February 11, 2007
RATS...THEY WERE SO SURE SOCIALISM WOULD WORK THIS TIME...:
Inflation, food scarcity roil Venezuela: Economists say the government is overreaching in controlling prices, fueling a black market (Chris Kraul, February 11, 2007, LA Times)
Police swooped down last week on a grimy central market district, forced open a warehouse and seized 7 tons of a white substance. It wasn't cocaine. The contraband was sugar, and the seizure of at least 184 tons nationwide showed how President Hugo Chavez's efforts to remake the economy are fraying at the edges.The bust near the Quinta Crespo market came as double-digit inflation and scarcity have hit Venezuela's markets. The seizures were efforts to strike at what one Chavez supporter, Carabobo Gov. Luis Felipe Acosta, said was hoarding by "terrorist capitalists who want to destroy the country."
But economists and industry officials describe the raids as the latest in a sequence of hamhanded, politically motivated attempts to rein in market forces beyond Chavez's control.
If it's fair to define insanity as making the same mistake over and over again but believing you'll get a different result next time, mightn't we have to think of the Left as crazy? Posted by Orrin Judd at February 11, 2007 10:11 AM
What, you expect loony ex-corporals (or whatever)to invent a brand new *ism?
"Terrorist Capitalist" -- Where can I get the t-shirt?
Posted by: curt at February 11, 2007 11:00 AMBut, in the eyes of the Left, no mistake has been made. There simply are no 'laws' of economics apart from what the government dictates.
That is why they cheer Hugo, while decrying homelessness, hunger, and the rapacious Republicans here at home.
"Inflation? It has to be worse here than in Venezuela." And true believers would even say the same about Zimbabwe.
Posted by: jim hamlen at February 11, 2007 11:58 AMJim --
I believe our caring cohort (which may not perfectly overlap our Left) is currently decrying obesity among the poor.
As a cause, hunger is so last century.
Posted by: curt at February 11, 2007 12:44 PM"The delight of the frustrated in chaos and in the downfall of the fortunate and prosperous does not spring from an ecstatic awareness that they are clearing the ground for the heavenly city. In their fanatical cry of "all or nothing at all" the second alternative echoes perhaps a more ardent wish than the first."
"The reason that the inferior elements of a nation can exert a marked influence on its' course is that they are wholly without reverence toward the present. They see their lives and the present as spoiled beyond remedy and they are ready to waste and wreck both; hence their recklessness and their will to chaos and anarchy. They also crave to dissolve their spoiled, meaningless selves in some soul-stirring spectacular communal undertaking." -- Eric Hoffer
Posted by: jd watson at February 11, 2007 2:49 PM