Here’s a video of the food riots that Gary is talking about.
A majority of the voters of Venezuela are thieves. They have tried to vote themselves prosperity through the welfare state.
This preference for theft by the ballot box has now blown up in their faces.
Good.
To imagine that theft produces any other result is to imagine that (1) dishonesty is the best policy, (2) thieves win in the long run, and (3) private property is theft.
Venezuelans elected and re-elected the long-winded socialist Hugo Chavez. Chavez was a tin-horn dictator whose role model — rhetorically and ideologically — was Fidel Castro. He loved to give three-hour speeches. He loved to hear himself talk.
After Chavez died of cancer, Venezuelans voted for his hand-picked successor, a former bus driver. Maduro carries on Chavez’s policies.
Chavez’s state took oil income and created massive bureaucracies, where his political cronies prospered. He let some of this money trickle down to the voters, who re-elected him four times.
Venezuela was Cuba with oil income. But now oil revenues are down. The free market is crippled. Maduro has now doubled down on welfare state tyranny. The government confiscates vital resources, such as food. Food shortages are universal. The government rations it.
The worse the economy gets, the more Maduro’s government tightens the screws. It’s the grab-bag of welfare state policies: price controls, food rationing, calls for citizens to cut back on consumption, and tirades against unnamed enemies.
Via Gary North