Can't believe there are populist parties in Spain defending this model and trying to import it.
"These days, the American dream is more apt to be realized in South America, in places such as Ecuador, Venezuela and Argentina, where incomes are actually more equal today than they are in the land of Horatio Alger. Who's the banana republic now?" - http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/must-read/close-the-g...
My premise is that the majority of oil demand will be gone in 30 years or so, not all of it. Losing the automobile industry to electric (nothing can stop that over the coming 30 years) will cut oil demand in half globally without anything else changing. Venezuela is cursed with mediocre quality oil that isn't easily extracted, so they'll be the first losers as oil demand falls (Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Russia as low cost producers will be the last standing and will fill that last 50% of the market that more slowly erodes).
Venezuela still has a lot of light crude oil, and also the large heavy crude deposits, which is still cheaper to refine than shale oil for instance. The industry here still has not even touched all the offshore resources properly and it is mostly suffering from lack of investment, especially in exploration for new wells.
And in the end, when all that is consumed we will probably turn to the uranium and God knows other minerals in the Amazon, instead of properly developing and diversifying the economy.