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Little Tich

(6,171 posts)
Fri Jul 29, 2016, 11:13 PM Jul 2016

Venezuela calls for mandatory labor in farm sector

Source: CNBC

The government of Venezuela has issued a decree that "effectively amounts to forced labor" in an attempt to fix a spiraling food crisis, according to a new report from Amnesty International.

A Venezuelan ministry last week announced Resolution No. 9855, which calls for the establishment of a "transitory labor regime" in order to relaunch the agricultural and food sector. The decree says that the government must do what is "necessary to achieve strategic levels of self-sufficiency," and states that workers can be forcefully moved from their jobs to work in farm fields or elsewhere in the agricultural sector for periods of 60 days.

"Trying to tackle Venezuela's severe food shortages by forcing people to work the fields is like trying to fix a broken leg with a band aid," said Erika Guevara Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International, in a statement.

The law is vague in laying out exactly which workers can be forced to work in the farm sector, though it indicates that both public- and private-sector workers may be included. While working in food production, workers will be suspended from their regular jobs. They'll be allowed to return to their original jobs upon the completion of service.

Read more: http://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/29/venezuela-calls-for-mandatory-labor-in-farm-sector.html

36 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
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Venezuela calls for mandatory labor in farm sector (Original Post) Little Tich Jul 2016 OP
Just as Mao told the Chinese in 1969. LuckyLib Jul 2016 #1
Chairman Mao's Grandson-in-Law Buys 13.5% Stake in Sotheby's mahatmakanejeeves Jul 2016 #27
Post removed Post removed Jul 2016 #2
Guaranteed employment for all? brooklynite Jul 2016 #3
No stressing about where you're christx30 Jul 2016 #4
Opportunities for healthy exercise? brooklynite Jul 2016 #5
Ohhh, that's sarcasm. I wasn't too sure at first. PersonNumber503602 Jul 2016 #8
Farm livin' is the life for me? GulfCoast66 Jul 2016 #6
Bringing back slavery. Archae Jul 2016 #7
Well socialism Elmergantry Jul 2016 #9
As is pure capitalism. ChairmanAgnostic Jul 2016 #12
dont think so. Elmergantry Jul 2016 #13
Er, no. ChairmanAgnostic Jul 2016 #14
"Pure Capitalism" Elmergantry Jul 2016 #31
Going too far in either direction leads to problems. ChairmanAgnostic Jul 2016 #32
Hmm. That's not true MyNameGoesHere Jul 2016 #15
It was nowhere near as bad as it is now. Supermarkets were full, no interminable lines Bacchus4.0 Jul 2016 #16
When's the last time you were bused into the countryside Igel Jul 2016 #17
I studied in the USSR in 1976. ChairmanAgnostic Jul 2016 #18
Nothing like that in the US. Is there a particular Bacchus4.0 Jul 2016 #19
My point is PURE anything never works, ChairmanAgnostic Jul 2016 #20
I'm with you. Scruffy1 Jul 2016 #22
Why do you consider Venezuela to be "pure" socialism? Bacchus4.0 Jul 2016 #25
The USSR was a funny kind of socialism. Igel Jul 2016 #24
Lots of folks say the US is totally capitalist, but they dont understand how its not. 7962 Jul 2016 #28
No successful country practices pure capitalism. nt sufrommich Jul 2016 #23
Despite Chavez's propaganda Venezuela was never Socialist. Odin2005 Jul 2016 #36
Worked for Pol Pot, right? nt Codeine Jul 2016 #10
Holiday in Cambodia Throd Jul 2016 #30
Not nice molova Jul 2016 #11
We're always told to respect the elections christx30 Jul 2016 #21
Where are all the DUers that used to love Chávez/Maduro? SomethingNew Jul 2016 #26
Give 'em time....... 7962 Jul 2016 #29
Same thing will happen here post Trump's wall workinclasszero Jul 2016 #33
Disaster Socialism is a real thing just like Disaster Captialism nt geek tragedy Jul 2016 #34
This is North Korea level horrifying. Odin2005 Jul 2016 #35

mahatmakanejeeves

(56,896 posts)
27. Chairman Mao's Grandson-in-Law Buys 13.5% Stake in Sotheby's
Sat Jul 30, 2016, 01:10 PM
Jul 2016




Chairman Mao's Grandson-in-Law Buys 13.5% Stake in Sotheby's

So what am I supposed to do with all these copies of the Little Red Book?

