributing editor of City Journal and the Dietrich Weismann Fellow at the Manhattan Institute. His latest book is The New Vichy Syndrome: Why European Intellectuals Surrender to Barbarism.
   http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/Manhattan_Institute
5. Posted by: goLookGoRead on 6/25/2010 12:24 PM
   
   "As I see it, the great hero of social justice, the one whose example can greatly help us all in our non-violent struggle for social justice is Julius Nyerere, the first Tanzanian president who helped lead all of Africa out of colonialism, and into a social and economic system that placed human beings rather than maximization of profit at the center of all economic endeavour."
   http://www.un.org/ga/president/63/statements/socialjustice100209.shtml
6. Posted by: Mark on 6/25/2010 1:01 PM
   

   "As I see it, the great hero of social justice, the one whose example can greatly help us all in our non-violent struggle for social justice is Julius Nyerere, the first Tanzanian president who helped lead all of Africa out of colonialism, and into a social and economic system that placed human beings rather than maximization of profit at the center of all economic endeavour."
   http://www.un.org/ga/president/63/statements/socialjustice100209.shtml

   
   
   To prove what you already believe, you hand pick a quote from a U.N. article (have slightly more respect for one of my own shits than I do for the U.N.), and article loaded with the arch-leftist term "Social Justice". I don't need you to show me that people who use that term like to bolster benevolent fascists who they hope will solve all their ills. I don't want someone's opinion of nyere I want the facts. Start with a reputable source:
   
   

   When in power, Nyerere implemented a socialist economic programme (announced in the Arusha Declaration), establishing close ties with China, and also introduced a policy of collectivisation in the country's agricultural system, known as Ujamaa or "familyhood."
   
   Although some of his policies can be characterised as socialist, Nyerere was first and foremost an African, and secondly a socialist. He was what is often called an African socialist. Nyerere had tremendous faith in rural African people and their traditional values and ways of life. He believed that life should be structured around the ujamaa, or extended family found in traditional Africa. He believed that in these traditional villages, the state of ujamaa had existed before the arrival of imperialists.
   
   He believed that Africans were already socialists and that all that they needed to do was return to their traditional mode of life and they would recapture it. This would be a true repudiation of capitalism, since his society would not rely on capitalism to exist. Unfortunately for Nyerere and Tanzania, this ujamaa system caused agricultural output to plummet. The deficit in cereal grains was more than 1 million tons between 1974 and 1977. Only loans and grants from the World Bank and the IMF in 1975 prevented Tanzania from going bankrupt. By 1979, ujamaa villages contained 90% of the rural population but only produced 5% of the national agricultural output.[18] Subsequently, the country fell on hard economic times which was excacerbated by a war against Idi Amin and the six year drought. Tanzania went from the largest exporter of agricultural products in Africa to the largest importer of agricultural products. Nyerere announced that he would retire after presidential elections in 1985, leaving the country to enter its free market era — as imposed by structural adjustment under the IMF and World bank — under the leadership of Ali Hassan Mwinyi.
   
   Nyerere was instrumental in putting both Ali Hassan Mwinyi and Benjamin Mkapa in power. He remained the chairman of Chama Cha Mapinduzi (ruling party) for five years following his presidency until 1990, and is still recognised as the Father of the Nation.

   
   
   Standard story. Dictator comes into power. Instigates socialism/fascism. Country spirals to death. Countyr is saved by free market capitalism.
   Your rejection of what I will call a law of human nature. That freedom works and socialism/fascism doesn't is not surprising when we consider what you previously wrote. Your complain about living in London, a situation you could resolve if you have the strength to do it, but you do nothing. You simply seek another person to solve your problems for you and this is why people like you support concepts like "Social Justice".
7. Posted by: Mark on 6/25/2010 1:03 PM
   
   Source for the above quote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Nyerere
8. Posted by: goLookGoRead on 6/25/2010 1:07 PM
   
   I've got side-tracked - it is the welfare system itself that I should focus on. I see now.
   There is a film called "Brassed Off", about a particular mining community during the early 1980s. How desperately sad the welfare system is in this country.
9. Posted by: Pankaj on 6/25/2010 2:43 PM
   
   Is someone really taking prizes awarded in the name of Nehru and Gandhi to be serious or good? Even more, A LENIN peace prize?!
   
