Drinking Water Shortage in Venezuela

Hugo Chavez, once
a darling of the Hollywood left, tried to transform Venezuela
into a socialist paradise using chavismo, a
Chavez-centered “top men” kind of socialism and nationalism while
it’s president from 1999 to 2013. Less than fifteen months after
his death, his successor, Nicolas Maduro, has revealed just how
much star power and personality can mask failure.

Bloomberg reports on the oil-rich country’s
latest shortage:

Residents of the Venezuelan capital of Caracas, who already
struggle to find toilet paper and deodorant, are facing a new
shortage — drinking water. 

The rationing of tap water amid a drought and a shortage of
bottles because of currency controls are forcing people to form
long lines at grocery stores and bottle shops as soon as deliveries
are made. Truck drivers spend much of their day outside water
dispatch centers as they try to meet demand.

As the economy he and his government are trying to control with
a stranglehold collapses around them, Maduro claims his opponents
are trying to kill him, an attempt to shore up support for his
leadership. Such a tactic was common under Chavez as well.
As
Juan Nagel at Caracas Chronicles explains:

When Hugo Chávez was alive, every time there were tiffs or
differences inside the government, out came the wild accusations of
“magnicidio” to stir the pot. By driving a wedge between
“they” (the assassins, which I guess includes all of us) and “us”
(the revolutionaries), the government thinks it can consolidate its
own factions. They seem to be saying “look, we may be incompetent
crooks who are destroying the country, but they are worse than us …
they want to kill us!”

It’s a cheap ploy, and it won’t work. In the face
of unstoppable inflation, straws seem to be the only
thing the government has to grasp on to.

The worst part is that some chavistas will fall for this. They
have lost the capacity to ask themselves why the government claims
an assassination has been thwarted and yet nobody is in prison.

The ability of central planning to turn abundance (Venezuela
is water-rich, too) into scarcity is unrivaled, despite claims
by its advocates that actually allowing suppliers and consumers to
buy and sell in free markets (“capitalism”) is the true culprit.
Yet the leaders of planned economies can often rely on this
delusion, and the emotional reactions they can elicit by demonizing
capitalism and their opponents, to deny economic reality.