It’s no secret that things are bad in Venezuela. Rolling blackouts are causing infant deaths in hospitals where backup generators have ceased to function; the country is on pace to hit 700 percent inflation; outside of active war zones, the murder rate in Caracas is the highest in the world.

For many Americans, it’s a news story piped in from a faraway place. For me? It’s my friends and family who are suffering at the hands of an increasingly powerful and paranoid dictatorial regime. As a kid growing up in Caracas, I remember the difficult decision my parents had to make when Hugo Chavez attempted his coup and took over shortly thereafter. My parents decided to leave behind our life in Venezuela and come to the United States – much like my mother’s family fled Cuba in the 1960s when Fidel Castro took over. Though it was a hard choice, in hindsight, we were the lucky ones.

Those watching from around the world, particularly in the United States, seem hesitant to put a label on Venezuela’s struggle. But for me and mine, it’s clear what precipitated this crisis – and we don’t share the hesitance to point it out. While extenuating circumstances like drought and oil prices have certainly worsened the situation, it’s clear there’s a larger force behind Venezuela’s woes.

The force that is driving Venezuela into the ground is socialism.

I read the messages telling me they had to go to five different markets that day to find bread. Even basic staples like Harina-Pan are missing from the shelves or skyrocketing in price.

I’ve heard them break down crying because they lack basic needs like toilet paper. And I hear the fear of not knowing what’s next or when these struggles will end.

In the midst of this chaos, I see people in the United States – most of whom have never known a life outside of the abundance available to them as a result of our market economy – gravitating toward socialism like it’s some natural force for good. As reported in these pages, a recent survey shows that nearly 60 percent of 18 to 26 year-olds believe socialism is the “most compassionate system.”

But socialism is not compassionate.

Whether a socialist government owns the means of production via nationalized industries, or enforces central planning via price controls and stringent regulatory structures,

socialism operates under the assumption that an insulated leader and his legion of bureaucrats are the best judges of what people are worth.

Socialism deprives individual choice and crushes ambition in pursuit of a uniform, unfulfilling and arbitrary definition of “equality.” And it does all of this in the name of “the greater good.”

But as we can see, absent individuals’ motivation and the productivity necessary to sustain it, that standard of equality

deterioratesuntil there are no resources left to redistribute.

It doesn’t have to be this way: The economic picture in Venezuela casts a striking contrast with the ideals of economic freedom that have permeated the world for the past several decades. The spread of capitalism, free trade, property rights and the rule of law have helped lift billions of people from poverty, strengthened the middle class and created unimaginable prosperity. In fact, they have helped drive the global poverty rate below 10 percent for the first time in human history – and those values are spreading even in places like China and the Scandinavian countries that are often heralded as “democratic socialist” utopias.

There is a reason

socialism has never succeeded:
It runs directly counter to human nature.

Socialist regimes either collapse or survive only by becoming less socialist; the more a country embraces economic freedom and free markets, the more prosperous it becomes.

Economic freedom is the antidote to socialism, and human nature yearns for it – because it recognizes individuals, respects them and endows them with a great deal of responsibility to take charge of their own lives and lift one another up.

Life isn’t perfect anywhere in the world. It’s full of scarcity and trade-offs and uncertainty. But I know that to facing those challenges, a life of choice and dignity like we have enjoyed in the United States is by far the preferable option to socialism and its inevitable human suffering. No one should have to live the images we’re seeing on television – and certainly not because of a wrongheaded political ideology.

I hope my friends and family abroad know we are doing what we can to be their voice. I hope others here in America will learn an invaluable lesson about the dark side of socialism – and the value of economic freedom.