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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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 Posted: Thu Oct 23, 2008 10:22 am Post subject: Venezuela struggles to keep lights on |
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SAN FELIX, Venezuela (Reuters) � Despite having some of the world's largest energy reserves, Venezuela is increasingly struggling to maintain basic electrical service, a growing challenge for leftist President Hugo Chavez.
The OPEC nation has suffered three nationwide blackouts this year, and chronic power shortages have sparked protests from the western Andean highlands to San Felix, a city of mostly poor industrial workers in the sweltering south.
Shoddy electrical service is now one of Venezuelans' top concerns, according to a recent poll, and may be a factor in elections next month for governors and mayors in which Chavez allies are expected to lose key posts, in part on complaints of poor services.
The problem suggests that Chavez, with his ambitious international alliances and promises to end capitalism, risks alienating supporters by failing to focus on basic issues like electricity, trash collection and law enforcement.
"With so much energy in Venezuela, how can we be without power?" asked Fernando Aponte, 49, whose slum neighborhood of Las Delicias in San Felix spent 15 days without electricity -- leading him to block a nearby avenue with burning tires in protest.
Just next door, Carmen Fernandez, 82, who is blind and has a pacemaker, says she has trouble sleeping through sultry nights without even a fan to cool her.
Experts say Venezuela for years has skimped billions of dollars in electrical investments, leaving generation 20 percent below the level necessary for a stable power grid and increasing the risk of national outages. Officially Venezuela has a capacity of 22,500 megawatts for a population of 28 million people, but a sizeable proportion is not working, analysts say.
And while Chavez has won praise for investing in health and education, his government has done little to repair local distribution systems that deliver electricity to end users, from barrio residents to business and industries. |
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081023/wl_nm/us_venezuela_electricity
You'd think that the 3/4 of a trillion or so in petro-dollars that Venezuela has received in the last 10 years would have been sufficient to keep the energy grid up to spec. Maybe there are some incentive issues? |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Thu Oct 23, 2008 10:39 am Post subject: |
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| Experts say Venezuela for years has skimped billions of dollars in electrical investments, leaving generation 20 percent below the level necessary for a stable power grid and increasing the risk of national outages. Officially Venezuela has a capacity of 22,500 megawatts for a population of 28 million people, but a sizeable proportion is not working, analysts say. |
Corruption. You find it in government, too.
Part of the problem with having a large public sector is the government is the government. As such, it has less of an incentive (as Mises hints) to correct itself. Whereas legislators would be less likely to sanction/support, then follow through with private companies, the government's Cadafe monopoly may have less of an incentive.
It can be even worse if funds are being misappropriated. This, of course, happens in the private sector as well. Nevertheless, directors of corporations are bound by fiduciary duties and are checked in their abuses by shareholders and the board, who can bring their corruption to trial. In the public sector, well, I guess it depends on the country.
But, ultimately, I don't know if this is a corruption problem or even an incentive problem. It could just be massive human error. |
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ontheway
Joined: 24 Aug 2005
Location: Somewhere under the rainbow...
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| Posted: Thu Oct 23, 2008 10:52 am Post subject: |
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| It could just be massive human error. |
Indeed. The people elected Chavez.
Socialism always fails, sometimes it fails slowly, sometimes quickly, but it always fails. |
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