Venezuela on the Verge of Collapse
“We’re hungry and tired.”
Most people can do without certain luxuries and conveniences for a significant amount of time. Temporary power and internet outages due to storms are common in many parts of America and people get through it.
Food on the other hand, is a different story. As any student of history can tell you, when people can’t find food things get ugly pretty fast.
Venezuela is quickly entering that danger zone. Reuters reports:
‘We want food!’, Venezuelans cry at protest near presidency
Venezuelan security forces fired teargas at protesters chanting “We want food!” near Caracas’ presidential palace on Thursday, the latest street violence in the crisis-hit OPEC nation.
Hundreds of angry Venezuelans heading toward Miraflores palace in downtown Caracas were met by National Guard troops and police who blocked a major road.
President Nicolas Maduro, under intense pressure over a worsening economic crisis in the South American nation of 30 million, had been scheduled to address a rally of indigenous groups nearby around the same time.
The protest spilled out of long lines at shops in the area, witnesses said, after some people tried to hijack a food truck.
“I’ve been here since eight in the morning. There’s no more food in the shops and supermarkets,” one woman told pro-opposition broadcaster Vivoplay.
“We’re hungry and tired.”
The government accused opposition politicians of inciting the chaos but said security forces had the situation under control.
Despite their country having the world’s biggest oil reserves, Venezuelans are suffering severe shortages of consumer goods ranging from milk to flour, soaring prices and a shrinking economy.
This was the top story last night on Special Report with Bret Baier. It’s pointed out that President Maduro’s core supporters are Venezuela’s poorest people. If he loses them, he’s in big trouble.
The popularity of Bernie Sanders on the American left has thrown a spotlight on Socialism throughout the primary process. What’s happening in Venezuela should be a teaching moment.
The Daily Signal reports:
Venezuela’s Crisis Is the Latest Example of Why Socialism Doesn’t Work
Venezuela’s current tragedy, simultaneously culminating in food shortages, a crime epidemic, and an energy collapse, is the latest example of why centralized planning economy does not work—and how it is indistinguishable from tyranny.
In the South American country, even the most basic services and products are becoming inaccessible as a result cronyism, interventionism, and a controlled prices policy. The government now works only two days a week in order to diminish the constant electricity blackouts. The inflation rate is the highest in the world: it is expected to be at 720 percent by the end of 2016.
Yes, you can still go to McDonalds in Venezuela—but you have to be willing to spend more than $130 for that side of french fries. And you’ll have to enjoy those $130 fries without a Coke—since the company suspended its production in the country due to a lack of sugar.
Feel the burn has a whole different meaning in the context of hunger.
Featured image via YouTube.
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Comments
Food shortages was a major contributor to the demise of the Soviet Union. The state controlled media says it was Reagan’s military buildup was the main cause. Don’t believe that. As per usual, the left has turned a blind eye to the problem and is in denial about it. Watch as the campaign gets into the final weeks and days, the left will blame Donald Trump for the mess in Venezuela, when the brown stuff hits the rotary device.
“The inflation rate is the highest in the world: it is expected to be at 720 percent by the end of 2016.”
This is a very big accomplishment. Abe, Draghi and Janet Yellen have been trying to get inflation above 2 percent for years. Trillions have been printed via QE, NIRP, ZIRP, bond buying, all to no avail. Here we have a backwater, two bit socialist doing something only these central bankers can dream of.
Hey Bernie, what do you think of Venezuela now?
LEÓN KRAUZE, UNIVISION: I am sure that you know about this topic: various leftist governments, especially the populists, are in serious trouble in Latin America. The socialist model in Venezuela has the country near collapse. Argentina, also Brazil, how do you explain that failure?
BERNIE SANDERS, DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE: You are asking me questions…
LEÓN KRAUZE, UNIVISION: I am sure you’re interested in that.
BERNIE SANDERS, DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE: I am very interested, but right now I’m running for President of the United States.
LEÓN KRAUZE, UNIVISION: So you don’t have an opinion about the crisis in Venezuela?
BERNIE SANDERS, DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE: Of course I have an opinion, but as I said, I’m focused on my campaign.
Saw a video that was showing all the “gun free” areas.
Apparently gunz be bad to socialists for some reason…..(sarcasm off).
Shouldn’t be hard. The stock excuse for dismissing bad examples should work fine. “You can’t possibly call [bad example here] real socialism.” In other words, it will work right when I do it.
And in the case of Venezuela, he’d probably be at least partially right. Endemic corruption, in league with ordinary garden-variety government incompetence, may be more at fault than fluctuations in the price of oil. Although certainly socialist controls would make it harder to fix the problems which are the proximate causes of this collapse.
They ran out of toilet paper months ago… surely they #FeelTheBern by now.
I spoke this week to a young lady who fled Venezuela just over a year ago. She said people are leaving that country by the thousands and that the situation is much worse than reported by the media.
I’m sure Michael Moore isn’t going hungry tonight. Well, I guess any night really.
I feel sorry for the 40-45% of Venezuelans who never voted for this crap. The rest? You voted for these Communist scum, well, cruel as it sounds, they deserve your fate.
The idiots who voted for these scum will either starve to death, die in a hospital for lack of medicine, or be gunned down in the streets by the very government they supported.
Let it be a lesson to those who think Marxism is the answer — if those idiots are even capable of learning a lesson.
Even if you have good intentions and want to do good, you can’t achieve good results. And make no mistake, a centrally planned and executed economy can not operate without using evil means; coercion at the point of a gun.
Although after centuries of failure it is impossible that anyone who still believes in socialism has good intentions. The only reason anyone would still advocate socialism is to get your hands on those evil means; the state monopoly on lethal force. That’s why you always see the greatest inequality of wealth in socialist countries. North Korea, for instance, where the elite drive Mercedes Benzes and eat imported caviar and drink French cognac while the peasantry are reduced to making soup out of grass and bark. Or Venezuela where Chavez’s daughters, Maduro, and other key members of the junta are billionaires and millionaires while the ordinary citizen is rioting for food.
I wouldn’t be so sure that Venezuela is on the brink of collapse. The next step is the gulag, or the total control zones as they’re known in North Korea, where “enemies” of the people and three generations of their family are sent to die.
Socialism always ends with the gulag, sooner or later.
As I’ve said many times, my laptop, Skynet, has become self-aware. The first sentence of my previous should have read:
“Even if you have good intentions and want to do good, you can’t achieve good results using evil means.”