Venezuela Ban Lines Outside Bakeries.

The tragedy of Venezuela continues unabated, but that doesn't mean the government of President Nicolás Maduro has stopped trying to fix problems like the devastating scarcity of food which has led to malnutrition, riots, food truck hijackings, vigilante lynchings of petty thieves, and the starvation of zoo animals.

No, Maduro hasn't admitted the failure of Chavismo — the brand of Bolivarian socialism imposed on the oil-rich country by his late predecessor Hugo Chavez — instead, Venezuela's embattled leader has launched a war on "anxiety."

The National Superintendency of Fair Prices has reportedly instituted a policy of fining bakeries that allow lines to stretch out their front doors, according to PanAmPost. The head of this particular bureaucracy, William Contreras, claims the lines aren't a true indicator of a severe shortage of bread, but rather, a political "strategy of generating anxiety."

Contreras claims there is no shortage of raw materials to make bread, but seems to not understand that bakeries just bake bread, they don't process the different kinds of wheat used to make the flour that's then used to make bread. But this is indicative of the magical thinking of Venezuela's socialist government: the breakdown of the economy couldn't possibly because of failed economic policy, and scarcity must be the result of a greater conspiracy.

Contreras was also quoted by El Tiempo as saying the long lines represented "fairly clear political intentions and purposes" such as "destabilizing the economy and break[ing] the morale of the people." This is in keeping with Maduro's deflection of the blame he deserves for destroying Venezuela's economy, which he puts at the feet of U.S.-backed agitators engaging in "economic war" by keeping things like toilet paper off supermarket shelves.

(This is pure government propaganda at is finest. Instead of leveling with the people and admitting their mistakes governments always tries to find a way to blame someone else or hide the truth from the people. Venezuela is failed socialist state it's doing everything it can to maintain control of the population it even went as far as forcing citizens to turn in their guns. This new attempt at fixing the problems is forcing an illusion on the people that no lines mean everything is fine and there's no shortage of food but in reality the country is collapsing. The only way to fix this problem is for the people to wake up and realize the government is the problem and once it's out of the way the economy will bounce back and people will have food and jobs again.)

http://reason.com/blog/2016/08/22/venezuelas-ban-lines-at-bakeries-bread