I never thought I would read an article in the
Washington Post that condemned centralized economies.
Most of these rags are infested with unrepentant Marxist. I guess the Venezuelan nightmare has awakened some in the mainstream media. Here is an excerpt from Matt O’Brien’s
article:
Venezuela
is stuck in a doom loop that's become a death spiral.
Its stores are empty, its people are
starving, and its government is to blame. It has tried to repeal the law of
supply and demand, and, in the process, eliminated any incentive for businesses
to actually sell things. The result is that the country with the largest oil
reserves in the world now has to resort to forced labor just to try to
feed itself.
It gives new meaning to the
revolution devouring its own.
How has it come
to this? Well, Venezuela was always going to have a tough time when oil prices
fell from $110 to $40 like they did the past two years. That's because it
doesn't have an economy so much as an oil exporting business that subsidizes
everything by making up 95 percent of the country's total trade
revenue. Even then, though, the oil crash has hurt it much more than
any other petrostate. To take one example, the International Monetary Fund
estimates that Russia's economy will "only" shrink 1.8 percent this
year compared to 10
percent for Venezuela. That's the difference between a
run-of-the-mill recession and a complete collapse.
And it's entirely man-made. The easiest
way to think about this is as a four-stage cycle of doom that begins with
inflation, continues to price controls, then shortages, and finally
nationalizations. Here's how it works, or rather doesn't.
Mr. O’Brien enumerates the cause and
effects of a controlled economy. What is
happening in Venezuela is not new which brings us to the old adage: Those who
don’t learn from history are condemned to repeat it. Unfortunately for America, we have a
political party that romanticizes the Great Depression and is dedicated to a
Chavista-esque revolution.
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