There are many countries that produce oil extraction equipment and Venezuela is free to trade with all of them. Venezuela’s problem is that Chavez’s cronies Drove out the people who knew how to run the oil industry, then looted it for personal profit, and by simple incompetence ran it into the ground for more profits while refusing to maintain the infrastructure. Just because the USA won’t trade with a country doesn’t mean other countries won’t as well.
More often the strong members of the tribe got the choice pickings and the old or weak got what little the strong didn’t want. THAT is what socialism is. The lives of hunter-gatherers were nasty, brutish and short.
“From each according to his ability and to each according to his need”. Is the basic concept of both communism and socialism, neither will work with human beings because the ones willing to work eventually tire of support those not willing to work and stop working.
That’s the communist mantra, but in the history of the world, communist states have never even attempted to deliver. They always turn into nasty dictatorships. By its very nature government wants to control and the type of people attracted to government positions will never relinquish their power. On the contrary, they work very hard every day to expand it.
You are talking about a “Star Trek universe” where anything desired and be produced at no cost or effort by a universal replicator and all needs and wants are easily fulfilled.
Our constitution was a contract between thirteen independent states to allow them to exist together. That’s why the Bill of Rights was required before most states would ratify the constitution.
Neither the theoretical construct of socialism nor of capitalism has ever "worked" as a pure ideological system.
You must live in a place like NYC that grew up around mass transit. You are the only person I’ve ever heard say they have a “great public transport” system. People use them, but from what Ive seen they are crowded, smelly and uncomfortable. How do you transport multiple bags of groceries home? How do you transport anything large or heavy that you buy? The answer is that you don’t. You shop every day, or every second day for groceries and pay through the nose for deliveries for large or heavy things. Amazon is a godsend for people like you. When you go anywhere you have to transfer to multiple trains or buses which waste time.
The knee-jerk proclamations of ideological simpletons aside, they'll just have to endure such popular programmes as Social Security and Medicare.
That's just plain wrong. Of course pure capitalism works. The purer it is, the better it works. Of course, it doesn't provide all the goodies you want free of charge, but that wouldn't be capitalism.
I have accurately noted that all the most advanced nations on earth are democratic, pragmatic blends of capitalism and socialism.
Yes, I agree. There's no need for government to do any of that.
It is in our federal Constitution. Besides, I completely disagree with you. The general Government can easily scale to any requirement when necessary. In this case, however, supply could mean general revenue for the general Government.
