The fundamental issue is fairly simple. Chavez was pushing a sort of ethnic nationalism for the mestizo majority. But his supporters just didn't have the technical skills to run an advanced economy.<p>Instead of trying to fix that his government kept appointing people with degrees in Marxist Studies. Bad decisions were chronically made and the country decayed.<p>The infrastructure will continue to decay unless the voters find technocrats they trust. Eventually buildings are going to start collapsing.
Two things:<p>1) In this piece, Joel Hirst makes a reference to Ayn Rand as though she had something relevant to say about Venezuela, civilization, or for that matter, anything. That alone raises a red flag for me. He's declaring himself on the side of the Objectivists. Who is John Galt? The embodiment of selfishness and much of what is wrong with capitalism.<p>2) Joel Hirst is a "Fellow in Human Freedom" at the George W. Bush Presidential Center. <a href="http://www.bushcenter.org/people/joel-hirst.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.bushcenter.org/people/joel-hirst.html</a> I'm not sure there is a single title in America that denotes greater intellectual fraudulence or moral bankruptcy than that. You can trace a straight line from Kissinger, the Argentine Junta and Reagan's Contras down to George W. Bush and his fellows in human freedom. So Joel is firmly on the side of oppression in Latin America. Remember that when you read his fairly shallow analogy between Venezuela and fallen civilizations.<p>I do not support Chavez or his politics, but I do recognize that America and US allies have presented very few palatable choices to the peoples of Latin America, and the Joel Hirsts of the world will not save the Amazonian peasants with their visions of John Galt.
Shortages are the natural result of price controls.<p>If someone asked me what Venezuela should do, I would say "get rid of price controls and stop the inflation." The inflation would be a little painful because it would mean the government would have to stop printing money to pay its bills, but the pain will continue to deepen until they fix the economics.
Does anyone else see parallels between what's happening there and some of the housing development in SF/ democratic cities? Of course, the rest of our economy doesn't have these price controls, so we're doing fine. What scares me, is the lack of basic economic education in the US, and what that means for the future of the US. There's a lot we can learn from what's happening in Venezuela.
Dunno if it's suicide so much as being killed by Chavez / Maduro. If they could just get someone mainstream who understands economics to at least a passing high school exams level then things could turn around.
Some of the main issues are:<p>Driving out professionals and putting cronies in to run infrastructure. People who don't care about "capital equipment maintenance" and things get run into the ground.<p>Political oppression.<p>Controlled economy, setting prices which create black markets.<p>Over reliance and lack of contingency planning vis a vis petroleum prices.<p>Overreliance on being "anti-imperialists" to be the antidote to their ills.<p>Etc, etc.
If you are interested in possible bias and the background of the author, he worked for USAID from 2004 to 2010 first in Venezuela then in Uganda, before he was a humanitarian relief worker with World Vision and Food for the Hungry:<p><a href="http://www.cfr.org/staff/b16446" rel="nofollow">http://www.cfr.org/staff/b16446</a>
I sometimes feel that Lord Vetinari (Patrician of Ankh Morpork, Discworld) got governance right, thought I often find myself yearning for "things to improve".<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Vetinari#Vetinari.27s_golden_rule" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Vetinari#Vetinari.27s_gol...</a>
I don't find this tragic, or suicide. Tragedy requires some kind of eventual catharsis or recovery. Suicide is intentionally causing your own death.<p>This is neither. This is the slow rot that comes from not being able to take care of yourself, like a mentally disabled person, except it's an entire nation. They can't fix it and they can't stop it. And there's no recovery to be had.<p>What lessons can we learn from the leadership of the country over the past 18 years?<p>One, maybe don't trust someone who tries to take over the government by force, rather than by popular decree. Two, maybe don't have unlimited presidential terms or rule-by-decree. Three, maybe don't try to force economic, industrial or social change. Fourth, maybe don't let your country's leadership be best friends with countries that have terrible human rights violation records, and especially if they kick Human Rights Watch out of the country and are constantly criticized by other organizations. Fifth, maybe it's time to revert controversial social and economic policies if your country actually stops producing crime data (and it's not because the crime rate is so low). And sixth, though this is controversial, it would be nice to have a national constitution that puts safeguards in place that will root out institutional corruption by the coordination of an organization which isn't appointed by an executive.<p>I don't know much about politics, though, so take that with a grain of salt.
And this from the country with more proven oil reserves that's any other - including Saudi Arabia.<p><a href="http://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-world-s-largest-oil-reserves-by-country.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-world-s-largest-oil-r...</a>
When Barack Obama told students in Argentina "Capitalism and Socialism are about the same" -- the part that is true is:<p>- in Socialism, there is an Elite group who get special rewards and at the very top, the money from the country's resources (Kim in N. Korea; Chavez; and Maduro, who recently sent hundreds of millions of gold out of the country to 'pay the country's debts')<p>- in Capitalism, there is an elite at the top who get special rewards<p>There are 3 kinds of people who want Socialism:<p>1) those in the citizenry who want the elite to share the money more, and manage the country so that it produces benefits more equally;<p>2) those in the elite who want the perks that come at the top of society and want to force the wealthy to spend their wealth on helping everyone<p>3) those in the elite who <i>know</i> Socialism fails but there's plenty of time to loot the country before that happens<p>In capitalism, the elite don't lie to you and say "we're doing this all for you." It's understood that if you add value (like Facebook, Tesla, Google) you get handsomely rich.<p>In socialism, at least part of the elite know damn well that the removal of incentives in Socialism (redistribution of wealth) will eventually cause an economic crash, and they lie to the population "this will all work!" to get the votes to redistribute wealth.<p>Meanwhile, they have time to ship gold out of the country.<p>The crux is there will ALWAYS be a jealousy-inspiring Elite. This is true in Communism, Socialism, and Capitalism.<p>When Barack Obama said ‘There’s Little Difference Between Communism and Capitalism. Just choose from what works' to an audience of Argentinian youth a few weeks ago, he may have been referring to this issue.<p>No system will result in equally shared wealth. Those at the top will do anything to retain their perks.<p>In Communism, the leadership kills those who threaten the leadership.<p>In Socialism, the leadership jails those posing serious threats to leadership.<p>In Capitalist democracies, we have mind-bending, emotionally-charged elections, and peaceful transfer of power.
“The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”<p>-- Margaret Thatcher<p>In this case, they managed to run even out of petro-money. Takes some skill.
The description towards the end is horrifying and quite frankly, it scares me. In my country (India), we have a population which is very diverse. Maybe because of that reason we have not proved vulnerable to such kind of single-minded stupidity. The impact is constrained to a state and/or time-period. This also ensures that even good ideas do not gain much traction, so we continue in this limbo of poverty and growth, sprawling malls and garbage on the streets, farmer suicides and billion dollar unicorns.
"This is what people will say in a hundred years, a thousand years about Caracas, Venezuela"<p>I don't think so. Will people disappear? Where to?<p>They'll mostly stay and figure out how to live. People are good at that.
No mention of the harsh sanctions against Venezuela. I wonder why? Perhaps because the conclusion without so much ignorance would have been: death by lost economic war against aggressive capitalist countries.