We already know many of the problems of Venezuela. The socialism has caused power reliability issues, despite being a major oil producer. They are having food riots, can’t keep toilet paper on the shelves, and no one even produces beer anymore. This is all being run by strong-arm authoritarians, who crack down on the media and any dissent by the citizens. Then there’s this
Dying Infants and No Medicine: Inside Venezuela’s Failing Hospitals
By morning, three newborns were already dead.
The day had begun with the usual hazards: chronic shortages of antibiotics, intravenous solutions, even food. Then a blackout swept over the city, shutting down the respirators in the maternity ward.
Doctors kept ailing infants alive by pumping air into their lungs by hand for hours. By nightfall, four more newborns had died.
“The death of a baby is our daily bread,†said Dr. Osleidy Camejo, a surgeon in the nation’s capital, Caracas, referring to the toll from Venezuela’s collapsing hospitals.
The economic crisis in this country has exploded into a public health emergency, claiming the lives of untold numbers of Venezuelans. It is just part of a larger unraveling here that has become so severe it has prompted President Nicolás Maduro to impose a state of emergency and has raised fears of a government collapse.
The word “socialism” doesn’t appear within the article, but, the NY Times does note
The crisis is aggravated by a political feud between Venezuela’s leftists, who control the presidency, and their rivals in congress. The president’s opponents declared a humanitarian crisis in January, and this month passed a law that would allow Venezuela to accept international aid to prop up the health care system.
So, you have those on the political “right” (they aren’t that right) who want to help the country, and those on the left who reject the help, and want to control. It’s a long, long, long article on the utter failure of left-wing politics.
But things are still great there for the 1%!!
And it would be the Chavez family who are the 1%ers in Venezuela! Socialism has always worked well for the people with guns; for everybody else, not so much.
Socialism is just Fascism with better PR.
A harder question is “When has socialism NOT led to starvation and economic collapse?”.
Perhaps East Germany. Because, Germans. But even their welfare was dependant on black markets, foreign welfare, and privileged access to foreign currency because their own was worthless. So there is your benchmark of socialism, the Socialist Unity Party of Germany.
But Bernie will make Socialism work where everyone else has failed. He’s the man with the plan. He figured it all out on his hippie commune and validated it on his honeymoon in the USSR.
Check out whats going on in Brazil right now. Another Socialist country on the verge of collapse. They are quite literally building bridges and railroads to NOWHERE because they believed the money would never stop from OIL……until it fell from 100 dollars to 30 dollars per bbl.
I have been all over the world traveling the back country roads of socialist and communist countries for decades…..If only our children could see the reality of what life is like in these countries….If only.
Margaret Thatcher noted the problem for Venezuela: the country ran out of other people’s money! Oil fell from over $100/bbl to under $30/bbl, for higher quality crude, and Venezuela’s “heavy” sour oil was bringing in only $18/bbl. They weren’t importing enough of other people’s money!
But the drop in oil prices simply exposed the problems inherent in socialism: those problems were already manifesting themselves in 2013, when Hugo Chavez died, in shortages and high — though at least still only double-digit — inflation. Once the prop of high oil prices vanished, the Venezuelan economy went straight into the toilet, with no toilet paper available to wipe the country’s stinking ass.
[…] disgusting beds, shortages of medication, people dying – it’s heartbreaking. Of course, as William Teach pointed out, the article doesn’t really mention how this is a socialist system. The closest it comes to […]