RE: Meat And Sugar Shortages In Venezuela
I believe Hugo Chavez has all the hall marks of the autocratic dictator. He has recently persauded the legislature to convey to him absolute power to rule by Diktat -- his word IS the law. It will not end prettily.
The citizens of Venezuela are experiencing the enexorable laws of economics playing out. Exclude the ability to make profits, and human motivation to produce vanishes as does the desired product. Price controls almost always are a mistake, not saying in every possible situation. One point of issue is that human beings are generally not smart enough to understand everything. A free market will quickly expose where human understanding failed, and human behavior will adopt quickly and correct the imbalance, for example not enough milk produced so the price of milk soars and production increases to cash in on the profit.
I'm not saying capitalism is perfect. There are some failings of capitalism too. But we do not have pure unadulterated capitalism in the US anyway. One of the failings of capitalism that I wish could be corrected -- and I don't know what the correction is -- is that it seems that a few actors in the chain of production can horde all the surplus wealth generated and many necessary, productive workers get squeezed to nearly a subsistence level. To state my complaint another way, it used to be that "a rising tide raises all boats" so when the economy did well, the workers did well. This does not appear to be prevailing at present. Speaking for myself, and I know others opinions vary on this topic, this is a weakness of capitalism and does incline those who are cut out of he action to be attracted to other economic systems -- including socialism.
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