Is Venezuela the biggest missed economic opportunity on the planet right now?

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What about their system of government is so broken that they can’t exploit this?

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They have and they are trying to expand their economy through their vast reserves of oil. This issue or roadblocks to expanding is two fold however:

1. Venezuelian oil is super thick. That makes it difficult to process. One way to process it is to cut it with lighter condensates like naphtha to bring it to market.


2. Monroe Doctrine. The U.S. will cock block as much as possible eastern countries like China from purchasing Venezuelan crude.

The quality of their oil sucks. Quantity =\= quality.

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Yep. Gerald Ford Carrier Strike Group is “exercising” off their coast now.

That’s what I am watching now and what triggered this thread. It baffles me that they got themselves in this position.

Ignoring their political instability and possible cultural incompatibility with accountability. A competent government would also be in an awkward position if they were seen as an economic competitor to the US but discouraged from being a closer trade partner with China. I’m sure their media and populace are highly manipulated right now

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Add into the equation that Venezuela allows Islamic terrorists to train on Margarita Island, just off their coast. Along with China, as you mentioned, we can't allow that shite in our own hemisphere.
Personally, I'd rather see our military cleaning up in our half of the world instead of the ME and Ukraine.

The DRC is a strong contender.

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Explain it to me like I graduated from an SEC school and slept through every class that didn’t directly contribute to me finding employment.

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Google communism

In addition to Venezuela’s oil being hard to refine their Infrastructure is a complete mess. I’ve seen some studies that say they would require $100 billion, and many years, to bring the oil industry back to normal.

Chavez, and Madero, completely destroyed that country.

Once Chavez got in power they started seizing businesses. Would kick the owners out and install a political appointee who would run it into the ground.

A lot of ranches were seized. What they would do is send in ‘squatters’ acting under the authority of government and drive the owners out or simply kill the landowners. These ranches quickly were run into the ground and made unprofitable.

At the time this was happening anybody with means to do so cashed out what they could, abandoned the rest and fled to the US and other places.

When their currency collapsed they tried to reboot the currency under a new name ‘bolivar fuerte’ and banned direct exchange for USD which led to a lot of their economy being gray market and transacting in USD.

The value of the new currency was so volatile that websites popped up to display exchange rates with USD.

Then to try and get a handle on homelessness they started assigning random people to live at private residences that had extra room. So this led to extended families moving in together to keep random homeless people from being assigned to the house by the government.

Ukraine and Myanmar

Both very resource rich and ideally situated

Argentina was one of the richest countries in the world a century ago

Where have you been? They have had communist dictators in power since Hugo Chavez took power in 1999. People wanted everything for free. Within a few short years they were eating out of dumpsters. Communism does not work, has never worked and will never work. Too many people want to ride in the cart while a few pull it.