Thursday, July 30, 2015

This Place Looks Like My New Warehouse...Oh Wait, It Is My New Warehouse!

Industrial parks are places where companies that need large buildings to make or store things find several of them in close proximity. Sometimes they will be built that way to take advantage of combined shipping or shared utilities or other things.

And then sometimes soldiers with guns come into them and tell you that you have two months to move your stuff out of them because the government's going to turn them into housing. At least, if you live in lawless Venezuela they do. Now, to be fair to President Nicolas Maduro and his kleptocractic government, the companies were told of this possibility back in 2013. That is, they were told of the potential seizure. It's not clear if the 60-day eviction notice, filed via form AK-47, was a part of that information. Judging by a couple of quotes in the story from workers, it seems unlikely that it was.

But when you try to operate a business in a country that operates by the Leaden Rule -- kind of like the updated Golden Rule, but it goes, "He who can spray the lead makes the rules" -- then this is the kind of thing that can happen.

There is no word on whether President Maduro will supply the new housing with that rarest of Venezuelan rarities, toilet paper, or whether he will need to keep a significant supply on hand given what kind of hole his predecessor Hugo Chavez and he have turned their country into.

No comments: