• Rations are halved in Venezuela again, black markets, looting, and rioting on the rise as shortages
    9 replies, posted
[img]http://www.trbimg.com/img-551b6e74/turbine/la-afp-getty-venezuela-economy-family-basket-jpg-20150331/750/750x422[/img] [i]People line up for soap in Caracas, Venezuela, in February.[/i] [quote]A friend texted me that coffee and toilet paper were on the shelves of an eastern Caracas supermarket, I raced to El Patio outlet hoping against hope that the increasingly scarce household items would still be available. No such luck. When I arrived at 9 a.m., the line was the length of a football field and a dozen bachaqueros, dressed in athletic wear and blue jeans, were leaving the store. They lugged nylon bags packed with coffee, milk powder, cooking oil and sugar, all highly coveted items in today's Venezuela. Slinging the precious commodities over their shoulders, they sped away on motorbikes. When armed soldiers finally allowed me inside, all that remained were a few bottles of dish soap and packages of corn flour. The bachaqueros, a term derived from the word bachaco, meaning a voracious ant-like insect, had snapped up what I needed most.[/quote] [quote] The government this month halved the weekly ration of three essential products: corn flour, to about 41/2 pounds per person; milk powder, to about 2 pounds; and toilet paper, to two rolls. Six months ago, only cornmeal and cooking oil were rationed, at four packages and about 11/2 gallons per person, respectively.[/quote] [quote]Residents of Caracas for the most part wait patiently, knowing that authorities will shut down the stores at the first sign of unrest, leaving them empty-handed. But social media recently reported looting in Cagua. In January, the national guard intervened at a store in Avila, on Caracas' northern edge, firing shots in the air after disturbances were reported.[/quote] [url]http://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-venezuela-shopping-20150401-story.html[/url]
So, are these bachaquero dudes ruining everything for everyone else?
[QUOTE=A B.A. Survivor;47462071]So, are these bachaquero dudes ruining everything for everyone else?[/QUOTE] Scalpers. An effect of every shortage of anything.
Doesn't rationing mean that you aren't allowed to just buy up an entire store like this?
So Venezuela has roving gangs of black market traders, a government divorced from reality, queues for basic necessities, rationing, high violent crime, no economy to speak of and a leader who plays the tried and true tin pot dictator card of blaming everything on foreigners. I'm honestly amazed Manduro has kept power, that base remains shockingly loyal seemingly in spite of reality and their own interests.
[QUOTE=Scot;47462194]Doesn't rationing mean that you aren't allowed to just buy up an entire store like this?[/QUOTE] That's the intended purpose, but it's made things worse pretty much. Venezuela is wasting time and money on introducing a massive costly rationing system and cracking down on black marketeers when they could just actually get to work on fixing the root of the problems in the first place (i.e economic mismanagement).
[QUOTE=Scot;47462194]Doesn't rationing mean that you aren't allowed to just buy up an entire store like this?[/QUOTE] Yeah but it's more complicated than that. I'm not sure how scalpers operate in other areas of the country but at least where I used to live, the city of Maracaibo, near the border with Colombia, bachaqueros are mostly members of the Wayuu indigenous tribe. They usually hoard up scarce items and smuggle part of them to Colombia, where they sell them in Colombian Pesos, and due to the big advantage the Peso has over the Venezuelan Bolivar they get huge profits from that. The rest is resold in flea markets at a much more expensive price. The reason they can buy so much is because they go in mobs to buy them: Wayuu people tend to have very large families, so they go in groups of 20 or 30 people, each gets signed up in a list for purchasing whatever scarce item is currently available, and then each one buys the maximum they're allowed, usually 1 to 3 of each thing. Since they're all from the same family, they all benefit from the profits. In addition to that, they have the advantage that a lot of the freight transport workforce in the area is made up of Wayuu people too, so they can usually get a tip of where items will be available even before they get there. I'm sorry if this whole explanation seems kind of racist, but I'm completely serious. [editline]5th April 2015[/editline] [QUOTE=Deng;47462216]That's the intended purpose, but it's made things worse pretty much. Venezuela is wasting time and money on introducing a massive costly rationing system and cracking down on black marketeers when they could just actually get to work on fixing the root of the problems in the first place (i.e economic mismanagement).[/QUOTE] yeah but for them the true root of the problem is "ECONOMIC WAR AGAINST THE BRAVE PEOPLE OF VENEZUELA" When you're that disconnected from reality, it's hard to make any true progress
Rationing can't prevent this kind of thing. Someone can profit off any kind of system you can come up with. In this case I'd guess someone will need to organize an anti-bachaquero movement. If you start killing them en masse, they'll stop buying up everything. That might not happen though because they are likely to be paying off government and/or military officials, so this entire operation will be protected.
If i'm not wrong, one of the biggest problems facing Venezuela at the moment is the utter and complete lack of an economy outside oil. Since oil has crashed they're pretty much fucked.
[QUOTE=The Aussie;47473812]If i'm not wrong, one of the biggest problems facing Venezuela at the moment is the utter and complete lack of an economy outside oil. Since oil has crashed they're pretty much fucked.[/QUOTE] Yep. They should take inspiration from Texas or Norway. Two economies that either depended on oil, or had depended on oil, but managed to invest the oil money into the future.
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