Chavez Wows Economic Fundamentalists In London

THEY HAD A grand old-time revival last week in London. Pastor “Red Ken” Livinstone had Venezuelan pastor Hugo Chávez in town for a rousing witness to the faithful. Said host Livingstone to the assembled faithful, according to Richard Beeston in the London Times:

“Those who a decade ago said that socialism was dead, see it now very much alive in Venezuela,” Mr Livingstone said, adding that the march against capitalism was now too strong for America to resist.

“When they predicted the death of socialism they could not have predicted what was to come,” he said. “It is not that socialism failed, it is that socialism has not come.”

Yep. Those economic fundamentalists certainly have a way with words. Here’s George Anthony, a retired engineer:

“I think Chávez is doing a great job for the people of Venezuela,” he said. “He is showing that socialism works in Latin America and the rest of the world.”

But Edward Lucas, in an address during Christian Aid Week, had another take.

Christian Aid Week is rightly a time for warmheartedness. But that is no excuse for softheadedness. It is sloppy thinking, for example, to believe poverty in one place is caused by wealth in another.
...
Hernando de Soto, the Peruvian economist, has shown convincingly how abuse of property rights by the powerful and corrupt prevents subsistence farmers and shantytown dwellers from getting on to the first rung of the wealth-creating ladder. No property rights mean no collateral for loans, no mobility and no investment.

That still eludes much of the anti-poverty lobby.

Shall I go on?

Without enforceable contracts, the rich and powerful are free to plunder the poor and weak. Debts are uncollectable; assets unprotectable.

Commentators have been remarking for some years about the decline of property rights under the Bolivarian Revolution of Hugo Chávez.

[T]ragically, anti-poverty campaigners in the West have allowed themselves to be conned by the protectionist arguments of rich people in poor countries. The protection of corrupt, incompetent and uncompetitive producers and providers of goods and services in poor countries levies yet another tax on the weakest.

And of course the most corrupt, incompetent and uncompetitive producers can be found in thug oil regimes from Saudi Arabia to Iran to Venezuela.

Meanwhile the thug dictator Chávez today

will be the guest of honour at City Hall, visit the House of Commons and deliver a speech in Whitehall before departing for Libya to meet his fellow revolutionary, Colonel Gaddafi.

And when the thug regime of Bolivarian socialism collapses in misery and violence will Pastor Red Ken and his followers still be saying that socialism has not been tried?

Sphere: Related Content |

Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

Comments:

Posted by: Big Red in ya face! on 05/15/06 7:49am

lol, That was funny.. I like that sarcastic take, the creamy white oligarch character is played pretty well. Sloppy thinking, lmao. I shall direct you to gregpalast.com You can simply write the contrary of whatever he says, that will work well for further inspiration. Looks like you don\'t believe in democracy, watch out or Patriot act will label you as a terrorist.

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