[February 01, 2015] Socialism is a system of government that has repeatedly shown itself to be prone to failure unless very specific conditions exist that finance its ability to operate. Venezuela is such a socialist nation that relies heavily upon oil production to fund itself, rather than upon the hard work of its people and efficient, fair governance.
Over the past few years, there has been limited reporting of the street violence, corruption, crime, and government inefficiency – mostly from reporters out of Europe. This is unexpected since Venezuela is in South America … and yet the American press generally ignores what’s going on there. Some argue that the media in the United States and socialistic governments are cousins of the same tribe and therefore the U.S. media is unwilling to make Venezuela appear to be less than ideal.
The Venezuelan government, led by President Maduro, established controls that allowed the economy to deteriorate. The president permitted the extensive use of price controls and rationing of commodities. In conjunction with printing money without value, inflation has soared. Furthermore, its dependence on oil exports has risen to 95 percent of its economy and slumping oil prices have created a problem.
Such action is emblematic of socialist governments. The Venezuelan president blames “profit hungry businessmen” for the problems.1 What is also known about the Venezuelan government is that it allows its military to support drug traffickers who are running large-scale cocaine transportation networks. Nearly the entire economy is dependent on oil and also on these drug deals.
With both the economic problems and increasing crime, the citizens of Venezuela have become frustrated and many have taken to the streets in protest. New information out of the country tells us that many of those protestors were killed by the police and military; authorized by the government for “safety” reasons.
Venezuela is in a death spiral and has been for some time. The question is whether their government will take responsible economic reform, reduce corruption, and get crime under control, or whether the whole system will collapse.
For additional information on Venezuela, I wrote in theLeaderMaker.com blog about how it has become the classic failed socialist state (see links here and here).
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[1] http://www.euronews.com/2014/02/13/venezuela-s-woes-economy-tanks-as-crime-soars/