The news coming from Venezuela-including shortages as well as, most recently, riots over blackouts the imposition of a two-day workweek for government employees, supposedly aimed at saving electricity and an accelerating drive to recall the president-is dire, but also easy to dismiss as representing just one more of these recurrent episodes. One pretty much expects them to suffer an economic crash, a political crisis, or both, with some regularity. The experiment with “21st-century socialism” as introduced by the late President Hugo Chavez, a self-described champion of the poor who vowed to distribute the country’s wealth among the masses, and instead steered the nation toward the catastrophe the world is witnessing under his handpicked successor Maduro, has been a cruel failure.ĭeveloping countries, like teenagers, are prone to accidents. But to Venezuelans like the present writers, and the entrepreneur, there’s nothing funny about the dark turn our country has taken. The entrepreneur is one of the real people behind those zany “there’s no toilet paper in Venezuela” stories that play up the crisis for laughs, and clicks. The entrepreneur and three of his top managers faced criminal prosecution and possible jail time. Seizing the toilet paper, they claimed they had busted a major hoarding operation, part of a U.S.-backed “economic war” the Maduro government holds responsible for creating Venezuela’s shortages in the first place. No sooner had the TP delivery reached the factory than the secret police swept in. (We’re not naming the entrepreneur lest the government retaliate against him.) The price was steep but he had no other option-his company was at risk. So the entrepreneur turned to the black market, where he found an apparent solution: a supplier able to deliver, all at once, enough TP to last a few months. Toilet-paper theft may sound like a farce, but it’s a serious matter for the entrepreneur: Failing to stock the restrooms puts him in violation of his agreement with the union, and that puts his factory at risk of a prolonged strike, which in turn could lead to its being seized by the socialist government under the increasingly unpopular President Nicolas Maduro. What a Billionaire Thinks Every Kid Should Know Joe Pinsker

A stort where reality falls apart