Venezuela is on the verge of both economic and social collapse, and the Bolivarian socialist government headed by President Nicolás Maduro is lashing out at any everyone from “whingeing” factory owners (who lack the raw materials they need to produce anything of value) to the U.S. government, who he accused of formenting a coup when he extended the nation’s state of emergency last Friday.
The style of socialism introduced to the oil-rich country by Maduro’s predecessor, the late Hugo Chavez, was credited by Salon‘s David Sirota with creating an economic miracle as recently as 2013. But the disaster currently unfolding is more than just a failure of socialism.
Venezuela has been spending a fortune on unnecessary and ridiculous expenditures for years. That is, when government officials haven’t been (allegedly) stealing billions in oil profits and pocketing the cash outright.
Despite sitting on the world’s largest oil reserves and having nationalized oil production, Venezuela spends $45 million a year on Pastor Maldonado — an undistinguished Formula One race car driver with a predilection for crashing a lot — who essentially serves as a walking billboard for the country’s oil company. Wasting taxpayer money on sponsoring a loser athlete is bad enough, but what could possibly be the justification for spending that kind of cash to advertise the national oil company, which by definition has no competition?
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