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Venezuela needs your toilet paper

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  • Venezuela needs your toilet paper




    Venezuela reaches the final stage of socialism: no toilet paper

    DAVID BOAZ, The Cato Institute




    In 1990 I went to a Cato Institute conference in what was then still the Soviet Union. We were told to bring our own toilet paper, which was in fact useful advice.

    Now, after only 16 years of Chavista rule, Venezuela has demonstrated that "Socialism of the 21st Century" is pretty much like socialism in the 20th century. Fusion reports:

    Venezuela's product shortages have become so severe that some hotels in that country are asking guests to bring their own toilet paper and soap, a local tourism industry spokesman said on Wednesday….

    "It's an extreme situation," says Xinia Camacho, owner of a 20-room boutique hotel in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada national park. "For over a year we haven't had toilet paper, soap, any kind of milk, coffee or sugar. So we have to tell our guests to come prepared."…

    Montilla says bigger hotels can circumvent product shortages by buying toilet paper and other basic supplies from black market smugglers who charge up to 6-times the regular price. But smaller, family-run hotels can't always afford to pay such steep prices, which means that sometimes they have to make do without.

    Camacho says she refuses to buy toilet paper from the black market on principle. "In the black market you have to pay 110 bolivares [$0.50] for a roll of toilet paper that usually costs 17 bolivares [$ 0.08] in the supermarket," Camacho told Fusion. "We don't want to participate in the corruption of the black market, and I don't have four hours a day to line up for toilet paper" at a supermarket….

    Recently, Venezuelan officials have been stopping people from transporting essential goods across the country in an effort to stem the flow of contraband. So now Camacho's guests could potentially have their toilet paper confiscated before they even make it to the hotel.
    Shortages, queues, black markets, and official theft. And blaming the CIA. Yes, Venezuela has truly achieved socialism.

    But what I never understood is this: Why toilet paper? How hard is it to make toilet paper? I can understand a socialist economy having trouble producing decent cars or computers. But toilet paper? And soap? And matches?

    Sure, it's been said that if you tried communism in the Sahara, you'd get a shortage of sand. Still, a shortage of paper seems like a real achievement.




    Tissue Paper-for-Venezuelan Oil Swap Offered by Trinidad




    Venezuela, plagued with shortages of basic goods, was offered a reprieve by the Prime Minister of neighboring Trinidad & Tobago: exchange oil for tissue paper.

    Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar suggested an oil-for-tissue swap in a news conference Tuesday following a meeting in Port of Spain with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. She said the deal would benefit both countries.

    “The concept of commodity sharing is simple -– the Government of Trinidad and Tobago will purchase goods identified by the Government of Venezuela from T&T’s manufacturers, such as tissue paper, gasoline, and parts for machinery,” Persad-Bissessar said.

    In Venezuela, which has the world’s largest oil reserves, citizens line up outside supermarkets for hours seeking a bag of clothing detergent, toilet paper or cooking oil. Price controls and a lack of dollars for importers have emptied stores of many basic goods, a situation Maduro blames on hoarders conducting an “economic war” against his socialist government.

    Officials at Venezuela’s Information Ministry declined to comment.

    Buffeted by plunging oil prices, Venezuela’s economy will contract 7 percent this year, according to the International Monetary Fund, while inflation, which accelerated to 69 percent in December, is already the fastest in the world. According to the constitution, Maduro must call legislative elections by the end of the year.

    “Economic recession, high inflation, and growing shortages have weakened public support for the government, likely reducing its political room to introduce difficult corrective economic measures that would improve its external liquidity position,” Standard & Poor’s said in a Feb. 9 report.

    While in Trinidad, Latin America’s biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas, Maduro and Persad-Bissessar discussed the commercialization of cross-border natural gas reserves.

    Persad-Bissessar presented the swap proposal as a win-win opportunity for the two nations, separated by an 11-kilometer (6.8-mile) strait off Venezuela’s northeast coast.

    Tissue paper and other goods “would then be traded for commodities that are needed for our industries –- in particular bitumen and crude oil -– which can be supplied by Venezuela,” she said, adding that “this proposal is at an planning stages, and we recognize that a monitoring mechanism would be key to its success.”

  • #2
    What a shitty situation!

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    • #3
      Funny how things play out as expected. They'll be able to use their currency to wipe once the toilet paper runs out.

      Comment


      • #4
        It's not surprising that they can't make basic consumer goods like TP. When you operate on a quota system, instead of a simple demand-driven manufacturing model, and half your production evaporates to graft and inefficiency, you run out of basic shit. People in the USSR weren't spending days in line for cars and PC's. They were standing in line for bread and shoes.
        ZOMBIE REAGAN FOR PRESIDENT 2016!!! heh

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        • #5
          Thank you for posting this. One of my employees has a friend from Venezuela who keeps spouting off about how he should move to Venezuela because everything there is free. I can not wait to show him this.
          Magnus, I am your father. You need to ask your mother about a man named Calvin Klein.

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          • #6
            But hey, gasoline is $0.02/lit, so they've got that going for them...which is nice.
            "It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom - for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself."

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            • #7
              Originally posted by helosailor View Post
              But hey, gasoline is $0.02/lit, so they've got that going for them...which is nice.
              What does cheap gas get for you if you can't afford a car to put it in?
              Magnus, I am your father. You need to ask your mother about a man named Calvin Klein.

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              • #8
                Who needs a clean ass when you live in a socialist paradise!
                Originally posted by racrguy
                What's your beef with NPR, because their listeners are typically more informed than others?
                Originally posted by racrguy
                Voting is a constitutional right, overthrowing the government isn't.

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                • #9
                  It gets you 7 miles on the Mypostwassarcasm Express.
                  "It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom - for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself."

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                  • #10
                    Guess they'll be transitioning to the three seashells.
                    Originally posted by Broncojohnny
                    HOORAY ME and FUCK YOU!

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                    • #11
                      Amazon.com should work out some kind of delivery system on the Amazon river. Set up some drones on a barge or something and drop TP to your door in Caracas. It'd be great!

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                      • #12
                        Originally posted by Nash B. View Post
                        Guess they'll be transitioning to the three seashells.
                        Now that's some funny shit

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                        • #13
                          What's funny they are buying corporate jets like it's going out of style.
                          07 GT500
                          05 SRT10
                          88 turbocoupe T-bird
                          93 Cobra
                          86 coupe
                          Ducati 848

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                          • #14

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                            • #15
                              Socialism = shared misery!

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