Print headline this morning: "Mao's Kin Buys 13.5% Stake in Sotheby's"

China’s Taikang Life Insurance Takes 13.5% Stake in Sotheby’s

Taikang expresses interests in possibly nominating directors to Sotheby’s board

By Kelly Crow
Kelly.Crow@wsj.com
@KellyCrowWSJ

Updated July 28, 2016 12:02 a.m. ET

A Chinese life insurance company run by the grandson-in-law of Chairman Mao Zedong has bought a 13.5% stake in Sotheby’s, citing a “positive view” of the auction house as well as potential interest in a board seat.

Taikang Life Insurance Co., one of China’s biggest insurance companies, disclosed its stake Wednesday in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, a regulatory requirement for active investors who press for corporate change.

The move makes Taikang the largest shareholder of Sotheby’s, eclipsing stakes held by hedge-fund managers such as Third Point’s Dan Loeb, who owns 11.38%, and Point72 Asset Management’s Steven Cohen, who owns 5.5%.

Taikang is run by Chen Dongsheng, a businessman best known in art circles as an art collector who helped found China Guardian Auctions Co. Ltd., the country’s first government-run auction house specializing in Chinese antiques and calligraphy. Mr. Chen, who is in his late 50s, is married to Mao’s granddaughter, Kong Dongmei.

Response to Little Tich (Original post)

 

Elmergantry

(884 posts)
13. dont think so.
Sat Jul 30, 2016, 09:14 AM
Jul 2016

Capitalism built this great country. Socialism destroyed what capitalism built in Venezuela

ChairmanAgnostic

(28,017 posts)
14. Er, no.
Sat Jul 30, 2016, 09:17 AM
Jul 2016

We've had a mixed economy during the times of biggest and most widespread growth. Pure capitalism necessarily leads to economic slavery for 90% of the people. Always.

Read Capital, a pretty thorough and well written book that came out last year. Then you would not be saying things like you just did.

 

MyNameGoesHere

(7,638 posts)
15. Hmm. That's not true
Sat Jul 30, 2016, 09:25 AM
Jul 2016

Things are worse than when Americas exported capitalism and had poverty at 70% and the rich enjoying the benefits, but it didn't build shit. The poor were fucked under capitalism just like they are fucked now. Maduro has been a disaster and dropping oil prices didn't help cover his stupidity. But to imply Venezuela was a capitalist utopia before Chavez is just lying.

Bacchus4.0

(6,837 posts)
16. It was nowhere near as bad as it is now. Supermarkets were full, no interminable lines
Sat Jul 30, 2016, 09:36 AM
Jul 2016

crime was lower, no forced labor. The rich still enjoy the benefits of the government system rigged for them. Of course, many of the rich now are in the chavista government.

Igel

(35,196 posts)
17. When's the last time you were bused into the countryside
Sat Jul 30, 2016, 09:58 AM
Jul 2016

for the weekend as a condition of your employment to work for free on a state-owned farm to harvest potatoes?

Hey, last year an old fart from the current Russian communist party in the Duma said that they should revive the practice, sending city kids out to sovkhozes to dig potatoes. (There aren't really any more sovkhozes, but I think he just wanted the kids to muck in the dirt.)


Or when's the last time you sent your kids off to a summer camp for a month, at state expense, for the real purpose of providing free agricultural workers on state-run enterprises? (Even if that practice did produce an oddly good movie because of its campiness, Starci na chmelu, with it's great partially subversive song "Hops are our gold"

.)

