Wasting your time and your pearls here Tristan.

Those that don't like the intellectual challenge, of for them, an unwinnable debate, or a few new novel ideas, like runner, mindlessly inform the world they know naught about any of those political systems or advocates.

But label all they disagree with on self-evident idealogical grounds, as lefties, leaners, Marxist, socialist or communist. And in so doing, inform the world, they are empty idealogical vessels, intellectually unable to mount a credible argument for their political, broken record rhetoric.

Tax avoidance and actual rates as received by treasury remain largely unchanged. I remember a proud boost from Alan Bond and before we'd won America's cup from the yanks, that he'd gotten his company's tax bill as paid in actual dollars, to just 13 cents in the dollar.

We have a demonstrably unfair, two-tiered tax system that massively favours high-income earners and the current government wants to tilt it further in their and most politicians favour!

Hard to critique a policy, without placing a countervailing policy paradigm on the table. Which is what I have done and in the interest of genuine welfare improvements and substantial economic improvement for the entire nation!

Just by actually adjusting the burden so our tax avoiding international guests finally cannot escape as they do now and I believe somewhere north of 60 billion per!

Some might argue, that we cannot do much better economically or in terms of real reform and social justice. I just don't happen to be one of them just very tired of talking to intellectually arrogant folk with tin ears and foregone conclusions on everything!
Alan B.

Tristan,
Venezuela isn't in a bad way because of foreign intervention but because the socialists who are in power are terrible economic managers.

That isn't because of socialism; their predecessors were also quite bad economic managers. Nor is it because of their rampant cronyism, which should make them worth opposing no matter what you think of socialism.

The main source of the problem is their managed exchange rate. Even when the price of oil (their main export) halved, they kept the Bolivar pegged to the US dollar, preventing them from exporting their way out of trouble. But they didn't have the resources to keep its actual value at its official value, so its actual value has collapsed.

you're aware there are very harsh sanctions, right?

Cooperative capitalism as Co-ops were the only, free market, private enterprise business model that mostly survived the great depression largely intact!

Extreme exploitive capitalism needs to engage in tax avoidance/other multitudinous malfeasance to grow the profit curve!

The economic miracle that was war-torn post-war Japan, created its economic miracle/recovery to become the second largest economy for a time, was by the planned implementation of cooperative capitalism, social unity/social credit!?

Could we ever unite well enough via inescapable self-interest? To do that here?

Some years ago now, a reported Brazilian entrepreneurial industrialist was facing ruination due to the Macivallian mechanisation of his wife, her lover/some bankers, as they sort to take over the enterprise he'd built.

He beat them/their banking friends by gifting a controlling share to his most loyal/experienced employees, creating in the process a virtual employee-owned co-op. Then used an ATM to entrench/legalise the changes?

The end result? Went from the brink of bankruptcy to become one of the most successful manufacturing enterprises in Brazil. With the former head honcho now touring the world following the golf tournaments of champions, his passion. The Co-op pays far higher wages created a creche and a housing co-op for the employees.

Former owner, worth more now as a junior partner, with far greater wealth than anything he had when it was a traditional, top-down commercial enterprise.

As I look around the world I see most of the so-called economic miracles and Tiger economies used variants of cooperative capitalism for their often astonishing turn-a-rounds.

Albeit, often opposed by entrenched Communists and extreme Capitalists alike, because it was for them and their vastly less egalitarian business models, a virtual death knell. Something we need to consider here while we have a country and an economy that is still ours!

Socialism may well be more egalitarian but imposes the deadbeats and the drones, higher taxes and costs on the more productive members of the community. I have an, even swap, emigration plan for all the latter, where they can reside with their parasitic kind!
Alan B.

Tristan,
I'm aware that the Venezuelan government claim them to be very harsh, but looking at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_sanctions_during_the_Venezuelan_crisis those claims seem quite dubious. Most of those sanctions (all of them until quite recently) are targeted not at the country, but at certain people associated with the Maduro government.

The more recent sanctions imposed by the Trump administration would be very harsh if they were part of a concerted international effort. But as trade with countries other than the USA is unaffected, they're easily evaded thus their effect is very limited.

Sanctions make a convenient scapegoat for Maduro, but it's not credible to claim they're the cause of the problem. Venezuela's hyperinflation predates them!

Correction: I should've written "easily avoided" rather than "easily evaded".
I'm not saying such deals are continuing illegally; I'm saying they don't need to.