Venezuela Issues Law of Fair Prices, Prohibiting Profits Over 30%. The Fair Prices Act, an instrument with which the Government of Nicolas Maduro intends to control prices and eliminate shortages, includes penalties of up to 10 years imprisonment for hoarders.
…..read more HERE
Invoking price controls and laws to prevent hoarding and “excess” profits is a sure sign that a government is utterly inept.
It does not occur to these mental midgets that the solution is freer — not more restrictive — markets. Their actions are pouring gasoline on the fire.
We’ve been down this road before. US and Canada both tried wage and price controls in the 1970s, a disastrous failure. The former USSR exercised complete wage and price controls. The result was an absolute shortage of goods of all kinds. Things got so bad, and there was such a shortage of railway locomotives, that railway yards were reduced to stealing rolling stock and locomotives from their neighbours.
Throughout history there have been zero successes with governments attempting to control directly the economy. How many times must this be repeated before people and governments understand that it doesn’t work?
Throughout history there have been zero successes with governments attempting to control directly the economy. How many times must this be repeated before people and governments understand that it doesn’t work?
Forever cgh.
It used to be called good and evil.
Could you imagine the penalty for charging 31% markup on a new door knob?
Oh wait you said Venezuela not Vancouver. I couldn’t tell one from the other for a moment.
To the left, this man is an economic genius. To the left anything that is left to it’s own devices is a gaping hole that must be filled with socialist policy. Always fixing the unbroken.
And people continue to say Ayn Rand was crazy, that this could never really happen.
Yes, sounds like Canada’s old wage and price controls. The government created inflation as a matter of policy and legislated against business and workers to end it. Similarly, Venezuela created its economic mess and is legislating against business to stop it. As usually, business will vote with its feet and the problem will worsen. How stupid are these guys? At least as stupid as Pierre Truseau.
Three things hit me:
– Conrad Black believes FDR saved capitalism.
– FDR jailed people for breaking the price codes.
– It DOES work.
Oh, I know, it doesn’t work for the general economy, but that’s never the objective anyway.
Any economic benefits that flow from political action are happy unintended consequences.
I got that sudden epiphany once while re-reading von Mises who kept repeating that if only politicians understood that their methods would not achieve their intended objectives; Mises never got that those weren’t their objectives.
Our economy is riddled with price controls albeit in more subtle forms than those of the Venezuelan strong man.
I came here to say that, myself. This reads like it’s straight out of the pages of Atlas Shrugged.
“Conrad Black believes FDR saved capitalism.”
And I always believed Black was exceedingly intelligent. Goes to show ….
And I always thought that an appreciation of Keynesian economics and WWII saved capitalism.
Overheard in Castro’s inner sanctum……
“Dang! I wish I had thought of that.”
The only benefit of this real time groundhog day disaster is that since proper history is no longer taught in public schools, perhaps some will observe the on-going disastrous results of the teachings of their professoriate. “This time will be different blah blah blah……..”
And yes, Atlas Shrugged is no longer fiction. It’s evil parts seem to have become a manual for the institutional left. Has anyone found the Gulch?
King Canute could not be reached for comment.
Government makes a mess of things, then expects businesses to change their “behaviour” to fix everything. The same logic is used for carbon taxes, and it both cases, governments get lots of tax dollars with no strings attached, but of course, making society better for all of them, I mean us.
Venezuela is going down the toilet bowl fast these days.
I blame the new regime. It is far more serious and dedicated towards the Bolivarian Revoltuion than Chavez, who had the saving grace of being an inept scatter brain.
This is probably a good thread to insert some Frederic Bastiat, The Law, 1850.
A foundational work for all good libertarians and, from personal experience, a book that can actually recruit a mushy headed but sincere pilgrim into libertarianism.
The Law, passages in digestible cartoon format, tho come to think of it Bastiat’s scintillating writing needs no assistance:
http://americandigest.org/mt-archives/5minute_arguments/chronicle_of_a_death_fore.php
And again, one of the very best tips on this board: EBD’s suggestion to bookmark American Digest.
SCAR… I was in the vending business during the 70’s. it was very profitable. wage and price controls had almost no effect on our profit. what did have a major effect was the government induced inflation. the money supply had been increased so much that I believe in reality, not government stats, the dollar had lost all of it’s value over a ten year period. that is not to say it was worthless but the cost of living had gone crazy and 19-20% mortgage rates were the norm in 1980.
