The story, from an AP wire item, explained that an opposition leader was being ‘held at a military jail’ for his opposition to ‘15 years of socialist rule.’
This particular leader was named Leopoldo Lopez, and the dictator who put him in jail was Nicolas Maduro, but the general pattern of a liberty-seeking dissident being jailed by a socialist dictator has been the pattern for several decades in Venezuela.
The net impact of socialism in Venezuela follows a standard pattern which was clear in the various Soviet-bloc countries until 1990. The planned economy with high taxes and extreme regulation of all aspects of business, along with state ownership of almost all assets, leads to declining standards of living and brutal repression of civil rights and human rights.
These symptoms lingered and intensified both during the decade of rule by dictator Hugo Chavez, and during the reign of his successor, Nicolas Maduro.
The declining standards of living led to outright poverty, with shortages in basic goods, like food and toilet paper. Medical care deteriorated, and the average lifespan among Venezuela citizens’s shortened considerably.
By 2018, the condition of the nation was desperate, with many citizens near starvation. These sad developments were, however, reliably predictable twenty years earlier: such is the pattern of socialist governments.
