You explicitly quoted the part about economic decline, and indeed this was critical to the sort of scenario Montrose was referring to. His comment isn't suggesting that Rome be taken as the best historical case study for understanding Venezuela today, but rather that Venezuala might give us a sense of the on-the-ground human element during the decline of Rome.

We can look to the troubles of almost any country to look for something which "might give us a sense of the on-the-ground human element during the decline of Rome."

Where is there notable about Venezuela which makes this comparison insightful? Wouldn't it be more insightful to compare it to, say, the decline of the British Empire?

Has Venezuela, like Rome, had a long series of costly wars (including civil wars) which took money out of the government coffers?

Has Venezuela, like Rome, lost a revenue source by no longer being able to expand into new territory?

Does Venezuela have anything like the Vandal pirates which disrupted Roman trade?

Has it undergone a partition like that of the Eastern and Western Roman Empires, where the money diverted into strengthening Constantinople meant that Rome was less defended against invasion?

Is the Venezuelan military increasingly peopled by foreign soldiers of fortune who have little loyalty to the country and might instead attack it?

Because all I get from the comparison is that there's hyperinflation going on caused by poor government and a loss of income. Which has been true of a lot of countries.

The thing that is notable about the decline of Venezuela is that it's happening now, when we can make direct observations rather than reconstructing things from the historical records.

If I am betrayed by a friend and say "this is what Caesar must have felt like", I am not saying that my friend's betrayal is the most like that of Caesar's, nor that Caesar's betrayal is the most similar historical betrayal to my mine. It just means "oh, now I know more about what that feels like".

Which is a trite comparison for almost all cases.

I lost a glove. What I felt must be like what Luke Skywalker felt when he lost his hand.

I set a PR of 7:15 on running a mile. That must be like what Bannister felt when he broke the 4 minute mile.

But montrose made more than a simple comparison. The implication is that high-level government attempts to control economic policy is what lead to the similarity.

I disagree that assessment, and pointed to other attempts at high-level government control of economic policy, with a variety of results, to show that there isn't a strongly causal connection.

Plus, there are other factors which are involved. Why should we think that the views of Romans in the late Western Roman Empire were similar to what's going on in Venezuela now?