30%? Outrageous. Why should be be allowed to make any profit at all? Bloodsuckers. Capitalists have been despoiling the world and impoverishing us for millennia. They should be our slaves. It’s reparations for past crimes. Social justice now! Venezuela leads the way.
There was a famous case in the Land of the Free back in 1942– Wickard v. Filburn. Filburn was a North Dakota farmer. At the time, farmers were forbidden to produce “excess” wheat on their land. This was to help keep wheat prices up. Filburn grew and harvested wheat in excess of his allotment. The excess amount was not sold, but fed to his own chickens on his property. He was ordered to destroy his crop and pay a fine. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court.”The Court decided that Filburn’s wheat growing activities reduced the amount of wheat he would buy for chicken feed on the open market, and because wheat was traded nationally, Filburn’s production of more wheat than he was allotted was affecting interstate commerce. Thus, Filburn’s production could be regulated by the federal government.”
Who needs farmers anyway? Everybody knows food comes from Safeway.
They’ll be cheering this news at B.C. NDP headquarters,and the comments at the Tyee will be something to read.
exactly, no matter how preposterous the idea, she already had it covered.
Price controls have never worked. Since the time of Hammurabi,
they have resulted in mass starvation or worse.
The People of Venezuela are about to have a very bad time.
“Hoarding” is a pretty loose term.
I wonder how much cash, land, and other forms of real estate Nicolas Maduro and his crony friends “hoard”?
As a former Trade Union Leader, one could start with his hoarding of power.
If you bank at HSBC in England, don’t plan on making any large cash withdrawals. At least not without a good explanation. Or, maybe even a permission slip.
That’s because a previously unannounced change in banking policy is blocking some customers from making large withdrawals without “evidence” explaining why they need the money from their accounts .
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/prove-it–bank-blocking-customers-from-making-large-withdrawals-without–evidence–of-spending-need-222425920.html
Thankfully, people always get the government they deserve.
Dhimmi, Scar,
Keep in mind that when FDR was doing his thing, countries were falling to socialism and communism around the world. There was a pretty strong feeling that there might be a workers revolution here in the United States in the late 20s and early 30s and some of what they did was in reaction to that possibility. IF he managed to stave off a revolution, then there might be a reasonable argument that he saved capitalism. Unfortunately, it’s not possible to ever know what might have happened.
cgh, well said. Stealing rolling stock and locomotives were not the only items stolen in the Soviet Union.
Anything not nailed down was fair game, and it is not much different today. We hired a local tour guide to visit the village where my mother was born and on the way I saw a tractor and cultivator on the edge of a field and a tractor and folded harrow on the road side. I asked the guide to stop as I wanted to see the farm equipment up close. He stopped and said wait here until I find the owners first, as they think someone will steal stuff off the equipment or even the equipment.
Ayn Rand was right in so many ways.
Ayn Rand was right in so many ways.
Find yer Gulch. “There is no way to rule innocent men”
And somewhere, in a land far away, a government was banning 100W light bulbs, telling you what toilet to buy, letting unions and leftists take over the education system, bending over for radical green fraudsters, supporting kangaroo “human rights” tribunals, and funding the state broadcaster to the tune of about $1 billion per year so that it can peddle its lies day in and day out.
and doling out $66 million to the Terrorist Authority, and $400 million in foreign assistance to fight global warming and $44 billion to Lockheed Martin, and helping out Toyota and Ford, and bailing out CAW with tens of billions and imposing an ethanol mandate and …
Bono’s advice:
“In dealing with poverty here and around the world, welfare and foreign aid are a Band-Aid. Free enterprise is a cure.
“Entrepreneurship is the most sure way of development.”
You get the idea Rizwan…and also, in a land far away, the state broadcaster gets a guaranteed feed into every home, while a struggling upstart operating in the free market, with fresh ideas that challenge the status quo, gets treated in a way that is guaranteed to ensure it eventually fails. And the *one* government that should and could have dealt with the state broadcaster did nothing.
The pathway to a socialist hole in the ground like Venezuela is a very short one.
Go to the Yellowknife CIBC and ask for $6000 cash.
I was amused,amazed and will be buying silver.
Apparently they can only allow the owner of the money to have $3000/day .
So of course I enquired; “What you don’t have any money?”
Pathetic, now I always tell them I am purchasing illicit drugs, when asked of my reasons for cash..
Venezuela is the future for Alberta under Alison the Red.
The BEST website about those f*cking loser Chavistas.
http://caracaschronicles.com/