Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez doesn?t like capitalism.
None of us should be surprised to read the following opening to a Business Week article about life with Chavez:
Caracas ? It’s 10 a.m., and tempers are already flaring at the Cada supermarket in Caracas’ San Bernardino neighborhood. The store has just taken delivery of two pallets of 4- and 11-pound sacks of sugar. With dozens of shoppers swarming around him, Rigoberto Fern?ndez tries to pass out the bags one by one. The clerk hands a smaller one to a gray-haired woman, but she flings it back. “How dare you tell me I can’t have one of the larger bags?” she screams. The sack splits open, spilling sugar everywhere.
Within 10 minutes, the shipment has vanished. “I am so fed up with these food shortages,” Fern?ndez mutters as he sweeps up the mess. “People get desperate and start behaving like animals.”
Venezuelan President Hugo Ch?vez’s response to the food shortages: find a scapegoat, in this case supermarket owners.
Ah, yes, the scapegoat tactic. Socialists prefer it to the truth: price controls ? in any sector ? cause problems.
