January 8, 2026 • 14 mins
Beeline Blogger Scott Beeken joined Preston to shared the data behind the decline of what was once the most prosperous nation in South America.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
That's an interesting way to start the third hour of
the radio program known as The Morning Show with Preston Scott,
how are you friends? Good to have you with us,
first week back after a lengthy time away, and we
are joined on the phone line by our friend Scott Beacon,
otherwise known as the b line Blogger. You can find
his work at b line Blogger dot blogspot dot com
(00:25):
and Scott Happy Holidays. How are you, sir?
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Debut Preston, Happy New Year?
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Tell me when did when did you start doing the
digging on Venezuela, Because when I saw your piece, I
knew it was going to be data driven. They always are,
But I have to believe you got interested in starting
to look at this long before we took Maduro out
of the country.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Oh yes, I've written about Venezuela for a number of
years in my blog and it's an interesting study to
get in from a data standpoint, because when you look
at how prosperous and successful and rich Venezuela was at
one time and how that's changed in the last twenty
five years, it's quite a lab study with regard to
(01:15):
the failure of socialism and collectivism compared to other countries.
In the world that have gone the other way, even
in Latin America. You know, you look at Chile and
what they've done compared to Venezuela over the last thirty
or forty years, and you look at countries like Poland,
it's really a sad state of affairs. What's happened to
(01:35):
the Venezuelan people over the last twenty five years.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
I want to get to those comparisons, but I want
to start where you started in your column, with what
you do know, and it starts by quantifying the suffering
inside of Venezuela since nineteen ninety nine. That was when
Hugo Chavez took over and things just went literally from
(02:01):
pretty good too horrible. To give us some of the
numbers and some of the data.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Yeah, it's it is a sad state of affairs of
what's happened to that country. You know, there's different numbers
out there. I actually the data that I use was
the most conservative. There's some that say that ninety percent
plus of the Venezuelan people are living in poverty today.
I just used the number seventy percent. But still, when
(02:28):
you compare that to the United States and the rest
of the world, it's pretty sobering when you look at
you know, their GDP per capita. You know, they really
are not much different than they were twenty five years ago.
Right now, I mean, you know, the rest of the
world is just passed and by the rest of Latin
America has passed. And by I mean they were the
richest country in South America twenty five or thirty years ago.
(02:51):
Now they're the poorest. They have an inflation rate that's
more than five hundred percent per year. Some of these
number are hard to put together because the government there
are so dysfunctional they don't even produce reliable statistics any longer,
so it really is hard to get your hand around
some of the numbers. But an independent economist has come
(03:14):
up with an annual inflation rate for Venezuela that's over
five hundred percent. So we have a situation too that
this has caused enormous numbers of people to leave the country,
some for economic reasons, some for political reasons. And obviously
we also know that Maduro empties a lot of the
(03:35):
jails and sent them to the United States. So the
end result is just over the last ten years, when
things have really gotten bad, the Smiths are about eight
million people have left Venezuela, which is about twenty percent
of the population in a decade. It's staggering.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
You mentioned some other countries. Let's start with Poland. We
got about a minute left in this segment. Give us
a quick snapshot of the comparison between Venezuela and Poland.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Yeah, if you go back to nineteen ninety nine, two thousand,
when things you know, kind of changed in Venezuela, Venezuela
and Poland were basically the same with regard to gross
national product. Today Poland has about uh, you know, six
seven times the GDP that Venezuela does. And why is
that interesting? Well, Poland lived under collectivism for many, many
(04:28):
years and decades under the Soviet Union, and they broke
free of that and shows a capitalism, a free market system.
Venezuela did exactly the opposite. And look what happened after
twenty five years. It's staggering.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Back with Scott Beek and the Bee Line blogger. We're
talking about Venezuela. I told you earlier in the week.
You know, we came back on the air Monday after
nearly three weeks away, and obviously the big story on
Monday was the capture of Nikol Maduro and his wife.
And I told you when I got Scott's peace that
(05:05):
I wanted him to come on the program to start
talking about some of the data to quantify just how
bad things are. You know that that's the mainstream media
is of course ignoring that, Scott. They're they're ignoring how
bad Even those stories have been leaking for you know,
a decade and a half or two about how bad
(05:25):
food sources have gone to the point where they're killing
zoo animals and eating anything that they can get their
hands on for food. You use the word collectivism. I
want to make sure that when people hear that, they
know what you're talking about. To find that for.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Us, well, you have you know, you have people in
Venezuela that took over that there were pure socialists or
communists who believed in the the rights of the of
the government basically, which it translates the leadership to control everything.
