Caracas Chronicles

I read the Fair Prices Law and I got a huge migraine. I wrote about it for FP (the law, not the migraine). The value added:

“The effect of the bill is clear: entrepreneurship in Venezuela is now an illegal activity. Thanks to this bill, the basic freedoms that should guide any society — freedom to innovate, private property, even the right to a fair trial — have essentially been taken away. Everyone, from lowly street vendors to the executives of multinational corporations, runs the danger of landing in a Venezuelan jail if a government bureaucrat thinks they are charging too much.”