   Do you - goLookGoRead, know how these prizes are actually awarded? Seriously, go look and this time and don't Read whatever it is you are reading - your press is most likely govt "regulated". You can pretty much blindly assume that these prizes are awarded to economically ignorant idiots and criminals who are better than others at seeking prizes. Nehru himself was an economic ignoramus who condemned a huge portion of humanity today to utter poverty and instituted a system of wealth and privilege to a tiny elite. Gandhi - though a wise and relatively honest man, was economically pessimistic and ignorant, probably because he had gotten caught in the winds of socialism aka economic insanity. And don't even get me started with Lenin.
   
   Do try and look beyond govt propaganda next time. Its hard - I know, because it completely surrounds folks who live in nationalistic societies including the so-called 'free world' - USA. Try harder. If you really want to read - go to mises.org and read.
10. Posted by: goLookGoRead on 6/25/2010 5:32 PM
    

    Your rejection of what I will call a law of human nature. That freedom works and socialism/fascism doesn't is not surprising when we consider what you previously wrote. Your complain about living in London, a situation you could resolve if you have the strength to do it, but you do nothing. You simply seek another person to solve your problems for you and this is why people like you support concepts like "Social Justice".

    
    
    Social Justice is a restriction imposed by governments on the freedom of capitalists to create wealth. I read about this in Ayn Rand's books. To be honest, I don't know whether all this stuff about freedom holds much weight with me, my freedom is relative to the amount of care I have to give to other members of my family, I have a towards duty to them too.
    
    Why should one New York political institution be any different from another? I don't have any trust for anything that the UN or the Manhattan Institute has to say about Nyerere, they're all liars anyway. Besides, Nyerere is dead now, and they were in cahoots with him when he was alive I suspect. Why give him such a honourary university degrees and medals and then call him a dictator after the fact?
11. Posted by: goLookGoRead on 6/25/2010 5:57 PM
    
    Pankaj - I refreshed my page and read your message after I posted mine. I am glad to reassure you that I am totally in agreement with you about our 'free world' press and our 'free world' governments. I shall certainly meander to misus.org. Thank you.
12. Posted by: Mark on 6/25/2010 9:43 PM
    

    Why give him such a honourary university degrees and medals and then call him a dictator after the fact?

    
    
    Because the intelligentsia is amazingly unwise. There was a lot of intellectual support for Hitler and the Stalin. Communism is still supported today in academia despite its track record of failure. They will support evil until it is proven absolutely to be evil and then pretend like they were against it all along.
13. Posted by: Pankaj on 6/25/2010 10:59 PM
    
    "Maybe it isn't just socialism by itself that can stifle a country's economy, but the innability to cope with a sudden change in the global economy?"
    
    Try this - tie a persons hands against his sides and push him face down to the ground. If he resists at any stage chop off his hands and maybe even his head. Do you think the person will cope with falls on his face with ease?
    
    This is what socialism does to an economy. The person who thinks of resisting the tying of his hands, and of putting forth his hands to break the fall TO SAVE HIS FACE - is the private property owner, the entreprenuer, the speculator. These people make profits out of forseeing the risk of a face-smash (maybe sell face guards to others who are willing to buy them). Ah, but how can we allow that horrible profit system to work? Its is "dehumanizing" and "puts profit maximizing before people"!
    
    Since, all people that can help and whose economic actions would help deal with the facesmash are vilianized and even criminalized in socialist systems, it would be a great surprise if a thoroughly socialist system retains its ability to cope with any change. (Note that the capitalists do what they do, at the risk of loosing THEIR accumulated wealth via losses, not on the pockets,shoulders and backs of "the country", and hence are far more honorable a group than socialists.)
    
    Yet there exist people who think that this phenomenon MAY not be the fault of socialism? Bravo! New levels of cognitive dissonance.
    
