Venezuela has, amazingly, taken another step along that path to the hell of an entirely dysfunctional economy. President Nicolas Maduro has just put the Army in charge of the food distribution system. This is something that Britain didn’t even do in the depths of WWII when the Nazis were trying to starve us into surrender. It’s also not the correct solution either–there’s no evidence that military personnel have any clue as to how to grow food nor import and transport it. The underlying problem here is an economic one and military personnel are not generally held to be all that good at that subject either. Given that it is an economic problem, there is only the economic solution–to abolish, immediately, all price controls.
But that’s not what they’re doing:
CARACAS—Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro put the armed forces in charge of a new food supply system aimed at alleviating crippling shortages, ceding yet more power to a military apparatus that is already involved in everything from banking to imports.
The head of the armed forces, Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino, will be in charge of transporting and distributing basic products, controlling prices and stimulating production, according to a decree published Tuesday in the official gazette.
“All the ministries, all the ministers, all the state institutions are at the service and in absolute subordination” to Mr. Padrino’s so-called Great Sovereign Supply Mission, Mr. Maduro said in a televised address Monday night.
[excerpted]http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2016/07/13/congratulations-to-bolivarian-socialism-now-the-army-runs-venezuelas-food-system/#4c8ffc0c5e09
