I thought we learned this lesson from the Soviet Union. I have a Russian friend that has explained this to me eloquently. She learned the lesson. Unfortunately, private property in the United States is headed the same direction as Chavez' Venezuela. We're just 10 years behind. Mr. Obama calls this "economic justice", "sharing the wealth", and "democracy of capital". I call it "coveting" and "stealing". So did the Founding Fathers (see quote below). They tried socialism in the early American colonies, and they nearly starved to death!
I hope America wakes up before we suffer the same fate as Venezuela -- shortages, and possibly starvation. I've heard other similar stories like the one below from Venezuela. Lesson: Socialism -- and socialist policies -- don't work!
"The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If `Thou shalt not covet' and `Thou shalt not steal' were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free." -- John Adams (A Defense of the American Constitutions, 1787)
from CJAD.com:
This vast ranch used to be filled with grazing herds of cattle, but the green pastures are now overgrown with weeds and dotted with patches where poor farmers grow corn and beans. The cows have vanished.
The 12,950-hectare El Charcote Ranch in central Venezuela was meant as a showcase for President Hugo Chavez's agrarian revolution, turning a country with food shortages and runaway inflation into one that could feed itself. But since troops and peasants seized the land from a British agribusiness company four years ago, beef production has dropped from 1.2 million kilograms annually to zero.
The ranch and many like it across the country raise the concern that the dream of a Venezuela living off its own land is just one more socialist promise heavy on rhetoric and light on results. The Chavez government says it has taken over more than 2.2 million hectares of farmland from private owners. Yet food imports have tripled since 2004, the year before Chavez began his aggressive reform program...
In Cuba, Chavez's friend and mentor Fidel Castro transferred more than 70 per cent of privately held land to the state and small farmers almost five decades ago. But Cuba relies heavily on food imports today, and the government is trying to revive an agricultural sector crippled by mismanagement by offering unused land to private farmers. In what could be a cautionary tale for Chavez, 55 per cent of Cuba's arable land went underused last year, and on state farms, just 29 per cent was actively used, according to the government.
