Reply #7: "Pegging" the "entire economy" on oil was done long before Chavez.

[Peace Patriot]

You continue to turn things upside down.

Venezuela's oil was nationalized in the 1970s. And a succession of rightwing governments proceeded to create an economy that was entirely dependent on oil. They fostered a pampered, well-paid, import-dependent, urban oil elite, who would rip off some of the profits and control the government, while they gave away 90% of the country's oil profits to multi-national corporations. They failed to create other jobs. They were even importing machine parts for the oil industry! They did not use their wealth to create local manufacturing, or to provide bootstrapping for the vast poor majority. They completely neglected local farming, and their stupid, corrupt land reform programs did nothing to stop Venezuela from losing all food security.

This is the situation that Chavez faced in 1998--an entirely oil-dependent country, that had been run for decades by an entrenched, spoiled, traitorous oil elite.

He did not have a choice on whether to "peg" the economy to the price of oil. It was a given. That's all Venezuela had going out, was oil. And the logical thing to do, in that situation--which is what the Chavez government did do, and why it is so popular--was to increase Venezuela's share of the oil profits and to use the oil profits to start to build that infrastructure, those local manufacturing plants, those schools and retraining and literacy programs, and other forward-looking activities, that the rightwing had completely failed to do.

Please answer my questions: 1) What else should Venezuela's oil profits be used for, than what the Chavez government is using them for?, and 2) What could Chavez have done to un-peg the country's economy to the price of oil, while still answering the country's desperate need for creating a manufacturing capability and local/regional infrastructure, and insuring food, housing, education and jobs to the vast poor majority of the country?

Cuz I don't get it. How could he have un-pegged that economy, without getting strung up on a lamppole by angry mobs of starving people? That would have been "tyranny"! To gradually diversify the economy, and bootstrap its workforce with education and health care, using the oil profits, was the wisest, more reasonable, most common sense thing to do! I don't see any alternative. He did NOT "peg" the economy to the price of oil. It was already "pegged" long before he was elected.