ChairmanAgnostic

(28,017 posts)
18. I studied in the USSR in 1976.
Sat Jul 30, 2016, 10:34 AM
Jul 2016

I saw it live and in color. Posters of Lenin is with us on building walls, military vehicles coming out every other lunch hour just to parade their strength, being followed everywhere I went.

But, one ignores the perils of PURE and i stress P U R E , unbridled, unregulated, capitalism - the kind some of our billionaires inflicted on the USSR when it first became Mommy Russia. (Boy, did it do severe harm there, too. I saw that as well in the 1990s when I taught there)

Pure capitalism, without regulations, progressive taxes, worker's rights, product safety, food and drug regulation, safety and testing, investment in the arts and crafts, investments in public education, roads and bridges, sewers, energy, clean water -

YOU GET NONE OF THIS WITH PURE CAPITALISM. To think it appears magically, just because "capitalism" is to willfully take a position that is foolish, ignorant, and untenable.

ChairmanAgnostic

(28,017 posts)
20. My point is PURE anything never works,
Sat Jul 30, 2016, 11:20 AM
Jul 2016

be it pure socialism (Venezuela at the moment) or pure capitalism (Russia in the 1990s) does not work.

The only working robust, rewarding and protective system is a mixed system. Like ours, assuming the tea baggers don't shut down the government again.

Scruffy1

(3,239 posts)
22. I'm with you.
Sat Jul 30, 2016, 12:04 PM
Jul 2016

holding up Venezuela as an example of anything is absurd. Venezuela had great economic disparity for a very long time and still had it under Chavez. the small moneyed elite is still there. They have had all their eggs in the oil basket for a long time and will suffer the results of not diversifying their economy. Price controls are unworkable in Venezuela and simply lead to a shortage of goods. but that does not mean that they are always unworkable. The United States instituted price controls during WWII and it was fairly successful. but they had John Kenneth Galbraith to run it and did not have a porous border problem. The problem is when ideology trumps reason rather it be free markets or state capitalism.

Igel

(35,196 posts)
24. The USSR was a funny kind of socialism.
Sat Jul 30, 2016, 12:09 PM
Jul 2016

Instead of devolving everything downward, it centralized to state capitalism.

The people were the party, but the party was the leaders. If the people disagreed with the leaders, they disagreed with themselves.

It's worth remembering that the USSR oficially wanted to remake the citizenry according to an ideological template.

Lockean capitalism has a bunch of implicit assumptions as to public morality and how social relations were structured. Remove that morality and things fall to pieces. Even democracy as envisioned by the founders was like this--it assumed a certain amount of social capital and civic morality.

 

7962

(11,841 posts)
28. Lots of folks say the US is totally capitalist, but they dont understand how its not.
Sat Jul 30, 2016, 02:00 PM
Jul 2016

Just like many people like to point at Nordic countries and say "See, Socialism works!". But those countries arent PURE Socialist either; they have many capitalist ideals at work.

Odin2005

(53,521 posts)
36. Despite Chavez's propaganda Venezuela was never Socialist.
Sun Jul 31, 2016, 08:29 PM
Jul 2016

Chavez was a populist nationalist strongman who used socialist and anti-colonialist rhetoric to maintain support.

Calling socialism "slavery" is the sort of nonsense appropriate for Freeperland, not here.

christx30

(6,241 posts)
21. We're always told to respect the elections
Sat Jul 30, 2016, 11:56 AM
Jul 2016

of countries like this. Well, this is what the people voted for every time they voted for Maduro.

SomethingNew

(279 posts)
26. Where are all the DUers that used to love Chávez/Maduro?
Sat Jul 30, 2016, 12:56 PM
Jul 2016

I thought all their problems were caused by the US? At least that's what I've been told here. I guess even the defenders of horrible dictators can't defend slavery.

 

workinclasszero

(28,270 posts)
33. Same thing will happen here post Trump's wall
Sun Jul 31, 2016, 06:26 PM
Jul 2016

And the deportation of millions of farm workers and others.

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