Your belated moralizing is a worthless exercise in the face of monumental problems in countries that have been constantly under attack by U.S. clandestine operations. The real problem with the Venezuelan revolution was that it did not purge american spies and operatives from the country and these operatives finally got about half their objectives realized. Your constant attacks on Chavez shows your ignorance of what he was facing all his life. Your concerns are always ideological and not based on realizing the existence of human needs and far less concerned with meeting them.
I have already pointed out that Venezuela's problem was relying on the petroleum economy too much. The fluctuations in oil prices pretty much put a crimp on the Venezuelan economy. This was in part because the people who assumed power after Chavez simply did not have the technological or organizational expertise to protect the country from the American capitalist vultures. Nothing that has happened in Venezuela should surprise anybody and all the parties involved are in some degree responsible for the unraveling of the economy. It is more a matter of ignorance than of intent. That to me makes a big difference.
Your rigid condemnation of every socialist regime in the world gives you away as a hidebound adherent of predatory capitalism and a slave to that ideology, unwilling to accept the changes we will be making in the form of even our government here in America. Capitalism is on its way out. With a balanced approach to change we need not go the way of Venezuela and also not pollute our entire world so human life becomes ever harder. What is wrong with your philosophy is that it demands that everybody in the world serve as their absolute master....money.
Your choices if you actually care about human flourishing and getting rid of poverty are Hong Kong style capitalism or Norweign style capitalism, or something in between. There is nothing outside of those options that has been sustainable and not fallen into complete dysfunction, corruption, and eventual misery.
Venezuela could've gone the way of Brazil, a leftist leaning capitalist system (that is not without problems, but is getting better over time), or Colombia, a more centrist capitalist system. There has been massive reductions in poverty in Brazil over the last twenty years, more so than Venezuela, and they are much better off. Colombia has also seen massive improvements and is poised for a bright future. No where near the human disaster that Venezuela is facing.