    Here is an oxy-moron - "non-violent struggle for social justice" apparently by the President of a country. Only people he took violent action against were - speculators, smugglers, horders, thieves, insurgents and tax-evaders, law breakers and anti-social(ist) elements.
14. Posted by: goLookGoRead on 6/26/2010 7:03 AM
    
    Thank you Pankaj you explained it very clearly and thank you for doing it so.
    
    I grew up to see American people and British people (my birth country is Britain) as corrupt and as currupting as their black market industries of transporting German Nazis to either North America or South America, they all frequented the same bars and clubs in my neighbourhoods) I have formed the opinion that these free world liberators were lining their pockets with dubbious money, which makes political correctness in Britain quite an insulting farce in my opinion.
    
    In my family we faught fascism - not so much as the intelligenzia, but as the relatives and friends of some of them, we were communists, and in a sense, we still believed we were the good guys and they were the bad guys. Naive of me perhaps, but I just wouldn't have equated me and mine as being the bad guys, and I am being sincere to you and to myself.
    
    Franco didn't have much trouble defeating us and treating us like you describe, and I do have first hand experience of the facesmash you describe, happening in southern Spain during the 60s and 70s, when I lived there, only that it was not in relation free capitalism and enterprise (there was plenty of that happening in southern Spain during Franco's time), but in relation to ordinary everyday life for me.
    
    I have gotten used to thinking of communism in terms of the sacrifice and the bravery of members of my own family who happened to have lost their war. The fascists were in cahoots with the Americans and the British, in southern Spain, throughout WWII and well into the 70s, prior to Franco's death. Thirty years later, they are still doing the same thing and in the same ways - in cahoots with their own old friendly enemies.
    
    It sounds like you are saying this to me: 'if the fortunes of the Spanish Civil war and of the communist republicans in Spain, had been reversed, they would have turned out to be just like Franco or even worse'. But I grew up in an enviroment where old friends and old enemies were associates together, fascists and foreigners enjoying their spoils of war in mutual support and respect.
    
    I admit that I do perhaps see the modern western free world using the lenses of my early childhood and communist upbringing in southern Spain. I think you have made me aware of another interesting dialemma.
15. Posted by: Pankaj on 6/26/2010 2:38 PM
    
    Well, at least you are honest about your feelings and sources of knowledge. I assure you as a former socialist (almost turned full commie at a time) that you will change your mind, if you read thru mises.org as long as you keep your mind open and your biases guarded. Now I am a trying to be a totally non-violent person with anarcho-libertarian anti-political leanings.
    
    They have excellent lectures on American history, some European history as well, lesson on economics in simple terms that everyone can understand. Once you go thru that, you will realize how wrong headed socialism/communism and fascism actually is and what damage it does to fellow human beings and society in general.
16. Posted by: Nate on 7/2/2010 4:02 PM
    

    Hi Nate
    
    From vague memories of my schooldays back in Spain, I thought that Venezuela's Nationalization of its own petrol industry, the PDVSA, was a success story for Venezuela. Nationalization happened under Juan Pablo Perez Alfonso in 1976 (before Chavez even became president of Venezuela).
    
    Venezuela was hit badly by the fall in the prize of crude oil during the mid 90s, which caused its currency to be devalued (an international crisis which also hit the UK). It was quite a political shock for Venezuela, because its entire economy depended on exporting petrol to America mostly. (Probably a similar type of dependency as we have here in the UK with our unhealthy dependency on the banking industry, too many eggs in one single basket sort of thing).
    
    Venezuela has been one of the few countries who secured an improvement from the contracts that were originally drafted by (and in) the US on how Venezuelan petrolium deposits should be exploited during 1918 to 1976. OPEC itself started life out as a special forum in Venezuela, with a Venezuelan politician as its secretary general at one time.
    
    Maybe it isn't just socialism by itself that can stifle a country's economy, but the innability to cope with a sudden change in the global economy?

    
    
    
    The immoral seizure of private property by the socialist regime of Venezuela is what killed the economy. Not the changes in commodity prices. As commodity prices, particularly oil, have been increasing – Venezuela has still been experiencing economic contraction. This is thanks to the ineptitude that is inherent to socialism.
    
