CARACAS - Thousands of Venezuelans lined up outside the country's equivalent of Best Buy, a chain of electronics stores known as Daka, hoping for a bargain after the socialist government forced the company to charge customers "fair" prices."Too extreme," you think? "That will never happen in the US!"
President Nicolás Maduro ordered a military "occupation" of the company's five stores as he continues the government's crackdown on an "economic war" it says is being waged against the country, with the help of Washington.
Members of Venezuela's National Guard, some of whom carried assault rifles, kept order at the stores as bargain hunters rushed to get inside.
"I want a Sony plasma television for the house," said Amanda Lisboa, 34, a business administrator, who had waited seven hours already outside one Caracas store. "It's going to be so cheap!"
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"This is for the good of the nation," Maduro said. "Leave nothing on the shelves, nothing in the warehouses … Let nothing remain in stock!"
The president was accompanied on television by images of officials checking prices of 32-inch plasma televisions.
Daka's store managers, according to Maduro, have been arrested and are being held by the country's security services. Neither Daka nor the government responded to requests for comment.
Maduro has long blamed the opposition for waging an economic war on the country though critics are adamant that government price controls, enacted by Chávez a decade ago, are the real cause for the dire state of the economy.
With such a shortage of hard currency for importers and regular citizens, dollars sell on the black market for nine times their official, government-set value. Prices, at shops such as Daka, are set according to this black market, hence the government's crackdown.
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But it will -- it's all-but inevitable -- because most of the political elites and a good half the people already subscribe to the faulty -- and immoral -- reasoning used to justify the looting.
What do you think will happen to the economy ... and to society ... then? What do you think will happen once everyone realizes that what a man has is "his" only so long as "the government" hasn't yet decided to expropriate it to buy votes/popularity?
And, after the inevitable and utterly predictable collapse of social trust, and collapse of the economy, what do you think "the government" will say? Will it be, "Oops! We caused that with our doctrinaire leftist policies and actions; we shall un-do our destructive policies at once"? Or, will it be, "President [Leftist Shill] ordered a military "occupation" of [company X's] stores -- [so as to] force the company to charge customers "fair" prices -- as he continues the government's crackdown on an "economic war" it says is being waged against the country. [X's] store managers ... have been arrested and are being held by the country's security services."
As leftists like to say, "You can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs." What they don't tell you upfront is that those eggs are human heads. Still, it has been over two centuries since the French Revolution, and *every time* leftists get control over the dispensation of state violence, the result is windrows of human corpses. Every damned time. At this late date, anyone who doesn't *know* what the leftists ultimately have in store for him doesn't know because he refuses to know.
Margaret Thatcher is generally credited with the observation that "The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money." What most people don't want to think about is the fact that before the (current batch of) socialists admit this, as eventually even they must, they are quite willing to convert any number of human lives into money. But, of course, that just shifts the problem with socialism being that eventually you run out of other people's lives.
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