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Comment by v768 | Hacker News Reader

Things have changed a lot since this was written in December. I live in Caracas, there's massive national food shortages. Now you can't have 3 meals a day for a month with 100€, and would spend quite some time finding it (on the black market). Last time I saw sugar, it was around 3€ per kilo.

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...

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Yep, I'm living in Barquisimeto and between me and my wife we are making around $160 per month. We are scraping by.

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.

There's something I'm not understanding here: both you and the GP are commenting on a food shortage and Sugar is the food that you both mention as being hard to come by. If there is a food shortage shouldn't sugar be the last food you would care about obtaining? Or are basic necessities (rice, etc) readily available and it's only luxuries like sugar that are hard to find?

All the basics are hard to come by: rice, flour, milk, toiletries,etc. I'm just commenting about sugar because GP commented on it. I assume because it's one of the items that has just disapeared lately.

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.

If you've never been poor then you won't understand that coffee and tea (therefore sugar) are not luxuries, but a way to keep your sanity. The alternative is taking to the streets

Do you think things are going to improve in time for you and your family to survive?

I'm not sure really, the government is not going to leave peacefully, and while they are in power they are not going to do anything to improve the situation.

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.

>Now you can't have 3 meals a day for a month with 100€

Pretty insane that things can get so desperate that even hard currency can't get you 3 meals.

It can happen anywhere there's fiat currency and long supply lines.

I often read that gold is superior to fiat currency, but how would any kind of currency or precious commodity make a difference in this case, since demand is outstripping supply of finite tangible goods.

It wouldn't. Don't believe what you read on the internet about money. The goldbugs are a vocal minority, not taken seriously in real economics discussions.

That has nothing to do with anything, Venezuela is in trouble because of capital controls.

Which, unless people are literally paid in physical gold coins, also doesn't help.

I'm not sure what this means. What doesn't help?

Theoretically, gold has more robust ties to reality, so it would have value elsewhere; this is in contrast to the Venezuelan currency, which I expect (though don't know for sure) is inflated like crazy. If that's true, then it could mean that some enterprising Colombians (or someone else nearby) might find it worth their while to smuggle food in for the gold or gold-backed currency, which should be exchangeable at a predictable and stable rate.

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.

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