The economic disintegration of Venezuela is a powerful example how socialism fails. Even in a nation with massive oil wealth.
This video from Reason tells the tragic story.
I think long-run data is especially valuable when assessing a nation’s economic performance.
And Venezuela definitely looks terrible when looking at decades of data on per-capita economic output.
Especially when compared to a pro-market nations such as Chile.
Not that we should be surprised. This is what we find anytime capitalist-oriented counties are compared with statism-oriented countries.
And there are many other case studies.
But let’s re-focus on the problems of Venezuela. In one of her Wall Street Journal columns, Mary Anastasia O’Grady analyzes the government-caused crisis. She starts by describing what happened.
Efforts to guarantee outcomes are at odds with what it means to live in a free society where equality under the law is the guiding principle. …Hugo Chávez…promised to make everyone in his country equally well-off. The concept sold in a nation that believed it was infinitely rich because it was swimming in oil. …stick it to the haves. When he did, they packed their bags and left. …it is the flight of the knowledge worker that has done the most harm to the nation. …The Bolivarian revolution’s earliest large-scale assault on know-how came during a lockout at the monopoly oil company Petróleos de Venezuela (PdVSA) in December 2002. …the regime used it to purge at least 18,000 PdVSA and related-company employees, gutting the industry of most of its experienced personnel. By replacing fired workers with political loyalists, Chávez believed he was protecting his golden goose. …In 2009 the regime expropriated Venezuelan companies that served the oil industry.
And she concludes by describing the consequences.
as long as oil prices were high, the costs of such recklessness was hidden. The party ended when prices tanked in 2014, government revenues dropped precipitously, and central bank money-printing led to a mega-devaluation of the bolivar. …another wave of oil engineers—this time led by a younger generation—went abroad to work. In the years that followed, more oil technicians threw in the towel on life in Venezuela. This vicious circle of declining revenue and human-capital flight has brought the once-mighty Venezuelan petroleum powerhouse to a standstill.
In other words, exactly as depicted in the video at the start of this column.
No wonder Venezuelans are eating their pets.
Or joining gangs simply as a strategy to get food.
The bottom line is that socialism doesn’t work. Even in a country that has massive reserves of oil.
Sooner or later, the attempt to achieve coerced equality will mean that too many people are on the dole and too few people are producing. Which brings to mind Margaret Thatcher’s famous observation.
P.S. The New York Times actually wrote a big story about Venezuela’s collapse and somehow never mentioned socialism.
P.P.S. Here are four other videos about the impact of socialism in Venezuela.
P.P.P.S. The situation has become so dire that even some socialists are disavowing Venezuela.
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Image credit: ZiaLater | CC BY-SA 3.0.
