Venezuela system killing Christmas

Published 7:39 pm Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Well this is jolly. According to the Associated Press, “Venezuela is stepping up efforts to combat shortages and rising prices so families can have a Merry Christmas complete with 12-cent sacks of sugar and 50-cent chickens.”

Seriously, how have 50-cent chickens not made it into any Christmas songs yet?

But shortages in Venezuela are a serious business — and the government is to blame. It’s price controls and central planning, not the Ebenezer Scrooge of free market capitalism, that’s to blame.

But the Venezuelan government won’t admit this.

“President Nicolas Maduro announced Friday that he is deploying hundreds of inspectors to enforce the government’s price regulations, which set the cost of everything from milk to toothbrushes artificially low,” AP explains. “The move is part of expanded effort to combat chronic shortages, smuggling and runaway inflation that are putting great stress on consumers in the socialist Latin American country.”

Here’s the real issue: Why can’t Venezuela, an oil-rich country even richer in fertile farmland and lush tropical climes, feed itself?

The answer is socialism. Socialism fails, always and everywhere it is tried. There’s not a single example of a successful socialist system.

Don’t get us wrong. Socialism is a great idea.

How wonderful this world would be, if each person contributed what he could, and took only what he needed.

But we don’t live in that world. We live in the real world, in which people want to be rewarded for their work, or else they won’t do it. Socialism denies one fundamental flaw in human nature that people are, for lack of a better term, selfish. If their reward is guaranteed, they’ll only work as hard as they have to. Plus, they’re greedy. They’ll take whatever they can.

People also are fallible. Like socialism, planned economies always fail because of planners. The result always is disappointing, so much so that every socialist government has had to result to shooting or jailing its opposition.

In Venezuela, it’s illegal for journalists to cover demonstrations against the government. And it’s illegal for them to write or speak about the failed economy.

For those Venezuelans who can’t buy food, much of this discussion is academic. All they have are the promises of the government.

“Today we deploy, and in November and December you will see that we have guaranteed a happy Christmas for the people,” Maduro said last week during televised remarks.

The enforcement team sounds quite merry, indeed.

“The new inspection team will be responsible for verifying that prices remain below government-issued caps at supermarkets as well as at stores selling shoes, toys, appliances and hardware, among other goods,” AP reports. “Maduro promised to be ‘relentless’ in tracking down and punishing violators.”

Caracas Chamber of Commerce head Victor Maldonado knows these measures won’t work.

“There is a huge crisis of confidence in Venezuela,” he told the AP. The business sector “doesn’t trust the government’s economic policies or its ability to resolve problems. Experience tells us that with measures like these, you’re left with empty shelves, little to no supplies, and closed businesses.”

That’s Christmas under socialism.