You Probably Didn’t Hear that Venezuela Was Again Ranked the Happiest Country in South America

[Socialistlemur]

34. Nevertheless Venezuela isn't sustainable

I read Mr Maduro returned from The people's republic of China, the emerging fascist bastion where ruthless capitalism is the norm. Apparently he signed many agreements and managed to get another $5 billion USD loan.

Under the current management the Venezuela economy has become almost totally dependent on oil exports, and the rest of the economy is a disaster. This is caused by what is termed Dutch disease.

Today due to the enormous imbalances and excessive printing of worthless currency Venezuela has over 40 % inflation. Price controls have created shortages, and a draconian foreign exchange control system causes endless difficulties for importers. And in a country where very little is produced, imports are king. The combination causes extreme shortages.

Thus far I'm limiting myself to discuss the basic economic forces which are making Venezuela look like such a disaster.

But it gets worse. Venezuela lives from oil. Oil which is increasingly heavy. This means it has too much carbon. It causes global warming. And there's going to be a huge battle to force these oil producers to keep their oil underground. Which means Venezuela sure doesn't look very sustainable to me.

Now lets talk about happiness...as it turns out the statistics used for that report are old. They date when the moves were made to make people happy so Chavez and then Maduro would get elected. Populist policies can work for a while, but they fail if there's no efficiency, honesty and hard work behind them. And that's not exactly what Chavez was about.

So, it seems to me there is a lot of confusion about Venezuela's reality. They are in debt, they have high inflation, a lot of crime, food shortages, and plan to live off a substance many around the world think should not be produced because it causes CO2 emissions which will drive up sea level and ruin humanity. Do you think the Venezuelans will be happy people when the world turns against hydrocarbons and they don't know what else to do, and have nothing else to sell? This sure doesn't sound sustainable to me. And happy? They are going to be mighty miserable as far as I can see.