There are those who say that the definition of “insanity” is doing something over and over, and expecting a different result. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
As, for example, nations trying out socialism. As Venezuela has done, and whose endgame was predicted three generations ago:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 1944, Friedrich Hayek warned in The Road to Serfdom that tyranny inevitably results when a government exercises complete control of the economy through central planning. Over half a century later, beginning with Hugo Ch\u00e1vez\u2019s revolution, Venezuela began its own road to serfdom by expropriating thousands of businesses and even entire industries. The more fortunate companies left before it was too late, while the businesses that remained were handed over to the Venezuelan military, under whose oversight they were neglected into ruins. In a typical demonstration of class warfare, the government publicly vilified these business owners as unpatriotic, greedy lackeys of American interests, claiming that Venezuela\u2019s poverty had been a direct result of their existence.<\/p>
Chavismo created an atmosphere of distrust in which no one felt safe enough to invest in Venezuela. More important, the courts were no longer the place to get redress. Since 1999, the Venezuelan judiciary had been systematically stacked with judges loyal to the executive. Twenty years after socialism took hold of the country, Venezuela has hit rock bottom on every possible development index. Today, 90 percent of Venezuelans are living below the poverty line and inflation rates exceed 1 million percent. Record numbers of children are dying from malnutrition, and nearly all of the country\u2019s hospitals are either inoperative or in critical need of basic medical supplies. Frequent nationwide power outages have left, at times, up to 70 percent of Venezuela in darkness. Ch\u00e1vez\u2019s socialist agenda purported to be in service of the entire nation, but as Hayek reminds us, \u201cthe pursuit of some of [the] most cherished ideals . . . [produces] results utterly different from those which we expected.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
But that’s not the most <\/em>comprehensive defenition. To be truly comprehensive, you’d need to add the clause “and then import it to the United States”:<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
[Seattle] reporter Eric Johnson recently released a documentary called Seattle is Dying<\/em> which dared to document the city\u2019s collapse into Third World status.
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