Venezuela Government Sells Fish

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The Bolivarian News Agency reports that, in three weeks, the Venezuelan government's Corporación Venezolana de Alimentos has sold 136 tons of fish. Juan Carlos Jiménez, the company's president, announced that an additional 76 tons of fresh fish, namely atún, carite pintado, cataco, anchoa, bonito, cachama will be made available by Tuesday.

I took my trusty calculator and just figured out that 136 tons is 136,000 kilos. That's a little bit less than half a gram per Venezuelan. Now all we have to do is figure out how to shrink all Venezuelans so they are about 3 cm tall. Then they'll think half a gram of fish is enough to put in a tiny arepa.

And this, my friends, is why this government is a failure. The fishing and retail industry in this country has been private and we have always had the fish available in the market - no Fidel, this isn't like Cuba at all, here we have had plenty of food available. And there's no need for the government to get involved in this business - their efforts, which they make sure they write a lot about, are absolutely useless. They are worse than useless, because they are focusing on things they really don't know how to run, which means they forget to do things they should worry about, such as making sure there's enough spare generating capacity in the system to run during the dry season, or making sure there's policemen around to stop the criminals.

I have a brilliant idea: if they're worried about people not having money to buy the fish, then they should run the economy so people can work and get paid a decent wage. And for people to get paid a decent wage, they need to make or grow things of value. And in this country is very hard to make or grow things, because they keep the exchange rate controlled, the bolivar is too high, and the government imports or makes sure private outfits import almost everything. Which means we import potatoes from Colombia, beef from Brazil, and clothing from Bolivia, Udmurtia or whichever country Chavez wants to favor.

To make it even more difficult for the common man, lately the government has been nationalizing private property in a truly bizarre fashion. They took over a building full of small retail shops a while back - and now the building stands empty. They have taken over farm after farm, and the land is now fallow, not used for anything. They nationalized service companies doing work for PDVSA and now those companies don't work very well. They nationalized the private portion of the private electric power generation industry and...well, you know what's happening to us, we have no electricity.

Now I will go eat my half gram of fish.

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1. I supplemented my half gram of government fish with real food

I put shrimp on my arepa - bought from a "capitalist" fisherman in Higuerote's fish market. We were laughing when I explained to him he was a capitalist roader because he owns his fishing boat with a 50 HP outboard, and owns nets, fishing reels, hooks, and everything.

But it won't be so funny when they come take his boat and force him to join a fishing commune - if the communists have their way. And if they do, forget getting fresh fish in reasonable quantities, Those boats will not be around long, the motors will not be maintained, the fishermen won't fish, and we'll be like in Cuba, living on our ration of 0,5 grams of fish per person every three weeks. Or whatever some bastard in the government decides is the proper diet.