Venezuela has a bread shortage. The government has decided bakers are the problem. (Makes sense?)

Socialism can not calculate prices effectively. This is socialism’s (of various kinds) fatal flaw.

Real prices, honest prices, often reflect a reality that the powers that be in socialist systems don’t like. As such the powers that be start looking for reasons, any reasons other than the real ones, for why their particular economy is failing. They often conjure boogeymen.

You see it’s reactionary capitalists undermining the system. They are trying to extract the people’s surplus value. And so on and so on.

Nope. It’s government mandated price controls that distort the market and then compound themselves down the line. That’s it. That’s always it.

(From The Miami Herald)

Two bakeries were also seized for 90 days for breaking a number of rules, including selling overpriced bread.

Juan Crespo, the president of the Industrial Flour Union called Sintra-Harina, which represents 9,000 bakeries nationwide, said the government’s heavy hand isn’t going to solve the problem.

“The government isn’t importing enough wheat,” he said. “If you don’t have wheat, you don’t have flour, and if you don’t have flour, you don’t have bread.”

He said the country needs four, 30-ton boats of wheat every month to cover basic demand.

The notion that bread could become an issue in Venezuela is one more indictment of an economic system gone bust. The country boasts the world’s largest oil reserves but it has to import just about everything else. Facing a cash crunch, the government has dramatically cut back imports, sparking shortages, massive lines and fueling triple-digit inflation.

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