    Oil rigs were seized from western oil companies, who rightfully owned them and paid for their construction, to be (poorly) managed and controlled by the Venezuelan state. Which is part of why socialism is evil; it takes away the fruits of peoples private efforts and distributes it to the cronies of the ruling political party as the scraps are shared around the general plebiscite of society. Look at Mikhail Khodorkovsky; rotting in a Russian prison so Putin could seize his assets for the state.
    
    Since these nations are unstable politically and do not recognise private ownership, what benefit is there to develop an asset that will be confiscated by the state?
    What killed Venezuela was the fall-out of their seizure of the rigs. Companies left, foreign investment fell.. Nobody wanted to do business with an unstable corrupt socialist hell-whole like Venezuela.
    
    As a Greek, I can tell you how inherently floored and evil socialism is.
    The near-bankruptcy of Greece is thanks to inept socialists who spend and spend under the faulty ideological notion that people inherently deserve certain privileges (even if the state can’t afford them). Greece, in trying to stick to this ideal – keeping the people happy, borrowed and borrowed and lied and lied. Now, thanks to Greece’s selfish and politically charged actions – Europe could face massive recession.
17. Posted by: Pankaj on 7/6/2010 3:51 PM
    
    Since this thread has cooled down here is a more detail economic and anti-political analysis of GoLookRead's comment
    
    "From vague memories of my schooldays back in Spain, I thought that Venezuela's Nationalization of its own petrol industry, the PDVSA, was a success story for Venezuela."
    A school child in Spain .. remembering whether petrol industry nationalization was a success story? Understanding that a school child thousands of miles away, unaware of business practices, profit/utility calculation remembers something as a "success story". Sounds reasonable? Nope. Sounds like indoctrination/propaganda.
    
    "Nationalization happened under Juan Pablo Perez Alfonso in 1976 (before Chavez even became president of Venezuela)." Okay - like all good propaganda, some seeming facts thrown in to make things more believable.
    
    "Venezuela was hit badly by the fall in the prize of crude oil during the mid 90s, which caused its currency to be devalued (an international crisis which also hit the UK)."
    Remember the hike in preceeding decade in the price of crude? Who benefited from it? Second question is - why is crude export by a private "US" industry linked to nationalized currency issued by Venezuelan govt? Sounds weird doesn't it.
    Here is some explanation behind what happened. When the exports of a nation increase in net value, the value of the currency rises. This happened to Venezuelan and pretty much every oil exporting country. However, Venezuelan govt devalued the currency by printing more and more "currency" to "stabilize" prices (note all these are euphemistic terms). In fact, the venezuelan govt skimmed the rise in its currency, thus preventing its subjects from benefiting in the rise of their purchasing power. To say it another way, the venezuelan govt stole purchasing power from its subjects before the 90s. When the price of crude crashed however, this racket left behind a trail of destruction in the perceived devaluation of the currency. It just took that long for the devaluation to hit the venezuelan people painfully enough for them to realize it was happening.
    
    "It was quite a political shock for Venezuela, because its entire economy depended on exporting petrol to America mostly. (Probably a similar type of dependency as we have here in the UK with our unhealthy dependency on the banking industry, too many eggs in one single basket sort of thing)."
    Actually Swiss too have a huge banking sector - but you never hear of them in any trouble like bankruptcy or in need of bailouts.. do you? The Gulf states are in crude too. They never needed to seize and nationalize foreign gas industries operating in their territory, apart from Iran that is (another stupid socialist can be credited for that fiasco).
    
    "Venezuela has been one of the few countries who secured an improvement from the contracts that were originally drafted by (and in) the US on how Venezuelan petrolium deposits should be exploited during 1918 to 1976. OPEC itself started life out as a special forum in Venezuela, with a Venezuelan politician as its secretary general at one time."
    OPEC is a international cartel of oil producers - and has become a glorious example of the inherent impossibility of successful cartelization, with members undercutting each other. Only a socialist or a fascist can be happy with such attempts to "unite" businesses.
    
