The Liberty Papers

You know, ever since I started working from home, I’ve found myself to be much more productive. I think that has a lot to do with the fact that I no longer spend time in meetings. Does Hugo Chavez realize the damage he’ll do to productivity by sending people to socialism classes for four hours a week?

Venezuela’s government will require workers to spend four hours a week in “socialist formation” classes, and is mandating employers form “Bolivarian Work Councils” to run courses on the job, El Universal reported, citing Labor and Social Security Minister Jose Ramon Rivero.

The classes will first be held only in public sector jobs, beginning with a pilot program at the nation’s Labor Ministry, and will later spread to private businesses, after President Hugo Chavez decrees a law outlining re-education guidelines and rules, the newspaper said.

Topics to be addressed in the four-hour classes include Venezuelan history and “basic tools for analyzing reality, the environment, the role of the state and socialist scheme,” to speed the transition from capitalism to socialism, Rivero said, according to the newspaper.

Chavez has asked that socialist education, the so-called “Third Motor” of his Bolivarian revolution, be carried out beyond schools, in factories, workshops, offices and fields, the newspaper reported.

Notably missing from his list of things to teach are logical fallacies and economics, but then, those two things would make his citizens subjects realize that Chavez was trying to dupe them and that socialism won’t work. Incentives matter, Hugo.

But alas, as much as those of us anti-socialists argue, nobody is listening. So we’ll just have to wait for the inevitable Venezuelan collapse to make our point for us. At which time the socialists will just say “Well, Chavez didn’t do it right…” Same story, different day.

Hat Tip: Lance @ A Second Hand Conjecture (also see his interview with Manny Lopez, a reporter who regularly visits Venezuela)