By Luis Manuel Aguana
After the economic measures
announced, the Maduro regime returned to their own way of trying to tie down
food prices. After removing 5 zeros from the amounts of all the economically
active population's bank accounts, instead of taking measures that directly
affected the causes of the blistering hyperinflation that plagues us, the
regime went to control prices. In other words, back to the beginning of the
cycle. They want the private sector to pay an unpayable minimum wage after 90
days, which the regime says it will pay in the beginning, but which companies
cannot pay because they do not have a money-making machine.
It reminded me of the famous joke
about the reaction of a capitalist, a fascist and a communist to the infidelity
of their wives. The first one beats her, the second one kills her, but the
third one protests in front of the United States Embassy. And that is what the
communists who run the economy of Nicolas Maduro are doing, they continue to
blame the "economic war" of the empire. They want to make the
population believe that putting supermarket managers in prison or forcing
production entrepreneurs to put up a forced price will control inflation.
Meanwhile, for 90 days, Venezuelans
will have the illusion of having "increased" their minimum wage from
a single blow to $30, courtesy of the clowns of the economic magic circus of
the Maduro regime. They have already begun badly by saying that they will pay
pensions in three parts starting in September and that companies will have to
register their payrolls so that the difference between the current minimum wage
and the new one (180 million Bolívares fuertes or 1800 million Bolívares
soberanos) could be paid by the regime through the Homeland Card during the
first 90 days. It is clear that in that time the employers will be doing the
math to get rid of the employees or close their businesses. If nothing else is
done, it won't be long before those zeros grow back.
"In the majority of the work groups established between the
national government and businessmen, for the discussion of prices of 25
products of the basic basket, no agreements were reached, according to the
president of Fedecámaras, Carlos Larrazábal. (see Panorama in Spanish, El Presidente de Fedecámaras
aseguró que la mayoría de precios de productos no fueron acordados, en https://www.panorama.com.ve/politicayeconomia/Presidente-Fedecamaras-aseguro-que-la-mayoria-de-precios-de-productos-no-fueron-acordados-20180823-0026.html).
But the prices not yet agreed upon
were published in Resolution No. VSE-001-2018
of the Extraordinary Official Gazette No. 6,397 dated Tuesday, August 21 (see in
Spanish Contrapunto, Se acabo la espera: los 25 productos con precios acordados
en bolívares soberanos, en
According to this note, very
important companies such as Arroz Cristal, La Lucha, Industrias Diana, Coposa,
Central Azucarero El Palmar, Pastas Capri, Pastas Sindoni, Corporación
Venezolana de Café, Cargill de Venezuela and Alimentos Polar agreed with the
regime, even against the cost structure, as the President of Fedecámaras
suggested. Are these important businessmen
accepting the imposition of the regime by assuming in their cost structure a
difference that would destroy their companies, or are they playing into
Maduro's hands by accepting an inflationary subsidy for food production? In
either case the situation is perverse and very dangerous.
This puts us here in a complex and
at the same time very delicate discussion: To what extent are the businessmen
supporting the regime and what is the limit that can be reached to give
continuity to a situation that is impossible to sustain? There is no one like
entrepreneurs to know that in a communist regime there is no chance of the
company surviving. Private property has no place in this form of visualizing
economic relations between people. So why give the regime oxygen to keep
prolonging people's suffering? They have expropriated, humiliated and ruined
the private sector, and destroyed more than half of this country's GDP in 5
years. To continue producing with what is left so that these people can
continue to fortify themselves with the food of the population, because they
are the ones who have brutally increased the price of the food distribution
chain through their mafias, is nothing less than suicidal.
Some of them may argue that there
are threats such as expropriations or jail for businessmen or that it is
necessary to continue producing because there is a great need in Venezuela. All
this is true, but all these reasons could have been valid at the beginning of
this tragedy, which has now reached unsustainable levels. Today we are already
in a life dilemma in which we must decide if it is them or us. In this there is
an extraordinary ethical and moral component that every entrepreneur must weigh
up well within his or her own situation. If you don't lose it today, you will
surely lose it very soon tomorrow.
Franklin Brito went on an
indeclinable hunger strike that cost him his life because his farm was
expropriated and he did not give in to the bribes offered by the regime (see in
Spanish El Estímulo, Franklin Brito, la inmortalidad cumple 7 años
http://elestimulo.com/climax/franklin-brito-la-inmortalidad-cumple-siete-anos/).
In the same way, in a
little-known facet of entrepreneurship, former Ambassador Diego Arria's
production hacienda "Las Carolinas" was also expropriated because of
his open opposition to the regime. This place produced "2,500 liters of
milk daily, has about 250 head of cattle, has about 80 hectares of crops and
generates 30 direct jobs" (see in Spanish, Confiscan hacienda a crítico de
Chávez, en https://www.elnuevoherald.com/noticias/mundo/america-latina/venezuela-es/article2004973.html). And so, the more than 200,000
companies that have vanished in the last 20 years are too scandalous a cemetery
for entrepreneurs to look the other way. We have all arrived at the arrival
point, and the remaining entrepreneurs, who sooner or later will be forced to
face the situation, cannot escape from this.
It is not the first time that
entrepreneurs have believed that they can survive through a dictatorship. In an
excellent work that relates the business situation in Spain during the Franco
era, it is highlighted: "Those who
thought that the dictatorship would bring the desired order to business, found
themselves with an authoritarian, protective, one-party, interventionist state,
willing to sacrifice the development and welfare of the population for the sake
of its consolidation. The economic policy was designed by a military
government, which reserved a capacity for intervention superior to that of
previous stages, transforming the traditional link between the business world
and the political world..." (see in Spanish, Empresarios y política en la dictadura de Franco
https://www.jstor.org/stable/41325087,
Dictadura y Empresarios, pág. 149). Nothing
different is happening in Venezuela with this dictatorship, even worse, because
in a communist system the days of the private sector are counted.
But it will not be until business
people "learn the lesson of dictatorship" that things begin to
change, as they did in 1958. This was stated by former President Don Rómulo
Betancourt in a historic interview by Carlos Rangel and Sofía Imber in their
extraordinary morning program, " Buenos Días ", in 1978. Don Rómulo
said:"...And also something very
important: in addition to the workers' forces that had always been within his
union militantly fighting for democracy, in 1958 there was an awareness of the
business sector. Then the business sector, which had already learned the hard
lessons of the 10 years of dictatorship, cooperated in the formation of this
great democratic front. The Armed Forces had also learned the lesson of the
dictatorship. A dictatorship that spoke on behalf of the Armed Forces but from
which the dictator benefited, a small gang of unconditional people in uniform
and a vast influx of civilians, contractors, lawyers, engineers, and the
government of the Armed Forces was a government of the dictator and a gang of
opportunists..." (see in Spanish, Sofia Imber y Carlos Rangel
entrevistan a Rómulo Betancourt, en https://youtu.be/_ZlZm5Uxg00 min 10:30).
When the
real businessmen, those who put their principles before their pockets, learn
that lesson from the dictatorship', by separating the wheat from the chaff, and
by differentiating themselves completely from the vast influx of civilians,
contractors' and the clique of profiteers' of the regime that Betancourt
mentioned, they will be able to take a step forward in the definitive recovery
of freedom in Venezuela. Without their help, the regime will never be able to
survive....
Caracas,
August 23, 2018
Email: luismanuel.aguana@gmail.com
Twitter:@laguana
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