Electricity shortages in a country whose sole export is energy are truly a miraculous thing. It takes a very special government to produce them.
It isn’t of course an exclusively leftist idiot thing. The gross corruption in Nigeria seems to have a similar effect, Iran I believe suffers from petrol shortages.
But then we would agree that all three are very special governments, would we not?
9 responses so far ↓
1 Wolfie // Nov 17, 2009 at 1:55 pm
What? There are corruption shortages in Nigeria?
Only yesterday one of their senior businessmen emailed me offering a most generous commission to assist his most trustworthyness in exporting TEN MILLION DOLLARS.
2 jameshigham // Nov 17, 2009 at 4:06 pm
Perhaps leftist governments have that special penchant for it.
3 Dennis the Peasant // Nov 17, 2009 at 5:28 pm
Oh course, Dickie would argue that the core problem is Venezuela’s far-too-low taxation rates.
If Chavez instituted a Tobin tax, this would all go away.
4 dearieme // Nov 17, 2009 at 5:33 pm
It is the convention in some circles to refer to the notorious Economist and Censor as Broad DeRound, which I take to be an unflattering girthist allusion.
5 Niall Smith // Nov 17, 2009 at 8:40 pm
Stuff like this always irritates me.
De Tocqueville made the point that great natural resources can be a recipe for a disaster and that was in 1835. If memory serves.
He wasn’t even an economist.
6 Bob Piper // Nov 17, 2009 at 10:53 pm
Interestingly, he blames the medium term problem on… demand rising very rapidly both because of new projects propelled by the state and because rising income for the poor has unleashed a mad consumption splurge–tvs. air conditioning in every room, etc
Wicked commie bastards. Why can’t they just keep the poor impoverished like generations of US-backed bastards have done.
7 The Remittance Man // Nov 18, 2009 at 10:36 am
Well they could always export hotties to make up the deficit.
Ooops, no they can’t. According to Hugo they are all turning into porkers.
8 john b // Nov 18, 2009 at 12:43 pm
Perhaps leftist governments have that special penchant for it.
Hmm. In order to classify Chavez’s populist-nationalist, Iran’s religious-fundamentalist and Nigeria’s socially-conservative, kleptocratic-with-lip-service-to-free-markets governments as “leftist”, you need to make some pretty ridiculous steps of logic..
9 The Pedant-General // Nov 18, 2009 at 2:32 pm
no more ridiculous that the rule enforced by the left that any leftist manifesto to be applied in only one nation magically makes it right wing.
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