My poor Venezuelan people under Chavismo

Venezuelans used to eat maize flour. Production is collapsing because of the whole price controls, the currency control with several exchange rates favoring more corruption, the massive stealing from military and state functionaries and general mismanagement of the economy.

Now Venezuelans are eating cassava. That is a plant that can be easily planted. There are several problems with its use, though. Firstly, people need to cook it very well because otherwise cassava can be highly poisonous. There is the issue of scalability: there is only so much land, cassava has never been produced on an industrial scale in Venezuela and anyway, trying to make cassava production scalable is pointless if we haven't addressed the collapse of maize production in the first pace...but then you would need to change the essence of corrupt Chavismo.

This is what my relatives in poor areas of Venezuela are telling me right now: A kilo of fresh cassava costs Bs. 600. With a minimum wage you can buy 19 kilos every month...and nothing else.

A full minimum wage would give you otherwise 13.5 kg of beans, 11.57 kg of carrots or 3 kg of chicken. Yes: your minimum wage salary gives you three kilograms of chicken.

My relatives and friends are spending more and more time queuing up. It would be interesting - although a full challenge - if someone could come up with a way to gauge the increase in hours spent on those queues.

The government as well as some deluded people from the extreme left claim it's all because of some economic war. Shortages were not just part of the end of socialist or pseudo-socialist regimes with price controls and no independent powers. Shortages were present throughout the existence of those regimes - since Lenin times through Stalin - and later on.

Repression will scale up. Venezuelans need more support from the outside world.