Solipsism is an endemic condition in oil rich Venezuela

Sir your “Bolivarian bully” November 11, is completely right in all except the subtitle where you mentions “chávez´s 100 years of solipsism” Indeed we agree in that chávez is a particularly bad case of extreme egocentrism, but the real truth is that Venezuelan solipsism is rooted in the centralization of the oil revenues and that it therefore affects all our governments whenever oil prices are high.

The centralization of oil revenues is what has made it so hard for the opposition to develop an alternative to chávez, since in a rent seeking society the important factor is not who spends the best but who seems to care the most about you, and in this chávez has been a truly formidable politician.

Venezuela´s Berlin wall will only fall the day the citizens manage the will to take away the oil checkbook from their local solipsistic tropical sheiks.