Socialist countries are quite adept at providing excuses for their inevitable failure.

And as GoldTelegraph's Virginia Fidler recently noted, as socialist utopia Venezuela hits bottom, the latest culprit is oil.

But oil prices have been rising since the fourth quarter of 2017, and Venezuela’s economy has only gotten worse. These higher prices should be a boom for Venezuela by creating greater revenues. Instead, its oil industry is in shambles and decline.

Falling oil prices are not the cause of Venezuela’s misery. It’s socialism. It’s the system whereby government owns the means of production. Historically, governments do a horrible job managing businesses. The Venezuelan government isn’t managing its industries on any level. It’s slowly destroying them. President Maduro has been unable to keep the oil industry running. There are no new investors because the government will confiscate any further exploration.

All oil-producing nations have experienced falling oil prices. Only Venezuela is at the brink of an abyss from which it may never recover. Venezuela is sinking in a quagmire of socialist principles. Inefficiency, corruption, price controls, and out-of-control hyperinflation have created economic madness. Does President Maduro care? It’s hard to say. But he and his military minions are not starving, and they have guns. The population is bound to notice sooner or later. What happens when socialism encounters the forces of reality?

The world is watching this grim development, which undoubtedly will not have a happy ending, and judging by the following short clip, may have reached rock-bottom ...

This is the result of almost 20 years of socialist revolution in Venezuela. A sad reality. #Chavismo #May22

pic.twitter.com/vS58mxF8hj — Michael Welling (@WellingMichael) May 22, 2018

In just 20 seconds, viewers can see looters caught on video callously ignoring a dying truck driver...

...as they steal boxes of goods that he had been transporting...

We warned of these kind of attacks on truck drivers previously, as with hunger and scarcity widespread around its crisis-hit economy, Venezuela has seen a frightening upsurge of attacks on its increasingly anarchic roads in recent weeks.

“Every time I say goodbye to my family, I entrust myself to God and the Virgin,” says 36-year-old Venezuelan trucker Humberto Aguilar.

As one would expect, the almost inhuman scene in the clip above saw a torrent of responses on social media. From:

"This is 20 years of US sanctions, sabotage & the murderous behaviour of the CIA & local landowners, the latter wanting to go back to everything for the rich & nothing for the poor."

to...

"Very very sad... they have returned Venezuelans to a primitive state where basic instincts govern each and every action of your life"

Either way, this week's actions by President Trump are unlikely to help, as The Duran's Frank Sellers reports on Washington's efforts to obstruct economic aid (from China and Russia) to Venezuela.

Washington has suddenly discovered its reverence for Venezuela’s law, as it attempts to utilize them as a pretext to discourage Russia and China from extending debt to the South American country, struggling under the isolation from global markets due to the sanctions imposed upon it by America and its allies. The US is insistent that only the Venezuelan National Assembly can arrange for further debt within Venezuela.

Sputnik reports:

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) – The United States has spoken with both Chinese and Russian officials and warned them that the Venezuelan National Assembly is the only entity allowed to provide for the issuance of new debt in Venezuela, a senior administration official said in a press briefing on Monday. “We have had fairly pointed discussions with the People’s Republic of China on not throwing good money after bad, and we cautioned them that the United States, the Lima Group of nations and others, that made abundantly clear that the only, under the Venezuelan constitution, the only entity which is lawfully authorized to allow or to provide for the issuance of new debt is the National Assembly. We’ve had a similar discussion with Russia,” the official told reporters.

This warning comes as US President Donald Trump issues a new executive order that bans Venezuelan officials from selling public assets at low prices in order to get themselves kickbacks, as well as bans US citizens from all transactions related to the debt of the Venezuelan government.

In the meantime, a newly-elected Maduro is showing more despotic tendencies, allowing a large part of the population to starve to maintain his socialist principles. Starvation and misery have become government policies. There is no other explanation. The situation can only worsen. As people die from hunger, the labor force is reduced, thus reducing the number of available goods, even more, creating even greater catastrophic shortages.