YangZD

[deleted]

[deleted]

First of all, thank you for coming here and expressing your sincere opinion about this subject, despite knowing that you could be probably flamed or witch hunted because we clearly expressed that we reject the current government.

We welcome you and are glad to hear your views on this issue, despite not agreeing with you and discusing this issue healthfully; Because, that's what freedom and democracy it's about. Sadly, the government you support doesn't think the same about us.

First of all, I would like to ask if you live in Venezuela?, are you constantly informed about the issues the country goes through everyday? If so, through what media?

the Venezuelan private media and private companies are the ones waging an economic war (causing shortages, driving up inflation by black market exchanges, etc.) in an attempt to destabilize Maduro's government and then blame the problems on him and his government.

Look, you need to know how basic economics works, if anything, this whole disaster has been caused all by themselves by setting price controls and a currency exchange rate regime. Let me explain, shortages are not happening just because some executive bourgeois decided to hate on Chavez/Maduro and thus decided to not sell stuff anymore or decided to sell stuff at a bigger price just because they want to give Venezuelans a hard time and blame it onto Chavez/Maduro. That's just silly. Prices are dictated by the market.

What does that mean?, let me explain it with an simple example, let's say we got this guy called greedy capitalist n°1 and this other guy called greedy capitalist n°2. They both sell toilet paper, and it costs 1,5$ to produce 1 roll of toilet paper. Guy n°1, being the greedy bourgoise he is, decided to sells it a 1 million $ so he would make a profit of 999,999$, but hey, nobody his buying his stuff!, why?, well because it's so expensive!, so here comes Guy n°2 and sells each roll for 10$ each and PEOPLE are buying it!. Guy n°1 realizes that people will not buy stuff at absurd prices, so he changes the price to 8$, and now he's selling, but guy n°2 is running out of bussiness, so he changes the price to 5$.... and this circle continues, until a fixed and naturally set price comes to happen. That's what we call market, prices dictated BY the people, not some numbers some guy decided to because he felt like it.

Let's say that the price ended in 3$, then the government come in and say that it's to expensive for the poor, so they must sell it at 2$ (or even lower that the 1.5$ needed to produce it) so, one of the guys say "Hey, wtf!, this is not worth it anymore, I can go to this other country and still sell my stuff at 3$ there but not here?, screw this! I'm going there!" And BAM!, shortages happen.

That happened in Venezuela, happened in the URSS and will happen in any country a price control is set.

Videos explaining this very same issue:

Venezuela Police Confiscate Toilet Paper

Venezuela Has No Toilet Paper and Is Still Terrible

What's the end game?

You could ask the same thing to the people in Ukraine, Lybia, ect. And most of them would likely say the same thing as us, "We don't know, we just wants these people to be taken out of office".

Look, we're no politicians, no economists, no lawyers, but we know things are fucked up in here because we deal with them everyday. Maybe time will dictate what will happen, but for us, common citizens, there's not other goal than to be able to live a decent life, not worrying everyday that some thug may rob or even kill you in every corner you pass by; Not struggling to find some toilet paper; That and many other things is what we want to change. How?, we don't know. That's the truth.

I once saw a photo (from a friend in Venezuela) that made me think...It was a picture of an ugly looking protest in Argentina with the caption "this is how the rest of the world protests" and then a picture of several people on their blackberries with the caption "this is how Venezuela protests." How is this different than previous protests?

Yes, the fact is, most people just complained about stuff on the SNS, but never really did anything about it. This time is different, things are worse than ever, and now people that previously did nothing now are actively going out and callying other people to go. Everyday there's more people joining the protest and not just laidback complaining on the internet.

Thanks for your good wishes, we really hope to finally make a difference now.

In theory, a Venezuelan could go to Colombia and buy the goods there, but since the Bolivar (Venezuela's currency) is worth almost nothing nobody is going to exchange you that money at the official exchange rate but the black market one. So you would actually buy even less stuff there than here, despite the struggles people goes through to buy them.