They did have a huge interest in increasing productivity, there were the 5-year plans, the quotas that needed (theoretically) to be surpassed, etc.
The state fixing things was seen as a need when things did not work well (which they did more and more as with any centrally planned complex system that keeps growing).

I am not defending the communist system at all, but even they were not as shameless as Hugo, even if their calculations never materialized as they should.
Hugo, on the other side, is even going against what commies were claiming to aim at. He says basically life is for free.

He is looking at the disease and thinks that is the socialist system “per se”.

And the sad thing is that millions believe in him because that is the problem in Venezuela: we are a rich nation, we believe, “just like that” (because we have oil, gold, iron), we are the Land of Grace, El Dorado.

Roger, Juanchez:
really interesting topic.
Should be nice to have some kind of overview on that.

That’s an interesting question – slightly off topic, but I wonder if ANYONE has done any kind of follow up on companies/businesses/properties/farms/
etc. whcih have been nationalized. Have any of these flourished, or even survived? And in the case of stores like Exito, I don’t understand the basic business model. Like, where the hell is the inventory going to come from to stock the shelves.

JL

This is a pretty wonky translation, but let’s look at what is really being said here. First, “insatalled capacity” probably means what a store actually has in stock, the actually goods it has on the shelves to sell. Next, “quality of its articles” is self evident as is “nor their costs.” “Nor their sales” simply means that the survival of a state or “public” company/store wouldn’t depend on said company/store actually selling any goods – and that’s a good thing since by this hare-brained calculus, these companies/stores are almost certain to do no business at all.

The main problem with Chavez’ pronouncement is that he is trying to redefine consumerism, which is driven by human nature, not Chavez socialism. Put differently, name one sane person in Venezuela, Chavista or otherwise, who doesn’t give a damn about what a store has in stock, doesn’t care about the quality of the goods he or she is going to buy, and doesn’t care what they cost.

Just how insane the whole Chavez experiment has gone is pretty well summed up in the previous “market strategy,” a philosophy that would literally doom any private company to failure in un mes, o manos.

When someone has such a clear presciption for failure, and people simply go along with it, who is to blame when the inevitable happens and the shelves go empty, the B shrinks to nothingness and the lights go out??

Juancho