Venezuela is out of food, out of medicine, and running out of gas

[SVPete]

Venezuela is out of food, out of medicine, and running out of gas
POSTED AT 9:21 PM ON MARCH 24, 2017 BY JOHN SEXTON

Ed wrote last week about the shortage of bread in Venezuela which led the country’s Vice President to announce spot checks on bakeries designed to ensure they weren’t doing anything illegal with their flour. If that sounds like a bad joke it is, but it’s also true. Bakers in Venezuela were even arrested for making brownies instead of price controlled loaves of bread.

It’s not just food that the country is running out of these days. The Associated Press reports President Maduro is now turning to the United Nations for help with medical supplies:
...
But even more embarrassing for the socialist state is the fact that the country with the largest proven oil reserves in the world is now running out of gasoline. From Bloomberg:

Venezuela's government tried to enslave farmers, and they stopped producing. Who'd athunk it?

Venezuela's government tried to enslave producers of consumer goods, and they stopped producing. Who'd athunk it?

Venezuela's government tried to enslave distributors of food and consumer goods, and their warehouses became bare. Who'd athunk it?

Venezuela's government tried to enslave doctors and pharmaceuticals distributors, and healthcare and pharmaceuticals became scare to the vanishing point (except for government higher-ups, of course). Who'd athunk it?

Venezuela's government tried to enslave oil producers, refiners, and distributors, and oil products became scarce and  Venezuela's oil export business tanked. Who'd athunk it?

The USSR, Maoist China, Cuba, Kim-ist NoKo, Ethiopia of the 1980s, and Zimbabwe have demonstrated,time after time after time after ... what happens when government takes over entire segments of an economy and enslave its creators and producers. That it would happen, again, in Venezuela should surprise, precisely, no one (no one honest and not willfully blind, at least!).

[thundley4]

I read something about a baker being arrested for making sweet rolls.

[Adam Wood]

I read something about a baker being arrested for making sweet rolls.

There have been several cases of that, actually.  The Maduro government likes to make "examples" out of people who do not appropriately revel in their state-imposed misery.

[sneakypete]

Maybe they could fry up a few of the unicorns they fly to work in that "Socialist Paradise"?

[HAPPY2BME]

Maybe they could fry up a few of the unicorns they fly to work in that "Socialist Paradise"?

==============================

Venezuela is oil rich and socialist poor.  There was a good reason the Russians abandoned socialism for capitalism.  Socialism provides abundance for a few and starves the masses.  It is the same approach Hillary would have launched had she been elected. 

[SVPete]

==============================

Venezuela is oil rich and socialist poor.  There was a good reason the Russians abandoned socialism for capitalism.  Socialism provides abundance for a few and starves the masses.  It is the same approach Hillary would have launched had she been elected.

Socialism builds on but runs into the ground what was developed before the socialist government came to power. And if there's little to build on, well: Cuba and NoKo; Vietnam and China before allowing large degrees of capitalism. Czarist Russia had worked for decades to develop their industrial and educational base. WW1 and the Russian Revolution came as all that development was coming to fruition. It took a couple of decades to run Russian agriculture into the ground, and several decades more to run Russian industry into the ground, but they did it. The USSR in its last couple of decades was reduced to depending on wheat sales from the US to feed its people and stealing technology from the west to keep its industry going.

[freedumb2003b]

Maybe they could fry up a few of the unicorns they fly to work in that "Socialist Paradise"?

They ate them all:

[HAPPY2BME]

Socialism builds on but runs into the ground what was developed before the socialist government came to power. And if there's little to build on, well: Cuba and NoKo; Vietnam and China before allowing large degrees of capitalism. Czarist Russia had worked for decades to develop their industrial and educational base. WW1 and the Russian Revolution came as all that development was coming to fruition. It took a couple of decades to run Russian agriculture into the ground, and several decades more to run Russian industry into the ground, but they did it. The USSR in its last couple of decades was reduced to depending on wheat sales from the US to feed its people and stealing technology from the west to keep its industry going.

==========================

How well did Henry Ford capitalism work in Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union?

By early 1930s, English-language schools for the children of Americans workers in Moscow, Leningrad, Stalingrad, Kharkov (site of a tractor factory), and Nizhni Novgorod (site of the Ford plant). p.30 In addition to the blueprints and machinery, Ford had sold 75,000 Model A assembly kits for $40 million (close to a billion of today's debauched greenbacks). At a Stalingrad tractor factory, a 23-year-old American earned $250 a month compared to $140 at Ford's in Detroit, along with rent-free housing, a maid, thirty days' vacation a year, and free passage to the USSR.

http://www.warbirdforum.com/foresake.htm