Michael Rowan
Special for El Universal

The poor need a new game in Venezuela. Half the people live on $2 per person per day - as do half the people in Latin America! - while the GDP per capita is seven times that. Where is that extra $12 per person per day that would wipe out poverty in a flash if it were in the hands of the poor?

The state has that money, and it wants more. The state has a voracious appetite for accumulating money and property - all of it. Like all monopolists in the sad history of accumulation, it cannot be satisfied. Parker Brothers has it right in the game Monopoly - the game ends when one player has everything and all the others have nothing.

Venezuela has been playing Monopoly for a long time - since before Bolivar's time. But the game got serious when oil was nationalized in 1976. And it is not coincidental that Venezuela - the nation - has failed ever since, while the state and its cronies have become lavishly, obscenely rich. This is the truth of Venezuela, whether the Monopoly game was being won by a dictator or a democrat, a savage capitalist or a savage socialist.

Monopoly posing as utopian democracy is still Monopoly. For the losers - everybody but the state - the result is the same. Little handouts by the winner to keep the other players in the game for another role of the dice do not obscure the fact that all the properties on the board are covered by big red hotels owned by the winner. On every role, the poor need incredible luck to survive, which keeps them permanently dependent on the state.

So the solution for the losers is not to find a winner who treats them to better handouts than the previous winner, but to change the game so everyone can win. Venezuela doesn't need a sensible president to run the state -- it needs to break the monopoly of the state. Monopolies have been broken elsewhere, and they can be broken here.

Venezuela's last opportunity for success occurs in the 2006 presidential election. The choice for the poor is between Monopoly and the end of Monopoly. It is between the state and the nation. It is between $2 per person per day, and $14 per person per day. It may be obvious how the poor would decide to play if they were given that choice. But it is not so obvious that they will be given that choice.
mrowan@cantv.net

Michael Rowan's column is published every Tuesday