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Comment by johnmarcus | Hacker News Reader

my heart goes out to all Venezuelans right now. Their poorly run government pretty much bet the entire farm on oil and with the depreciation in recent years it was already tough living there. At a price close to 0, it can not be good.

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And sadly they can't quickly grow tourism due to the crime rate and instability (and now coronavirus). The country has incredible opportunities for tourism but it will take years first to solve its problems and then overcome its reputation.

And like most places who try to swap resource extraction for tourism they will find that it pays a lot less. States like West Virginia still haven't recovered from the collapse of coal jobs starting in the 1980s, even with tourism. Even in states like Colorado, being a liftie doesn't pay nearly as well as being a hard rock miner.

Covid-19 can't be helping things but oversimplifying Venezulea geopolitical situation as "a poorly run government" ignores the fact that there are multiple state-level actors (internally and externally) working against their best interests.

Focusing on external actors instead of internal corruption is missing the forest for a couple of trees.

Hrm....and why do those state actors work against Venezuelas interest? Perhaps they have aligned themselves with other other oppressive global regimes which nationalize resources to be managed by friends and family rather than competitive enterprises? And who did that alignment? Yep, poorly run government.

That aside, their monetary policy has also been a train wreck from the 70's, and compounded with more bad decisions in the early 2000's. https://mises.org/wire/venezuelas-economic-collapse-was-enab...

Until they fix core issues in their central government/bank, they will continue to struggle in a global economy.

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