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| WORK SHOP: Maximum Socialist Efficacy (New economic Order) |
Things must be really bad, and prospects for improvement almost nil for the regime to make it finally official that by the end of the year all supermarkets and food stores will have a finger print system to restrict what you can purchase. In short, if we are to believe the regime, if I buy 2 pounds of corn flour at store X, any other store will know about it and I will not be allowed to buy more corn flour for that week.
That from the view over here the logistics seem unworkable is irrelevant. I do not even know where the regime is going to get the currency to buy all the material it needs to equip all the stores it wishes to control.
No, what truly natters here is that the regime has taken finally an economic decision: controls will not be eased on the economy, real long term market solutions will not take place. As a consequence utmost centralization and control will proceed, with the poverty spread that comes along. Forget about devaluation, increase the price of gas, release some exchange controls to improve at least production of food. Here, we are going to use the few dollars available to buy a subsistence food system for all. After all if you cannot buy a car why should you worry about the price of gas? If you cannot afford travel, why should you care about which airlines fly to Venezuela? If you cannot afford Foie Gras and Salmon, why worry about corn flour being rationed to you?
And if you have any doubts about my words look at other bits of news.
The health sector is demanding a humanitarian emergency because medical supplies are not arriving and stocks are now depleted. The regime merely replies that they are overreacting even though you only need to visit the nearest pharmacy and listen to attendants tell a third of patrons "we do not have this one". But of course, one thing is to ration food, another thing is to ration medicine...
If food scarcity is a problem, other items are also missing. Toilet paper may be back, but look for shampoo or deodorant. Tooth paste is also back but gone is soap.
But even if you do not look at "material" issues as the ones described above, you will also observe that services are decreasing fast across the country. The main responsibility for this is the labor law decreed to help Chavez reelection in 2012. The law already nonviable in times of normally dysfunctional economy is now simply inapplicable in service sectors. As such a lot of business are reducing hours, reducing services and thus making our already hard lives more miserable.
Addendum
I retweeted this a couple of days ago and I think it is appropriate to add it here. It is from the Mercal in San Felipe if memory serves me well. Though I never saw it from above so I could be wrong. But does it matter? This is now a daily occurrence in most Mercal of Venezuela.
Distributing scarcity: the daily trials to get food at regime's distribution centers. pic.twitter.com/F7BzgagIrf @Yusnaby @ElPoliTwico
— daniel duquenal (@danielduquenal) August 20, 2014
Will this consumer fingerprinting scheme become a new Lista Tascón?
ReplyDeleteNot "as is" but surely a good way to see who shops where. Then again, if applied, the system can only work small scale, in the stores of the areas that are particularity meaningful for the regime.
DeleteOf course, uniformed National Guard, police, other military, plus high-level Chavistas will not have to get in line. They would not want their fingerprints stored anywhere that could lead to their arrest on corruption charges.
ReplyDeleteThe first work-around the controls will be citizens who sell their rations rather than consume it themselves. I believe the ration system is overseen by the National Election Commission so it will be corrupt from the start. Will Chavista areas get higher rations?
Without price controls none of this crap would be needed and adequate amounts of food would be available.
When I lived in Cuba they had special food and supplies delivery vans for "connected" officials. Raul Castro's main residence was in a building on 26th avenue in Havana (right in front of the Chinese cemetery), and I lived two blocks away. That area had quite a few government officials and diplomats, and we could see the vans pull up to their residences and unload the goodies.
DeleteMeanwhile my parents did the black market big time. One day two guys showed up with half a cow and they butchered it in our laundry room. My mom nearly had a nervous breakdown hauling beef to family and friends all over the city. That was a good month. I had never seen so much beef in one place, and I never saw it again until i left Cuba.
so sad
ReplyDeleteso many lights are going out.things just look dimmer and dimmer
firepigette
firepigette
Sounds to me like a good system for Anonymous to fuck up. What happens when those machines behave erratically or none at all? Close the santamaria?
ReplyDeleteSo, so sad to hear but yet another blow and giant step down the Cuban experience of life for Venezuelans. I continue to ask myself....when will the average Venezuelan wake up and say "enough is enough, I will take no more of this Chavista communist BS. We want our country back"?
ReplyDeleteTo me, the triumph of Chavism is the crazed spectacle of an extreme commitment to create beautiful "ideal" society that in stark reality is a nothing but an ugly wholesale disaster! It can only be explained as a product of unrestrained "group think" that shows the bazaar capabilities of human beings who dissolve into mobs.
ReplyDelete"Swimming in the same sea of happiness..."
ReplyDelete