How Venezuela went from a rich democracy to a collapsing dictatorship
I thought this paragraph was the most enlightening:<p><i>Chávez was an innovator in how he spent money, but he did little to improve how Venezuela actually makes money. He paid no attention to diversifying the economy or investing in domestic production outside of the oil sector. The country relies on imports for many of its most basic goods and services, include food and medicine.</i><p>You could probably put the greatest economic minds in the world in charge of a big country like Venezuela and they would still fail to diversify the economy.<p>Markets are necessary for successful diversification - avoiding shortages and economic collapses when key industries suffer downturns.<p>I&#x27;d say social democracies in Europe have shown pretty conclusively that the way to fund broad social programs to help the poor and middle class is via taxation of market economies. Let a healthy private sector self-organize the production of the economy, and let taxes pay for social programs.