But why? Yes, there is a hyperinflation. But the world has had a lot of hyperinflations without mass refugee flows. Yes, there is a huge fall in GDP. But the world has seen similar falls in GDP without generating mass refugee flows. Yes, there is political tyranny, but the world has seen lots of terrible tyrannies, and there isn’t a civil war.
Well, the root cause is simple. Famine. An accelerating famine. An honest-to-God 21st-century famine.
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The problem is that the Bolivarian Republic has systematically attacked its own farm sector, destroying its ability to buy inputs or operate without losses. For all the decline in food imports, they are still above the levels of the mid-1990s ... but the domestic production is no longer there.
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What political advantage accrued from destroying domestic agriculture, even during the good years, is utterly beyond me. And that, yet again, is the tragedy of Venezuela. It isn’t the evil, it’s the incompetence. Raving, insane, pointless incompetence.
In order to understand the current Venezuelan crisis, we need to turn to the economic and political science literature on famine ... which is not something I ever expected to say about an American country in the early 21st century.
