I Lived Like a Baller for a Month in Venezuela on Just £75 (2015)
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Edit: If you want a realistic picture of how is life today, read this piece, written by a foreign journalist that actually lives there (sadly, most things I see in foreign media is written from outside): http://bigstory.ap.org/article/7c0464c1dd404aca99458a8a19930...
Pretty insane that things can get so desperate that even hard currency can't get you 3 meals.
Having said that, it's an absurd notion. Maintaining a gold-backed currency in that shitshow, even if someone were so inclined, would be like carefully setting the tables for dinner on a sinking cruise ship: it's cool that you're enthusiastic about doing your job well, but there are some pretty important people screwing up in really important ways, and your efforts aren't going to get you anywhere.
Plus we've got a 3 month old baby, who luckily is exclusively breastfeeding, because baby formula is practically non-existent.
We had to pool about $60 to buy a sack of sugar in the black market and divide it among a bunch of family members.
Things are starting to look a lot more grim as time passes by and you realize that the government doesn't have the will to fix things and they are not going to go peacefully either. The outcome here is most likely going to be a violent one.
I'm actually not really worried about sugar because I barely consume it. We bought the sack of sugar because a cousin of mine used to make ends meet with a small cupcake business she used to make for parties,etc. and now she can't find flour or sugar.
I wrote a comment about this before: if you have enough money you can go out and eat lobster and whatever fancy food you want. The things that are almost impossible to find are basic things most people need to survive like flour, milk, toiletries, medicine,etc.
One important thing to understand is that the government is in the hands of an incredibly corrupt military that are involved in drug trafficking and all sorts of crimes. They know that if they ever leave power, they risk having to face justice sometime.
Right now things are not looking good for the country. My situation is not even that bad compared to most of the country. I mostly worry about my parents who are older and have to survive on their meager pension and whatever my sister and I can help them with.
It looks like the only way out unfortunately is through the airport.
The reason those black markets are so popular is that people living in a country like that far prefer to hold on to some hard currency instead of the local currency which is devaluating so fast that even a few weeks can make a huge difference. Saving the local currency makes no sense and hence the black market materializes.
One person I know paid off a mortgage entered into a few years earlier with a single months pay, rapid inflation creates all kinds of havoc.
First, unless you are a complete sociopath, just seeing so many people suffering to just buy food(or medicines) is a traumatic experience.
For a doctor to operate you, you need to bring the medicines first!!
Next, you will risking your life in every corner. In some South American countries life is worth nothing, but in Venezuela it is another level. If you are an outsider you have to be very careful. Venezuelan people have gotten used to it and they know subconsciously what not to do, while a European or (North)American can make mistakes easily, and they have too much money.
When Venezuelan people find a robber, they will lynch him, police will come so people do not kill him.
The country is near a civil war. Hugo Chavez created a populist law called "Referendum revocatorio" that if the Government did something against the people, the people could remove it from power. The opposition is trying to use this law, but Maduro opposes it.
Of course the people in power do not want to go out of power by any means, specially when in Venezuela every good job position is occupied by pro-Chavez people, they are "more equal than others" and will lose everything if they pass the law.
Venezuela has a big army, and this army is directly supported by Russia, so given that Venezuela oil reserves are the biggest in the world(albeit bad quality) it is very dangerous as lots of other countries could intervene and create a proxy war.
Now it easily tops the Bloomberg misery index for the second year in a row [2]
[1] http://www.pewglobal.org/2014/10/30/people-in-emerging-marke...
[2] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-04/these-are-...
The whole problem with the country are self-inflicted wounds.
I think you are the second person in Venezuela I've found on HN. Check my profile for my contact info.
It used to be pretty easy to open an account in Panama or the US from Venezuela, don't know if that has changed. The thing is getting the funds for the initial deposit.
$100 -> .17BTC -> 102 VEF -> $10.25. So you'd lose 90% of the dollar value even at the generous official VEF/USD exchange rate.
Right now, $1 = $1004 VEF I see that 1 BTC = $583.79
From localbitcoin.com I see people selling in Venezuela at around 628000.00 VEF / BTC. So the price is the same.
I think what's going on, is they are calculating the price of the dollar at one of the govt rates of 645 VEF per dollar.
That's not realistic. Anyone with dollars in Venezuela is going to sell them at the black market rate of VEF 1000 per dollar.
Of course, the black market rate is illegal here and the government even went so far as blocking the black market rate information websites here. That's their idea of economic policy.
EDIT: Just realized, surbitcoin rate is around BsF 600k per Bitcoin. We use the dot (.) as the thousands separator.
ETA: rafaelm, I'll send you $50 worth of bitcoin if you'll post an address :)
I'm going to call it now: the Venezuela crisis is not incompetence after all. It's the first steps of a highly competent plan to do what several other communist governments did last century: bring about the death of a large percentage of the country's population.
I don't lightly advocate military intervention. I think it's almost always the wrong thing to do. But I'm advocating it now. The communist government of Venezuela needs to be taken down hard and fast, before this turns into full-blown genocide.
If you want to read about Soviet forced collectivization and all that messy history for a preview of what's coming up, this is a pretty good source:
http://acienciala.faculty.ku.edu/communistnationssince1917/c...
Ctrl-F for "Collectivization" and start reading from there, or read the whole thing if you want the background.
Remember, the guys running Venezuela are communists. They've read up and talked with the Cubans about how the Soviet Union was set up and run, etc. They like that model and think it was a good idea. They are simply following the cookbook. This includes the propaganda that everything bad happening is due to foreign saboteurs, right-wing reactionaries or unfortunate, but soon to be remedied, mistakes.
They've got the forced collectivization already to go:
https://news.vice.com/article/venezuela-has-a-new-forced-lab...
Rich are blocking food to the poor in attempt to scare them from supporting the Bolivarian Revolution. Youtube videos also show Venezuelan stores hiding food to cause shortage.
They wouldn't say anything about how the food imports are controlled by the military and the government and how they've stolen more than $50 billion, as admitted by Chavez's former economic minister.
Look for the cases of Agroisleña, Fama de América, Sidor,the sugar factories all in govt hands, the formerly productive lands in Sur del Lago and a looong line of etceteras. Formerly productive industries that Chavez confiscated, put under supervision of corrupt military command that now don't produce anything.
Look for all the corruption in CADIVI, the agency in charge of the currency exchange that gave out billions of dollars to the military and their buddies The thousands of tons of food imported by the government for PDVAL left to rot in the ports of the country because once the food was bought and imported it didn't matter if it actually got to the stores.
Seriously, it gets tiring when someone that does not have the tiniest idea of what is actually going on in the country brings out the tired old argument that everything is the USA's fault.
The shortage situation has been constant and getting worse since last year. I actually live here! I'm not reading about this from some government funded propaganda machine from the comfort of my fully stocked home.
You clearly have no more arguments beyond they tired old "everything us the US fault". I already gave you several examples of the government corruption that led us to this situation and you STILL come back and tell me about the middle east, oil colonies, how it's all a plot by the US, etc?
I should go to the food lines tomorrow and try to explain that to people. I bet it would go down really well with everyone there!
Please, next time try to be better informed before making a fool of yourself.
I understand that the US has a shitty foreign policy, but that doesn't make every "antiimperialist" government the good guys. The world is not black and white.
This has to be a pretty common occurance.