To be fair, there's been a sharp decline since Maduro took power. Maybe the current government is simply too corrupt and incompetent. And let's not forget that any other plausible government in Venezuela wouldn't be any better. Venezuela doesn't have a single "government success" story. That makes it even more sad, Venezuela should be a much better, richer country on paper, but they are cursed with natural resources.

Norway and Venezuela, two cursed countries.

Venezuela's oil was discovered in the early 20th century. Norway's oil was discovered in the mid-late 20th century, at a time when the oil countries started fighting for control over their natural resources. The power structures created over oil in those two countries are nothing alike.

Furthermore, Venezuela oil was seen as a necessity for some companies, while Norway oil was discovered at a time when there were decades of oil reserves on tap.

Ironically, considering all the anti socialist rants in the discussion so far, Norway's oil industry is state owned and the government has taken the profits and invested in creating one of the largest sovereign wealth funds and in a lot of national infrastructure.

Norway discovered its oil fairly late and has taken a good look at how other countries did it. For example, the Netherlands, another mostly non-corrupt country, squandered their gas revenues.

So, the order matters. Chavez simply just took it and redistributed whereas Norways started as state owned?

Chavez took it because the oil execs were messing with the economy as a form of protest against taxes. A move that was highly controversial.

The situation with PDVSA was more complicated than that [1].

As for Norway, to avoid the Dutch disease they made several crucial decisions [2] early on, one of them being to encourage the development of a healthy, competitive private oil/gas sector while still retaining the majority of revenue and oil fields. They also funneled the profits into the now-famous sovereign wealth fund.

[1] https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/07/16/how-venezuela-struck-it...

[2] https://www.ft.com/content/99680a04-92a0-11de-b63b-00144feab...

> To be fair, there's been a sharp decline since Maduro took power. Maybe the current government is simply too corrupt and incompetent.

Given the incentives in place, it is hard to imagine that it could turn out anything but corrupt and incompetent. What reason do Venezuelan officials, aside from personal pride, have to execute their office faithfully and competently? What reason do they have to hire people who execute their offices faithfully (aside from to their boss) and competently?