And you know, gradually they took over everything in the
(06:04):
country of any value. They took over the oil industry,
which is where you know a lot of the wealth
you know, came from in Venezuela. At one point and
you know, gradually they took the property, They took the
oil property from the companies that were there, they took
the private property, they tried to run up themselves. All
(06:26):
the people over time that were knowledge believen. The local
people eventually left and eventually they didn't have the oil
revenues that they had, and then that filtered into everything else.
For a while, the oil was still pumping and they
could as the food sources and other things went down,
they used that to subsidize the food or the gasoline.
(06:48):
But eventually, as things got worse and worse, those things
dried up too, so that after a while you really
don't have anything that's the productive left in the country
and you get people that you know, have to live
in poverty and eat dogs and all the other things.
And why twenty percent of the people left the country
because it's not sustainable.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
This South America in general, Scott, it offers us a
complete and total example of collectivism, socialism, communism versus capitalism
and free market principles, does it not?
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Oh? Yes? And as an EBB and flow we've seen
in a lot of South American countries. You know, we're
seeing it in Argentina, which you know went through a
lot of socialists to type individuals and then then really
kind of on the other side. Now Chile is another
example that has gone back and forth, but it seems
like every time that they break away from the socialism
(07:51):
and go the free market way, they prosper. But then
it only takes a little while for someone to say, well,
something's going to be better and they move the other way,
and then things deteriorate. So it's a classic example. As
you mentioned, it's almost like a laboratory of the failures
of socialism.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Well, Venezuela used to be, if I if I remember
your piece correctly, it was it was, and what I
remember in myself is it was the wealthiest nation in
South America. Now it's not. And Chile was at the
bottom and now it's at the top.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Exactly. You know, I knew someone I had a friend
a number of years ago there was a country manager
in Venezuela, and you know, just raved about the life
that they had there and loved living there and the
resources they've got, the beauty of the country and just
all destroyed.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
We're seeing in the news, Scott that just because Maduro
and his wife are out it doesn't change anything. They
still have entrenched corruption and they have a system that
is a failed system. So what are your expectations. What
do you think the glide slope is for Venezuela to
turn things and get back to a path of being
(09:06):
able to sustain itself as a nation.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Well. As difficult as it was to go in to
Venezuela in that raid that they did, and how bold
that was to go in and fetch you know, Maduro
out of the country with his wife and get out
and bring him to New York City to stand trial,
that's nothing compared to what the challenge is to move
(09:30):
Venezuela forward with the potential leadership vacuum that they have.
So yeah, as they're wrote in the blog, I'm reminded
of all the late General Colin Palell citing the pottery
barn rule before the two thousand and three Iraq War.
You know, you break it, you own it, and so therefore,
you know, how do you move forward? And I think
they have learned some lessons from the past. And I
(09:52):
think even though it could be disheartening to think, well,
why do we have some of the same people the
inner circle, why are they still around? And I think
the answer to that is the reality is you need
some stability in order the country doesn't go into complete chaos.
And I think President Trump and Secretary of Rubio are
(10:12):
planning to hopefully work with some of the people that
have been in that inner circle for a period of
time for a transition and then their will, if you will,
to the United States interest and try to keep some
stability there while moving to democratic elections over time. Now,
as I cited in the blog post, you know that's
(10:35):
going to require a lot of patients. I think by
the Venezuelan people, I'm sure they want change immediately. They
don't like the fact that they've had to live under
the conditions they've lived for over the last twenty five years.
But it's going to take a while to get to
that next step, and that's not going to be easy.
But one of the things that you have to like
(10:57):
about Donald Trump, I mentioned this in the blog as well,
is to be great first, you have to not be
afraid to be great. And that's that's quite an attribute
just to have that. And one thing I'm sure about
Trump is that he's not afraid to be great. You know,
many presidents in the past over the last twenty five
(11:18):
years talked about Venezuela, but nobody did anything about it.
And he took the action and if he successful, you know,
he's changed the geopolitical calculus for the entire world because
this was the just Venezuela and the United States. This
directly affects what's going on in Russia, what's going on
in China, the effects it has in Cuba, and what
(11:40):
we're seeing in Iran right now. I mean, do you
think the people would be riding in the streets right
now if they didn't see what is going on in
Venezuela and giving them hope. So the stakes are huge,
and I wish I knew how it's going to work out,
but I know you couldn't have a possibility that we
have today without taking the steps that President Trump took
(12:03):
and taking Ma Duro out.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
You know, I have, I have shared with it just
a handful of people, you know that have been critical
about not installing you know, the right person, whoever that is,
like you can determine that immediately. Well, if you don't
have the military on your side, it doesn't matter. You're
gonna You're gonna create another firestorm of a problem. So
(12:26):
I think I agree with you. I think he's wise
to work with what's there. Hope that they're learning some lessons.
