Chavez Really Wants to Turn Venezuela into Cuba

Cuba could be a paradise, enjoying massive tourist trade with the United States, but instead the people suffer while el Comandante continues with his vile existence.

Hugo Chavez is turning Venezuela, despite there massive potential for wealth and prosperity due to oil deposits, into the larger, more populace, carbon copy of Cuba.

Trying to strong arm foreign companies isn't a path towards prosperity, instead it's a path towards privation and disaster.

Thugs like Chavez tend to get worse before they get killed (or die of natural causes), at some point the people of Venezuela will realize that the Bolivarian dream that Chavez is trying to sell them is really a collectivist nightmare.

Hopefully they won't replace the current Cuba analogies with Haitian like decades of instability in the aftermath of Chavez, instead they can go the way of Argentina and Chile, have their ups and downs, but remain democratic (even somewhat socialist if that suits them), free and eventually prosperous.

(most countries that have great wealth beneath the ground tend to develop an alarming dirth of wealth in human terms, and vice versa, countries without raw materials tend to develop stronger intellectual capital than other comparable nations, the good ol' U S of A a notable exception, wealthy in both respects)

(not an original observation on my part, but thought I'd throw it in there anyway (I'd cite an example of someone else who said similar if I could find it, I'm sure it's out there if someone want to link a piece along the same lines)

And while trying to find a link to someone who commented about the inverse relationship between a country's intellectual capital and its natural resources I came across this speech before the Empire Club back in 1944, which outlines some ideas that proved prescient, while others that were completely wrong, but what I really like is the closing joke that Mr. Wickman ends his speech with

I would like to tell you a story about an Englishman whose wife went to Canada after the last war. They had the old impression that your country was lacking in any kind of household comforts and was mostly populated by Indians. This man's wife had occasion to travel to the West Coast and arrangements had been made for her to stop on her way out in a certain hotel. Her husband had warned her that there would be no conveniences of any kind in the hotel, and that under no circumstances should she venture out in the dark. Days after her departure from London, he was astounded to get a cable from Toronto, reading, "Have arrived safely--I have "Running water" in my bedroom". He immediately replied, "Get that Indian out of there."