Venezuela: Should there be educational requirements for elected office?

[Athanasius68]

If you define socialism as state ownership of all the means of production then I agree that socialism doesn't work.

If the argument is one of poor management, why the blanket statement that state ownership of the means of production "doesnt work"?

 

[Athanasius68]

That's like me saying it makes no difference whether a capitalist nation is run by a capitalist bus driver vs a capitalist ideologue with a Masters or Ph.D. I hope you realize how absurd that is. There are basic management decisions that must be made regarding deficits and currency that have nothing to do with your ideology.

Two things:

1. A capitalist nation "run" by a "capitalist" bus driver would run it differently than a socialist nation run by a socialist bus driver. The same would be true for the two folks with the PHD. And this is because...

2. Socialism and capitalism are different. What is a "basic management" decision as per the capitalist views in a capitalist society is not necessarily a "basic management decision" according to the socialist views of a socialist society.

In other words, "bad management" in a socialist society is a result of adherence to a flawed system. A bus driving PHD will have no greater success in making a socialist run, than a high school dropout bus driver would.

 

[SonOfDaedalus]

Two things:

1. A capitalist nation "run" by a "capitalist" bus driver would run it differently than a socialist nation run by a socialist bus driver. The same would be true for the two folks with the PHD. And this is because...

2. Socialism and capitalism are different. What is a "basic management" decision as per the capitalist views in a capitalist society is not necessarily a "basic management decision" according to the socialist views of a socialist society.

In other words, "bad management" in a socialist society is a result of adherence to a flawed system. A bus driving PHD will have no greater success in making a socialist run, than a high school dropout bus driver would.

Chavez fired the heads of their state run oil company. The oil workers thought it was insanity and went on strike. Chavez doubled down on stupidity and fired 18,000 employees. The drain of knowledge and talent was a complete disaster.

That's bad management. It has nothing to do with socialism. A proper socialist would listen to the oil workers.

Chávez immediately fought back. During the strike, he axed scores of senior executives, including Juan Fernández, one of the organizers of the protest. In the months that followed, the pink slips kept coming, and by the time the smoke finally cleared, Chávez had fired more than 18,000 workers. With them went most of the managerial expertise and technical know-how PDVSA had managed to preserve during the earlier purges.

This evisceration of the PDVSA’s human capital would prove the most damaging of Chávez’s many moves against the company. Even his own government soon realized the harm it had done. Accidents and spills began to proliferate, and in 2005, a top energy ministry official admitted privately that it would take at least 15 years to rebuild the technical skills lost by the mass firings. Another energy ministry official even asked U.S. diplomats in Caracas to help arrange training in the United States. And in the years since, the situation has only worsened. Conditions at the company (and in the economy) are now so bad that employees take home a pittance — just a handful of dollars a month — and face political pressure to support the regime. Such treatment has led to the large-scale flight of skilled workers: more than 25,000 since last year, union officials say. According to Reuters, the exodus has grown so big that some PDVSA offices have begun refusing to let their workers resign.

“PDVSA was one of the best. They really knew how to operate,” said one executive at an international oil company with long experience in Venezuela. “The purge massively screwed them over, bled them of guys who knew what they were doing on so many levels. And they’ve never recovered.”

HOW VENEZUELA STRUCK IT POOR

It's a good article about how Venezuela's decline began. Later on there were other idiotic decisions by Maduro to make things even worse but it all started with Chavez's arrogance combined with ignorance.

Unfortunately for Venezuela, Chávez — like many of the people he appointed to run PDVSA — knew nothing about the business that was so central to the country’s prosperity. “He was ignorant about everything to do with oil, everything to do with geology, engineering, the economics of oil,” said Pedro Burelli, a former PDVSA board member who left the company when Chávez took power. “His was a completely encyclopedic ignorance.”

 

[Oozlefinch]

If Venezuela had looked at Norway (another oil rich country) and followed that example things would be much better. Norway invests most of it's oil profits in a giant sovereign fund that is collectively owned by all its citizens. That's definitely a more intelligent approach to collective ownership.

Of course, any comparison to Norway is a complete failure, since it is not a Socialist, Marxist or Communist country. It is a Constitutional Monarchy.

The failure of your argument is that no Socialist nation has ever succeeded, they have all failed. It does not matter if the "leaders" are bus drivers, illiterate peasants, or have multiple Doctorates. All have failed, and will fail.