so, venezuela has an excess demand for milk and butter, driving street protests. if you just decrease the demand (by increasing taxes and reducing imports), inflation will go down, thereby stopping the protests.

brilliant!

i'll keep that in mind if we ever have a problem with inflation in the price of water.

less sardonically, this is what happens when you approach economics as applied algebra.

if you ignore the prevalence of the black market (which seems to be the creation of government policy), it might be more effective if the demand for milk and butter was more elastic. but, then there probably wouldn't be a problem in the first place. it's hard to imagine people attacking cops over the price of computers.

as it is, decreasing demand for food sounds like an algorithm for depopulation.

maybe the solution is that venezuela needs to focus more on domestic production of food, including reducing exports? the root cause of the problem seems to be their dependence on food imports.

now, if you could just get somebody out there explaining to people that seizing farms and factories and building networks of food distribution is a better idea than throwing molotov cocktails at riot police...

alas, such a prophet escapes us, the world over.

hundreds of thousands of people on the street there, and in brazil, and in turkey, and in ukraine, greece, egypt and spain - and i'm not convinced that the thought of seizing production even entered anybody's minds.