Mad Max violence stalks Venezuela's lawless roads

In this case I can assure you the US had little to do with the economic collapse. The reason why the economy went down the drain was because of an extreme currency control. Just months after Maduro got ahold of power, he got rid of the only mechanism that existed to buy foreign currency legally. So what happened is that people had to resort to buy US dollars at black market rates. That caused shortages, inflation, etc.

Then they had the brilliant idea to enforce price controls on a lot of goods, which only served to ensure that nobody wanted to produce or trade said good.

US/EU sanctions only came recently and are targeted at individuals, so no, this mess is caused by the Venezuelan government itself.

What are the other cases of US intervention in this style? I can understand the consternation at some level, but has something happened in the past 2 decades that I just missed?

There is no reason concerned US citizens have to, nor will, tolerate another absurd US intervention (aka WAR).

Oil is not what caused the food shortages, it's what allowed the government to convince everyone their policies were working during the good times, while they depleted their cash reserves to cover the massive unsustainable hole their radical social policies were burning in their pocket.

Food shortages were a result of government enacted price controls, expropriation of farmland, and centralization of financial markets. Which subsequently disrupted local food production, scared away foreign imports, and reduced access to critically needed foreign currency.

No country can produce ALL of their own food. Imports are a necessity, even for socialist countries. Artificially reducing prices, fucking over all of your domestic business talent, and severely limiting foreign currency is a (predictable) recipe for a massive food crisis.

Venezuela suffered persistent food shortages well before the oil "crisis" (as early as 2002-2003) [1] ...meanwhile every other non-socialist petrol-state has bounced back from the crisis, EXCEPT Venezuela.

When Chavez came to power he announced "capitalism was dead" to the cheers of farmers. Those farmers are now starving and flooding over the border to Colombia whose "capitalist" food markets offer both greater variety and far greater supply. The oil crisis merely exposed the complete failure of their "modern" economic system.

Yet the Venezuelan government continue to blame the west for all of their failures. And local "hoarders" and "speculators" for food shortages [2].

It's obvious that looking in the mirror and admitting personal responsibility would be political suicide for the pseudo-dictators and all of their corrupt friends.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Venezuela

[2] https://www.economist.com/news/americas/21571445-cost-postpo...

The first Mad Max was not particularly post-apocalyptic - the world was falling down, but the vestiges of society were still rather strong, and the lunatic fringe like Toecutter were just motorcycle gangs cranked up to 11.

Things have gotten weirder and weirder in every installment since.