After years of braying about ‘food security’ – Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez has accomplished the opposite of that: widespread empty shelves for basic food stocks like meat and sugar, throughout Venezuelan grocery stores, duplicating Soviet-style food shortages. The next step will be rationing.

As of now, only chicken feet can be bought, according to this AP report. The brutal dictator is repeating the failures of Castrodom in Cuba, as he completely politicizes the economic realm. Chavez is also yelling about ‘speculators’ when the fact is, these food shortages are the natural result of Chavista control over the economy.

This goes down to the basis economic element that is communism’s Achilles Heel – its insistence on determining prices. Communist commissars set prices with little knowledge of what really makes an economy work. They just announce them by fiat, and force the whole market to distort to their diktat. That’s why Soviet factories cranked out the world’s shoddiest merchandise, and Chinese factories produce the world’s worst water pollution on China’s rivers. It’s why Ukrainian factories were experts at producing 10,000 pairs of left shoes, and why Latvians learned to stand in line once for a ticket to stand in line, got a ticket, stood in line to get a loaf of bread, then stood in line to pay for that bread, all of it taking a full day’s work. This is communism, in all its aspects, in action. But the root cause of it the same as it is of these new meat shortages in Caracas: the urge to set a price – against the will of the market, which prices in spontaneously what an object is really worth.

Today, the food shortages are there, affecting nearly a third of the food supply. It started with cattle ranches and sugar, but extended to chocolate, coffee and oil. Whole sectors of the Venezuelan economy are being run into the ground. As a result, Venezuelans are finding themselves with nothing. They have oil earnings to import food, but why should they be importing food when they should be maintaining their oil facilities or giving their shareholders a dividend? No, they will have to spend it on food and after they spend it on food, they will be beggars before they collapse, same as the monstrous regime of Fidel Castro.

Guess who’s going to have to clean this all up in the end?

Read Miguel’s translation of a fine VenEconomia piece here.

UPDATE: Here’s an excellent a short analysis as any I’ve seen on what the motivation is behind these food shortages is. Read it here.