Nicomedes Zuloaga Mosquera

Criticism of representative democracy from a liberal perspective, 1958-1998

Abstract

Nicomedes Zuloaga Mosquera recognizes that representative democracy worked at the political level. However, he harshly questions the economic performance of the regime. Zuloaga Mosquera analyzes the Venezuelan economy from the sixties onwards and the first criticism he makes is that economic growth was lower than the decade of 1948-1958. He criticizes the exaggerated increase in bureaucracy, public spending and the businessman-state that owns companies that are always losing money. He attacks the policy of “Post-import substitution industrialization.” The government entity must protect nascent industries in a moderate manner, but then must allow them to develop in the sense of competing in the international market so that the country obtains hard currencies other than those obtained from oil exploitation. Doing the opposite, practicing exaggerated protectionism, is detrimental to a healthy economy and consumers. Zuloaga Mosquera denounces excessive statism, among other reasons, because a huge State is a danger to freedom. Supports the personalization of voting and decentralization and the building of an efficient State. The exhaustion of greenhouse industrialization, oil rentism and corrupt and inefficient management of resources from hydrocarbon exploitation and the failure to carry out political reforms led to economic collapse and the loss of the democratic system.