Socialism plus a corrupt government would do this to any country, regardless of how rich it is in resources.
Know what? These issues are not unique to Venezuela. Each and every socialist country is going to end up this way. The problem with socialism is that after a specific time period, three will be no rich people left to tax. All the rich would have migrated to some sane country, or they would have become poor.
Not even just rich people. Can't find the original clip used but I saw a vid where they nonchalantly expropriated a small business and the owner was just crying. Who in their right minds would keep running a business in such an environment? It's all good till you run out of other people's money.
Edit: Here's the Stossel vid, just can't find the original clip it was taken from.
https://youtu.be/ACXTTfE4GxM?t=155Anyway, as an aside....this is why everyone ought to keep at least a little amount of cash on their person. You never know when the power is going to go out, and food/water/supplies run out quicker than you think. If you're relying on even a debit or credit card, good luck trying to use that when stores no longer have power. The first store that opened in my area while the power was out was a Walgreens pharmacy, and they were only taking cash. It was such a relief to buy some food and a bottle of Coca-Cola, but I only was able to do that because I had some cash on me.
The sad thing is their money has become so useless that you need several bunches of it just to buy a cup of coffee. That's how bad things has become. I heard people have started just using the dollar but I'm not sure if the government has banned that like it did bitcoin.