(Sung to the tune of the music hall song "What're we goin to do wif Uncle Arthur")

I've just listened to an hour of discussion on the question and I'm no wiser.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03vny34
That, as usual, is a bit of an exaggeration.

The program roughly divides into three segments: 1. the condition of Venezuela right now - a shambles 2. how did it get there -  divided opinion 3. what needs to be done to resolve its problems - divided opinion again.

I didn't know this, that Venezuela has the biggest proven oil reserves in the world (?). And clearly other big oil producing countries have gone through boom-bust cycles as the price fluctuated but haven't ended in the same catastrophe that Venezuela has.

I am inclined to agree with the economist on the panel - well more than inclined to be honest - that there are economic laws that can't be defied permanently, just like the law of gravity (on earth anyway).
And clearly Bolivarian economics as practised by Chavez & now Maduro tried to do just that with the result we see.
Market forces must be allowed to work. They can be regulated to an extent. If they are over-regulated that will be counter-productive. If they are totally defied, chaos will ensue.
The Chavez govt eventually tried to nationalise everything. What production there was was squeezed out or dried up. When the oil price fell, or even before, collapse set in.

Now the Maduro govt blames the US and its allies for the country's troubles. He is now suggesting that the US is about to invade.
Can anybody seriously imagine Obama would contemplate doing that? It's a measure of the madness that infects these people.

How are their problems to be resolved? Nothing in the shops, no drugs in the hospitals, crime rampant to the extent that everybody shuts themselves up at 6pm, business gone away or bankrupted.
There's some Irishman on the panel. He admits he's not an economist, I don't know what he is, probably a political scientist. His solution is the govt must consult the local communes & the poor people. The economist points out these people would have no idea what's necessary to rebuild the economy.

I can only imagine that some painful process of restarting market forces, as in Russia, will have to be gone through. But in Latin America, with military coups & revolutions, will such a process be allowed to happen. There's always foreign aid of course.
Oh and apparently it's going to get worse because the country is about to default on debt payments.

Yet another socialist success story, nothing to see here folks.  , the real mystery is why Marla didn't pack her bags and get on down there to enjoy the socialist paradise while the going was good, the good being about the time between the socialist paradise being declared and one hour later  , I guess thats a small window of opportunity 

Better to stay home and sh!t in your own nest hey Marla   

Socialism is Revenge of the Id!ots, when Chavez took over he made sure that every full bore f@ckin id!ot that ever graced the shores of Venezuela would be put in charge of something important 

Just another socialist utopia, it is what is envisioned by the greens and labor during their party get togethers.


Total control by the government and a ready made scape goat when they fkk it u due to incompetence.

Maybe Bernie Sanders or Hillary could sort their problems out.

Dear Socialists of America: Let’s Chat About Venezuela
Jun. 4, 2016 8:01am   

Mary Ramirez -The Blaze

. . . .If an order of McDonald’s fries costs you the USD equivalent of $126 (oh and by the way, that’s 9 percent of your monthly wages), youuuuuu might be living in a socialist country.

If your local state-run grocery store shelves are stocked with the same couple of items (when they’re stocked at all), youuuuuu might be living in a socialist country.

If your president ordered a 30 percent minimum wage increase (the 33rd hike in 17 years) and yet “minimum wage is now only about 20 percent of the cost of feeding a family of five,” youuuuuu might be living in a socialist country.

If what it once cost you to buy breakfast, lunch and dinner now barely gets you breakfast, youuuuuu might be living in a socialist country.

If you wait in line for hours for “a couple of little bags of flour or some butter,” youuuuuu might be living in a socialist country.

If government regulations force prices of food down, but 700+ percent inflation makes it nearly impossible to buy it, youuuuuu might be living in a socialist country.

If the government takes over grocery stores for having supposedly “squirreled away food to stoke public exasperation over widespread shortages,” youuuuuu might be living in a socialist country.

If you can only go to grocery stores on certain days and ONLY with a government-issued ID, youuuuuu might be living in a socialist country.

If your government threatens “to take over idle factories and jail their owners” because they’re being supposedly “paralyzed by the bourgeoisie,” youuuuuu might be living in a socialist country.

If the government has imposed rolling electricity blackouts and the little food you have sits spoiling in a powerless refrigerator (unless of course, you’re a government official living in Caracas), youuuuuu might be living in a socialist country.

If you “routinely skip one meal per day and increasingly rely on starches to make up for proteins that are too expensive or simply unavailable,” youuuuuu might be living in a socialist country.

If you’re eating dogs, cats and garbage to survive, youuuuuu might be living in a socialist country.

If your government now only works two days a week, youuuuuu might be living in a socialist country.

If you’re ambushing and looting grocery trucks on the highway, youuuuuu might be living in a socialist country.

If being the editor of a newspaper investigating government corruption gets you thrown in jail,  youuuuuu might be living in a socialist country.

If it’s nearly impossible to leave your country because of your government’s stringent currency controls, youuuuuu might be living in a socialist country.

Listen, all Foxworthy-esque joking aside, this is serious stuff.

We’re talking about a country sitting on the world’s largest oil reserves, and yet it is literally “almost too poor to afford inflation.” Translation: they can barely pay to print more money.

Venezuela (even with the global drop in oil prices) should be better than fine. It should be exceptional.

And yet today, Venezuela is gone. It has spiraled into a hellhole of violence, unimaginable poverty and government oppression.

Why?

Because the Venezuelan government, like so many before them, bought into the lie of socialism. Before my socialist friends point a finger, no, it’s not because of falling oil prices; even triple digit oil prices weren’t enough to pay for Venezuela’s wild redistributive spending spree.

They bought into the lie (or took advantage of it) that government can deal with economic problems with more government. They bought into the lie (or took advantage of it) that the government can orchestrate success.

To the 47 percent of Americans in this country who say they’d vote for a socialist:

What exactly did Venezuela do wrong? No really, what precisely went wrong?

What part of their top-down, government-run collectivism sounds any different that the socialism that Bernie Sanders and every other American socialist peddles?

Didn’t Venezuela’s current leadership (and decades’ worth of leadership before them) follow Karl Marx’s redistributive principles to a T?
So what gives?

I’ll leave you with a final thought:

If Venezuela’s socialist leader Nicolas Maduro praises would-be socialist leader Bernie Sanders as “an emerging candidate with a restorative and revolutionary message,” youuuuuu might want to rethink your worldview.

     

John Smith wrote on Jun 5^th, 2016 at 11:30am:




Yeah, straight after we sell you to the circus.

John Smith wrote on Jun 5^th, 2016 at 12:16pm:




You'd make Bozo the clown look serious.