Kelinfort wrote:As opposed to price ceilings the government created? It's obvious the government used the high price of oil to buy foreign goods because their price controls effectively killed domestic production of food and other goods.
Actually most of the price control was setup _after_ the oil price started to fall, in order to try to stop inflation. It didn't work very well, but you're inverting the causes and consequences right there.
Kelinfort wrote:Now that the boom days are gone, they cannot afford to import all their goods. As a result, either the prices will go up or there will be massive shortages.
That's part of the truth, but not related to anything Chávez or Maduro did - Venezuela was already importing nearly all their goods when they arrived. As for the shortages, some of them are due to falling oil prices, but many targeted shortage (for one month no toilet paper, for one month no oil, ...) are organized by the shop owners and import network owners, because they are political enemies of the government, regularly warehouses full of products in "shortage" but not delivered to stores are found.
But anyway that's out of the topic - the initial rermark that Venezuela proves central planning doesn't work is false, since Venezuela doesn't use central planning.
