Venezuela's populist government basically ignored economic reality; at the very least, if you depend on offshore oil revenues to fund socialism, you need to make sure you keep investing in oil exploration. [1]

I can't tell you why Scandinavian counties seem to be sensible and many others are crazy. But, I would say that anyone thinking about changes to US governance needs to take the craziness level into account. For a while the US made a passable imitation of being somewhat sensible, but it seems that was an illusion.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/venezuelas-inflation...