Venezuela’s socialist revolution runs out of bog roll

After ten years of the late presidente Hugo Chavez’s policy of bribing the poor by subsidising the cost of basic goods, Venezuelans have run out of toilet power. Supplies of sugar, cooking oil and corn flour – amongst other basic necessities - are also in short supply. Chavez’s hand-picked socialist successor has pledged to solve the bum-fodder problem by importing 50 million rolls – but as the population is over 29 million, relief is likely to be temporary.

The war-time phrase “one for up, one for down and one for polish” would suggest that every Venezuelan is going to need between three and six sheets a day, the solution might keep the skid-marks at bay for a couple of months – but, given that the average person uses 8.6 sheets per visit these days and the average roll contains between 350 and 500 sheets, and that distribution will be incompetently, I reckon 50 million rolls will last less than a month.

One of the reasons I’ve given up arguing with left-wingers is that they’re uninterested in the results of the policies they champion. We rightists are obsessed with results - we want to implement policies that work, so we generally require some evidence that they will: we look for examples of where similar policies have worked either in our own country, or abroad. If you’re a left-winger, the last thing you look for is evidence of a policy’s likely success: in fact, it’s worse than that – no amount of evidence that similar policies have failed wherever they’ve been tried will dent their enthusiasm, because, as I’ve often pointed out, their only real concern is how championing and implementing initiatives makes them feel. The confirmation of their own moral superiority that results from supporting a victim-supporting policy is the reward they seek – whether it actually improves lives is neither here nor there.

Lefties aren’t necessarily aware that results don’t matter to them: because they’re so addicted to spouting nonsense that makes them feel good, they seem capable of convincing themselves that either (a) something that has never worked before will – for reasons which are never articulated – work splendidly this time round (if we all join hands and wish very very hard), or (b) the policy actually has worked in the past and we’ve just misinterpreted the fact that lots of people died or suffered hardship as a sign of failure. When their dumb policies fail – as they always do - rather than face the fact that they got it wrong (yet again) they convince themselves enemies of the state (or the revolution or whatever) sabotaged their brilliant initiative. Every failed socialist policy ends in a search for scapegoats: these usually turn out to be the very people who warned the socialists that their crappy policy wouldn’t work when it was first mooted. In Venezuela’s case, the "disruptive" media are apparently responsible for the lack of loo rolls.

I’ve recently been reading Irving Babbitt, a conservative American cultural critic of the early 20th century, who was deeply suspicious of self-pleasing, left-wing do-gooders (whom he described as "humanitarians"). He nailed their capacity for self-deception some ninety years ago: “nothing short of the suicide of the planet would avail to convince the humanitarians that anything is wrong with their theory – and even then, the last surviving humanitarian would no doubt continue to moan conspiracy.”

Quite.

Venezuela’s current shortages are partly the result currency controls introduced by our liberal media's poster-boy Hugo Chavez to stop the flight of capital that resulted from his insane plundering of private business to finance wealth redistribution. Inevitably, there now isn’t enough foreign currency available to buy the raw material and machinery needed by Venezuelanindustry. Well, doh! Venezuela’s foreign minister this week claimed “We are making progress…we have to work very hard.” Chilling words – when left-wing politicians work very hard, you know things are going to get even worse.