How Bad Economics Destroyed Venezuela

Motion graphics by Vincent de Langen
Writing & Direction by Evan

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[midimusicforever]

Norway solved the resource curse. They put the oil money in a fund and only use the earnings from that fund for spending. It evens out the booms and busts a lot.

[gmo]

I’m from Venezuela. This is very accurate. The only info missing is that Chavez, over the course of a decade, ordered to take away many businesses from owners and give it to his friends in the military. Big cement companies, oil, paper companies, small, medium and large manufacturers, etc suddenly where being run at 1/4 capacity because they didn’t know how to run it. That meant the limited supply of items created a huge supply side inflation that the government tried to appease with importing from china but at limited capacity. Also, Chavez wasn’t giving dollars to anyone that wasn’t part of his political party so those companies closed up and left. The rest is what it’s in the video about exchange rates, printing money etc.

[josedelgado]

I left Venezuela a year ago and there's a correction I want to make on this video. The gas prices situation changed after the pandemic, now you need around 20 dollars to fill up your tank. That is not so bad compared to, for example, New York, but is not the cheap gasoline we had a decade ago. Good video.

[Nhkg]

All the economic problems are just the result of politics and corruption...
I have a friend from Venezuela and I remember her writing to me about the protests against Chavez. But as things got worse, her whole family fled to Europe. Luckily her family has Italian ancestors and therefore Italian passports, so getting into the EU was no problem for them.

[jerry]

This is why economists assume people will act selfish. It’s completely unrealistic to assume that everyone will get together to bail out a corrupt government

[WildermanJNM]

It feels so weird living in Venezuela and watching this video in 2023. This feels like a 2019 video. All of the things said in this video are true and it's a very well researched account of our economic disaster. But it's obsolete. Many things said here aren't really true in present-day Venezuela

[OmerE.C]

It's not oil that destroyed Venezuela, but the bad management of scarce resources.
In fact, resource management is the reason for the success and failure of almost all economies

[GeorgeN]

Venezuela : the worst economic storm in history
Lebanon : Hold my arak habibi

[jorgepalacios]

I'm a Venezuelan migrant and I cannot thank you enough for this video. It summarizes everything very well in a knowledge pill long enough not to be a trouble and not too short to leave several stuff outside.

Thank you. I cried because people need to know this all around the world. THANK YOU

[winyoutube]

0:23 that price for gas in Venezuela is partially true. The majority of gas stations and the majority of people get gas for 2 $ / gal. Only very few gas stations you have subsidize price and you have to wait from 8 hours to 2 days to get it because the line of cars is huge and when the gas in that station ends, the next gas truck to fill the gas station will arrive many hours later

[biocapsule]

It's basically like every single-industry town or settlement, except on a national level. When a mine run dry in a mining town, the town dies. But on a national level, the government have the capacity but not the know-how to turn things around.

[Gaboarincon]

I am from Venezuela and I remember when I began to understand what oil and revenue was, back a few years ago. Couldn’t get in my head why was I living in such country with such resource at hand…

[CGKey]

Unless the only intention of Polymatter here is to talk about the past and not the immediate present of Venezuela, this video is now outdated. The situation regarding currency exchange, gas prices and many other things have changed (in some cases for the better).

Still, this is a really good description of 2013-2019, arguably the single worst economic crisis Venezuela has gone through.

[mhdibm]

What many don't know is that a very similar but less severe situation has happened here in sudan and nothing seems to be improving

[AkkumuLBC]

Being born and raised in Venezuela I can confirm that literally everything about this video is correct.
Like, no wonder a lot of venezuelan people are leaving the country and pretty much all of them have accepted that it's on the best of their interests to never go back to Venezuela. Instead, they get their family members out of there one way or another, whether it's getting a contact that can get them through the border to wherever they're going (Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, etc) or just going Hail Mary and crossing the border illegally by themselves.
Here in Peru there's at least 1.6 million venezuelans, with ~1 million of them living in Metropolitan Lima (myself included) and I'm yet to see a single one of them wanting to go back to Venezuela, despite any struggles they've gone through (or sometimes any struggle they're currently going through).

Great video btw.

PS: I wanna invite any coñoesumadre who says Venezuela is fine, that the blame is on the population, or that I can't be venezuelan if I can write fluent english to take their racist-ass to Venezuela and try to live there for a year, no USD/EUR/etc allowed.

[theambient]

Oil certainly contributed to the problem, but poor leadership that has maintained a strangle-hold on power is the true issue. Any country in South America that admires how Venezuela is run is out of their mind.

[DEPR]

Your description about the nature of Venezuelan oil is wrong. As far as I know, it’s located way inland and the logistics required for transportation are tough. It’s also a heavier kind of oil that requires a degree of specialization at refineries, so it’s not so easy as you make it sound.

[DanielGonzalezL]

Venezuelan here. We've basically stopped using our currency. Everything is USD now.

[JRavelo]

I've been watching your videos for around a couple years and I'm glad you made one about a subject so personal and close to me as my country.

Yet, it's bittersweet; because is not as consistent as it could've been, and this is a missed chance to explained how a democratic collapse can derivate in a huge economic breakdown and that lead to a humanitarian crisis.

If you wanted to focus only on the economy rather than the policies I could understand but the current situation is the product of 25 years of chavism where both are deeply intertwined (like China) and that the process was progressive and not sudden (like Ukraine).

In any case Big thanks for bringing attention to one overlooked issue during the last decade, O hope this is just one out of a three.

[economicsinaction]

The joys of oil money can go as quickly as they came