Let’s give one cheer for the failure of President Hugo Chavez to make himself president-for-life. Venezuelans voted down his proposed constitutional “reforms.” As Frank Bajak reports:
Foes of the reform effort - including Roman Catholic leaders, media freedom groups, human rights groups and prominent business leaders - said it would have granted Chavez unchecked power and imperiled basic rights.
It’s a sad fact of the modern age that the folks just arriving in the city from the farm—the working class, if you like—experience life as a battle against the powerful.
So they vote for leaders who will fight for them against the powerful.
Unfortunately nearly all such leaders end up fighting the economy and leading their people to economic ruin.
Because whatever the working class may think, the market economy gives them the best prospects for a decent life—both in the short term and in the long term.
What workers should be doing is voting for politicians who will dismantle all the economic privileges that have been put in place to help the existing elite. But they don’t. They think that the answer to their economic struggle is to vote for a guy who will give them privileges.
When you make a mistake like that in this world, it ends up costing you big time. And it looks as thought Venezuelans are already beginning to experience the inevitable result of a government that meddles recklessly with the national economy.
What is unconscionable is that media, educational, and cultural elites won’t tell the people the truth: that privileges, subsidies, and government handouts harm the people they are supposed to help.
Why won’t they? Probably because they too are clueless about the extraordinary system of democratic capitalism that we have built in the last two hundred years. After all, if you wrote for a living, taught school for a living, or acted in movies or TV what would you know about the reality of making products and services for the consumer?
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