Looks like communism has worked its magic once again. From a prospering and stable nation to a virtually failed state in 10 years. Another notch on the belt for the Marxists. They're proud of themselves I'm sure. https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/clear-sign-most-miserable-country-135736317.html I wonder what the security situation will mean for us once this country collapses completely, which won't be long now.
How long have they been saying the same about North Korea? Oil $$$ can buy a very powerful police force to keep the citizenry in line.
Marxism is the management. And anyone with another solution will be punished. Useful idiots fail to see the lesson here. As oil dropped and conditions worsened in a free capitalist society there would have opportunities to fix it and profit. In the socialist/Marxist society only the chance to say you wrong and get demoted from pig, something they have to avoid.
My DiL is from Ve (now a legal US citizen, thank God)....The place is a shambles. I was there in 2008. We had an armed driver way back then to drive us around. What sucks is that it is a beautiful place. The people (at least the ones we met) were normal folks. The hotel we stayed at was in a Caracas mall. Every door into the mall had a shotgun toting guard. This is not going to end well. There are too many subsistance people who have lived on the dole ever since Chavez took over.
North Korea has been under the boot heel of the regime for well over half a century and are completely isolated from the outside world. Venezuela was a normal country that was overtaken by commies, their people still travel freely and have access to the outside world. They're in no way comparable other than by virtue of being totalitarian states. The place is about to implode. The best we can all hope for is an effective coup d'etat. The future? Well Chavez and his butt buddies spent almost 20 years systematically destroying most of Venezuela's institutions, it's going to be a hard road for them. The stats are insane. Mortality for infants under 1 year was 0.02% in 2002, and jumped to 2% by 2012. Hospitals don't even have electricity, doctors don't even have surgical gloves. They're basically at a mid 18th century level or care or worse. God damn. If the state collapses completely I would expect some sort of US military intervention.
I was there 25 years ago and traveled around. Loved it. Visited an island off shore that had tried to secede unsuccessfully. There were a lot of guns..we got mugged. There was a ton of drink driving. our hotel had been rebuilt next to the original..they left the original standing and it was full of artillery and bullet holes. It was a blast. Id do the entire trip again if it could be the same. Great food, cheap beer and great people.
They have a national park on the Caribean....It's a uniform 5 ft deep with about a hundred islands. We would get boated out to an island with coolers of beer and food..just swim and drink and have a good time. Vendors would wade the "lagoon" and sell stuff like Ice cream or jewelry....It was very cool. On the down side it reminded me of 1950 Americas....trash everywhere. Absolutely no regard for what they had. Sad story I'm afraid.
LOL, it sounds like, in your youth, you were one of those kind of young men that would creep up behind a bull buffalo in Yellowstone, kick him in the ass and run like hell.
