No Way to Run a Country

One of the stories about Venezuela that is darkly comic, out in the last couple of weeks, is that now thousands of oilfield workers, including almost all at the professional level, are fleeing the country with little more than the clothes on their backs. Reason? Maduro's answer to dropping oil production and problems in that sector was to arrest a lot of the people running it, and to place a General in charge who knew absolutely nothing about the oil industry. The General's answer to failing equipment and declining production was to bring his goon squads and threaten to shoot anyone who didn't make production go back up again. Surprise, surprise, everyone who has even the slightest bit of expertise is running away as fast as they can.

To run some of the refineries that don't have enough workers anymore, the General has sent in 20 year old illiterates with guns, and the only solution they know to something going wrong is to either yell at it or shoot it. Yep, that's a good way to stop that refinery from exploding.