{"id":1000,"date":"2007-05-24T19:09:25","date_gmt":"2007-05-24T17:09:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.larshvidberg.dk\/blog\/?p=1024"},"modified":"2007-05-24T19:09:25","modified_gmt":"2007-05-24T17:09:25","slug":"why-hugo-chavez-was-necessary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.whiteberg.dk\/?p=1000","title":{"rendered":"Why Hugo Chavez was a necessity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We hopefully soon will get rid off. Kevin Grier at Marginal Revolution on why <a href=\"http:\/\/www.marginalrevolution.com\/marginalrevolution\/2007\/05\/what_danny_glov.html\">Hugo Chavez was the result of poor governance<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In a kind of a weird back-door way, I also support Hugo Chavez. Or put another way, and going a little Hegelian, as Tyler likes to say, I think Chavez is an historical necessity, and a richly deserved one at that.<\/p>\n<p>Venezuela has relatively high levels of income inequality (a gini coefficient in 2000 of around .44 compared to .36 for the US according to the UN) from a relatively low base and was run by a corrupt elite class who swallowed up oil wealth while the economic standing of the country plummeted. In 1957, Venezuela&#8217;s GDP per capita was 51% of the US, in 2003 it stood at 18.5% of the US. Existing institutions had no credibility with a very large portion of the population and simply could not continue to exist as they had.<\/p>\n<p>Don&#8217;t get me wrong here, I&#8217;m NOT endorsing Hugo. Do I think that Chavez and his policies are going to serve the long term economic interests of Venezuela? NO. Do I think Chavez is a charming guy? NO. Would I be sad if Chavez lost power? NO. If George Bush and Chavez were in a burning building and I could only save one would it be Chavez? NO.<\/p>\n<p>I am just saying that Venezuela was run into the ground by its ruling class and Chavez is the (I hope only temporary) result of their short sighted, poor governance.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The same goes for Evo Morales of Bolivia. Interesting thoughts, and probably true for most of Latin America as well. But that&#8217;s no reason not to critizise Chavez for his increasingly dictatorial pretensions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We hopefully soon will get rid off. Kevin Grier at Marginal Revolution on why Hugo Chavez was the result of poor governance: In a kind of a weird back-door way, I also support Hugo Chavez. Or put another way, and going a little Hegelian, as Tyler likes to say, I think Chavez is an historical &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.whiteberg.dk\/?p=1000\" class=\"more-link\">L\u00e6s mere <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Why Hugo Chavez was a necessity<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[66,322],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whiteberg.dk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1000"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whiteberg.dk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whiteberg.dk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whiteberg.dk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whiteberg.dk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.whiteberg.dk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1000\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whiteberg.dk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whiteberg.dk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whiteberg.dk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}