    "Maybe it isn't just socialism by itself that can stifle a country's economy, but the innability to cope with a sudden change in the global economy?"
    I already explained why socialism prohibits the development of coping mechanisms with any change - its not surprising that it fails to deal with change, infact it would be surprising if a thoroughly socialist system is capable of dealing with any change at all.
18. Posted by: goLookGoRead on 7/7/2010 5:23 AM
    
    This sounds like the sort of thing that Ludwig Von Mises is saying in "The Free Market and Its Enemies" - particulary the section which I have read (p62) Money, Credit and the Business Cycle.
    
    I am not reassured that I should be any less frightened of the bankers or the government. I find them just as controlling and as the 'feared' centrally controlling alternative system. John Steinbeck "For Mice and Men" over again.
    
    Hard to understand how one can improve one's lot if one is an ordinary honest citizen that is adversely affected.
    
    We can visualize the economic forces, but we cannot drive the economic forces, because it is all too complex and chaotic. What a hopeless state I am existing in.
19. Posted by: Pankaj on 7/7/2010 7:09 PM
    
    "I am not reassured that I should be any less frightened of the bankers or the government. I find them just as controlling and as the 'feared' centrally controlling alternative system. John Steinbeck "For Mice and Men" over again."
    
    Do you understand what a tangent that is? Try reading Rothbard (who was Mises' best student, if you will) if you are not clear. Mises although a great economist was a classical liberal (i.e. did not engage in political theories much). I find the take of Rothbard's anarcho-capitalist take to be far better. Just to give you a taste - Rothbard had a good opinion of bank runs, because according to Rothbard, a bank run is essential to keep the banking power in check. He called it the free-market's way of checking bank credit expansion which is something quite destructive as experienced in US since 1913 and more severely since 2002.
    
    A centralized banking (ironically something that Marx and Friedman et.al trusted in) cartel under the govt is the anti-market provision by which banker grow their dominance over the affairs of others. Thus you would be wise to fear a govt-controlled/regulated banking system, especially if there is a central bank in existance and anti-bank-run govt guarantees.
    
    It is rumoured that Friedman gave up on central banking towards the end of his life - but that is pointless. It might be still hard for you to fathom that Mises was not a pro-banker economist (like Friedman) - but once you read his star disciple, you might change your mind.
    
    As to your hopeless state - Try understanding the theory of capital and interest, you will realize how to - "improve one's lot" (Keep in mind the Austrian economists talk of money (like "saving" etc.) almost always implying commodity money when you listen to their lectures). Once you do - your confusion and despair will be reigned in by forces of reason (it wont disappear, but at least you will be able to reason things out for yourself). The solution isn't instant and like all good things requires hard and smart work.
20. Posted by: goLookGoRead on 7/16/2010 1:46 PM
    
    Pankaj. Just to say that I have now worked my way through the first twelve chapters of "The Mystery of Banking" by Murray N. Rothbard, 2nd Ed., which can be downloaded for free at
    mises.org/books/mysteryofbanking.pdf - I have found it very interesting to read - I have now reached the chapters related to the United States, which I might just skim through.
    
    

    Actually Swiss too have a huge banking sector - but you never hear of them in any trouble like bankruptcy or in need of bailouts.. do you? The Gulf states are in crude too. They never needed to seize and nationalize foreign gas industries operating in their territory

    
    
    I think they have an awful lot of gold and diamonds and goodness knows what else deposited in their banks - perhaps that is helping their banking system greatly [and they benefit from exporting luxuries, i.e watches, diamonds to the world]. When the UK had plenty of North Sea Oil, the government of the day used it to bolster the economy through dreadful closures of whole sectors of production.
    
    To be honest, my knowledge of Venezuela is superficial, and I have never lived there, so could now ask a Venezuelan about their thoughts are of their own country.
    
    The book by Rothbard that I'm reading is about England, so it is just the type of history-revelation that I enjoy reading about. It is very educational, thank you for recommending Rothbard.
21. Posted by: Pankaj on 7/17/2010 1:01 AM
    
    You are welcome. Rothbard is far more fun to hear too in his lectures, some on youtube and others on mises.org
22. Posted by: goLookGoRead on 7/18/2010 12:56 PM
    
    Pankaj
    I would appreciate asking the odd question about what I'm reading. With @goLookGoRead Twitter and also a Google email account Are you by any chance on Twitter or the like?