Dateline 2025: Brazil’s legislature today approved the construction of yet another border fence on their border with Venezuela. The three existing fences have not discouraged the starving masses from attempting to flee famine-stricken Venezuela. Hugo Chavez Jr. today decried Brazil’s newest attempt to keep his people from attempting to find food and employment in neighboring Brazil. Millions of Venezuelans already have braved the dense jungles of the border in the search for food and a chance at prosperity. Chavez also reported an increase in the expected harvest of both potatoes and turnips this year from the nation’s farm collectives. “I am glad to report today that the glorious people of Venezuela have through monumental exertion greatly decreased the numbers of their comrades who will die of starvation this year!” Ever since the collapse of the world oil markets nearly 15 years ago due to our current, cheaper fuel’s discovery, Venezuela has had very few sources of foreign hard currency with which to purchase foodstuffs from abroad. This has led to massive emigration waves to neighboring countries and has prompted those countries to take extreme measures to keep out the numerous refugees.
A commissar in the Soviet Union went out to one of those state collective farms, grabbed the first worker he came to and said, ‘Comrade, how are the crops?’ “’Oh,’ he said, ‘Comrade Commissar, if we could put the potatoes in one pile, they would reach the foot of God.’” “And the commissar said, ‘This is the Soviet Union. There is no God.’ and he said, ‘That’s all right, there are no potatoes.’
- Ronald Reagan
Nice.
I like the fact that you don’t fall for the usual pitfall for future predictions... picking a date that is unrealistically early... but I think you’re actually over-estimating Venezuela’s stability. Zimbabwe, the bread-basket of Africa, collapsed just a few years after the farms were taken. I’ll say Venezuela gets crunched in about 2013-2015.