Señor Chavez has swept to power and compares himself to Fidel Castro.
Fidel faught for his power. I don't like what he did either, but here the comparison doesn't fit. Fidel got where he did with guns, not votes.
Señor Chavez is nationalizing much of his country's major industries. Oil is the main one. That is a good short term win, lots of cash still being generated by that Texas tea. Good luck keeping your pumps working when you will never get another outside company to invest one penny in upgrades and exploration. His move has effectively locked in its production at the current levels (they'll actually deminsh as equipment becomes harder and harder for them to repair.)
Señor Chavez has begun land reform. When has that EVER worked? Again, short run politics winning out as the underprivilaged underclass suddenly feels empowered. Oh yea, they also feel entitled. Good luck keeping that entitlement up.
Señor Chavez wants to move towards a national barter system. WHAT???!!! Barter ended in civilized society before we started keeping histories.
That clinches it. Señor Chavez wants to move Venezuela back into the dark ages and beyond.
The list of things he is doing is only missing the persecution of one group of citizens. I think he'll be able to bypass that ugly totalitarian characteristic by putting the country on the oil teat. Just look how well that has worked for Saudi Arabia, they have a HUGE and growing youth population and a very large unemployment rate (around 12 percent.) Both of which can be directly traced to government handouts associated with oil.
Good luck Señor Chavez.
A quick note. I got a comment from a Venezuelan student who has been opposed to Chavez from the beginning. Apparently there are more people opposing him than I originally gave credit to in this post. My prayers go out to these people.
She specifically noted that I had said, "Apparently no one in Venezuela is a student of history OR economics. " Julia, I hope you approve of my edits.
