Michael Rowan
Special for El Universal

The modern world is a complex adaptive system addressing uncertainty. The savage world of Chavez is a simple, rigid system seeking certainty. These two worlds are incompatible. It is incomprehensible to the modern world that Chavez does not want to engage it. It is incomprehensible to Chavez that the modern world will not surrender to his certainty.

The modern world is a success, and the Chavez world is a failure. Today's US poverty rate of $18,000 exceeds the standard of living of all but a miniscule percentage of 40,000 years of humans who lived before 1800, and all but a few percent of Venezuelans today. The modern world found its success by eliminating the monopoly over knowledge, power and money and living with the uncertainty of the outcomes. The Chavez world imposes a monopoly over knowledge, power and money in order to live in a fixed, rigid certainty.

Chavez loathes all that the modern world thinks, says and does. His 2006 presidential campaign is against the "imperialist, genocidal, fascist madman George W. Bush." Chavez wants to provoke a war between these worlds. He will arm one million Venezuelans with Russian rifles "to defend the fatherland" against the long awaited, predicted, and desired invasion that will never come. Chavez prays for Armageddon, "the hundred year war" and "the mother of all wars" against the modern world.

To defeat Chavez in the barrios, among the poor, and inside Chavismo itself, is very simple, but not so easy. It requires thinking about the poor and what they care about. The poor want access to Venezuela's oil wealth so they can achieve the standard of living they see in the modern world. The opposition strategy must be to provide the poor with the tools of wealth creation so they can do that. The tools include an oil fund for capital investment, property titles, education, freedom and the incentives to abide by successful rules for wealth creation. Do so, and Venezuela can eliminate poverty and double the size of its economy in five years.

If the election question of 2006 is a choice between Chavez and Bush, Chavez can win it. But if it is a choice between state monopoly and personal freedom from poverty, he can lose it, especially among the poor, especially in the barrios, and especially inside Chavismo itself. Who will give them that choice?
mrowan@cantv.net

Michael Rowan's column is published every Tuesday