Hacker News Reader

Comment by sj4nz | Hacker News Reader

Bloomberg's headline leaves out the condition "in April and May."

At least it states the reason why in the first paragraph: hydro-generation is at risk because of a prolonged drought.

As I understand it, bad government is the reason; the drought just turned it into a crisis.

The chief reasons are artificially low pricing (it's almost free, so people have no incentive to conserve power, and the utilities are starved of funds for maintenance) and poor administration (this has been a long time coming -- brown outs and black outs have been endemic for some time).

I think you hit the nail on the head. Mismanagement, driving out the professionals, lack of investment and corruption have turned a very promising South American economy into a subsistence economy.

They are simply running the country into the ground thru mismanagement and negligence.

The unfortunate part is that due to the prevailing opinion on 'running a country', they're essentially forced to assume a "control everything" position. I.e. Each subsequent failure / worsening of the conditions makes "control" or intervention more necessary in their eyes.

The option to let things happen (by removing regulation / price-controls, etc), or for scrapping and starting fresh appear to never be on the table in any meaningful respect.

Unfortunately, their politics won't allow them to consider any sensible alternative. The US is the devil, Columbia is devil junior and they certainly can't give in to capitalist cretins. Afaik even Cuba have pulled out their assistance (physicians, etc.)

It's like they try to run the country on ideals alone and that ideals will carry the day.

We have a party in the US that thinks "running a country" means cutting taxes and increasing corporate welfare until the government goes bankrupt.

And there is a party that doesn't. And the country is not seeing lines for basic goods and professionals and the educated class are not being forced out of the country and we don't have a majority of officials pocketing money and you're free to express disapproval, etc. etc.

We're not a basket case economy in any stretch of the imagination. Compare and contrast.

> the utilities are starved of funds for maintenance

That's all it is, tbh, without resorting to hyperbole. This happens even in capitalist economies -- companies have little incentive for maintenance at the best of times.

IMHO, when 40% of energy for the whole country is provided by one single plant (regardless of plant type), things will go wrong at some point. To overcome a situation like that you need money and vision to build a redundant system. Clearly the Venezuelan government lacked them.

"That's all it is, tbh, without resorting to hyperbole. This happens even in capitalist economies -- companies have little incentive for maintenance at the best of times."

Have you actually looked at the maintenance budget of US utility companies?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com