{"id":369347,"date":"2019-01-27T15:34:08","date_gmt":"2019-01-27T15:34:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wncen.com\/?p=369347"},"modified":"2019-01-27T15:34:54","modified_gmt":"2019-01-27T15:34:54","slug":"naval-killer-app-of-crypto-is-socialism-venezuela-is-a-prime-example","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wncen.com\/news\/naval-killer-app-of-crypto-is-socialism-venezuela-is-a-prime-example\/","title":{"rendered":"Naval: Killer App of Crypto is Socialism, Venezuela is a Prime Example"},"content":{"rendered":"
The killer application of crypto is socialism, said Naval Ravikant.<\/p>\n
https:\/\/twitter.com\/naval\/status\/82889984<\/p>\n
The prominent entrepreneur, who co-founded AngelList, a website dedicated to matching startups with investors, emphasized the use case of crypto at a time when socialism is failing in Venezuela. However, he didn’t specifically mention the country.<\/p>\n
Every sensible witness agrees that Venezuela, which is sitting atop the world’s largest oil reserves<\/a>, has turned into a humanitarian disaster. Former president Hugo Chavez and its “Fifth Republic Movement” overtook the nation with the dissolution of social democratic parties and movements. He hijacked the political language through a discourse that established the idea of “people” and “anti-people.”<\/p>\n Chavez and his allies were able to enforce Scandinavian social-democracy whereby economic and social policies intervene to promote social justice within the framework of a capitalist economy and liberal democracy. The results were confident in the early days. Venezuela achieved an impressive Human Development Index, offered free education, and used government resources to tackle poverty.<\/p>\n But the good things could not sustain. People supported the idea of confiscation of economy’s strategic areas such as telecom, electricity, and oil. Things started to move in the opposite direction when the Chavez government also began expropriating other regions, including valves, paper, rice, meat, fruit juice, hotels, coffee, etc. The policy didn’t go well while catering to\u00a0a dynamic, global market. The cases of top-level corruption surged thanks to an increase in favoritism inside the government. Meanwhile, a faltering economy led to the birth of black markets. It reduced people’s dependency on the local Bolivar as they started acquiring dollars to settle cross border deals.<\/p>\n When oil prices plummeted, the chips went down for Venezuela whose overspending had already created an economic deficit. They responded by printing more Bolivar currency, leading to inflation, which further led to price controls, and then to shortages. Protests followed. Repression ensued. A democracy destroyed.<\/p>\n What Venezuela got, in the end, is hyperinflation, scarcity of goods, despair, and hunger.<\/p>\n Naval proposed crypto as a solution to the failure of Marxist-based economies. But whether or not a cryptocurrency would be centralized or state-backed (like Petro), he didn’t specify.\u00a0A follower later decrypted Naval’s one-line tweet, which the celebrated entrepreneur endorsed openly.<\/p>\nBreaking Free<\/h2>\n