Early indications are they're learning some lessons about what the
capabilities of the country are. And I think that you're right.
I think that this is not just a message to
China and Russia and Iran. It's a it's a message
(12:47):
to Cuba, it's a message to the hemisphere, and that
it's going to be in everyone's best interest for us
to all get along on our side of the of
the globe.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Absolutely. Yeah. The love thing I would like to see
and I haven't seen it mentioned, you know. I would
like to see a major effort by the United States
to bring food into Venezuela. And we've seen some of
the farmers with the tariff situation, some countries have cut
us off and din the or whatever. I would like
to see a massive outreach the Venezuela with food and
(13:21):
very clearly showing a tangible thing that the United States
is on the side of the Venezuelan people and that's
something we could do very easily. It would help our farmers,
would also help the people of Venezuela. I would really
like to see that take place soon.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Do you see that as a barter we get some oil,
they get some food.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
I wouldn't do it at a barter situation. Yeah, I
would do it as a humanitarian situation and really to
show we're with you. Yep, you know we're with you.
And yeah, the the oil is aside you. A lot
of people want to make that this is a grab
for oil, et cetera. Really, the oil is the venice
the whale as people. I mean, certainly we can collaborate
(14:03):
them with refinery capabilities and cut off the flow that
was going to Cuba and Iran and sign a Russia
the bad actors to our own benefit. But you know,
really they deserve they deserve.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
That oil on they had, just like they used to.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Exactly.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Scott, thanks as always. I appreciate all the data that
you pull together and present in such a tidy fashion.
I appreciate it very much, and thanks for making time
for us.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Always enjoy at President, and again, happy new Year to
you and all your listeners.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Thank you very much. Scott Beacon with us this morning,
and again, subscribe, it costs you nothing. Sign up get
his newsletters. You will be a much better informed person
on all the things he writes about. Bline blogger dot blogspot,
dot com,
That's an interesting way to start the third hour of
the radio program known as The Morning Show with Preston Scott,
how are you friends? Good to have you with us,
first week back after a lengthy time away, and we
are joined on the phone line by our friend Scott Beacon,
otherwise known as the b line Blogger. You can find
his work at b line Blogger dot blogspot dot com
(00:25):
and Scott Happy Holidays. How are you, sir?
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Debut Preston, Happy New Year?
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Tell me when did when did you start doing the
digging on Venezuela, Because when I saw your piece, I
knew it was going to be data driven. They always are,
But I have to believe you got interested in starting
to look at this long before we took Maduro out
of the country.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Oh yes, I've written about Venezuela for a number of
years in my blog and it's an interesting study to
get in from a data standpoint, because when you look
at how prosperous and successful and rich Venezuela was at
one time and how that's changed in the last twenty
five years, it's quite a lab study with regard to
(01:15):
the failure of socialism and collectivism compared to other countries.
In the world that have gone the other way, even
in Latin America. You know, you look at Chile and
what they've done compared to Venezuela over the last thirty
or forty years, and you look at countries like Poland,
it's really a sad state of affairs. What's happened to
(01:35):
the Venezuelan people over the last twenty five years.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
I want to get to those comparisons, but I want
to start where you started in your column, with what
you do know, and it starts by quantifying the suffering
inside of Venezuela since nineteen ninety nine. That was when
Hugo Chavez took over and things just went literally from
(02:01):
pretty good too horrible. To give us some of the
numbers and some of the data.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Yeah, it's it is a sad state of affairs of
what's happened to that country. You know, there's different numbers
out there. I actually the data that I use was
the most conservative. There's some that say that ninety percent
plus of the Venezuelan people are living in poverty today.
I just used the number seventy percent. But still, when
(02:28):
you compare that to the United States and the rest
of the world, it's pretty sobering when you look at
you know, their GDP per capita. You know, they really
are not much different than they were twenty five years ago.
Right now, I mean, you know, the rest of the
world is just passed and by the rest of Latin
America has passed. And by I mean they were the
richest country in South America twenty five or thirty years ago.
(02:51):
Now they're the poorest. They have an inflation rate that's
more than five hundred percent per year. Some of these
number are hard to put together because the government there
are so dysfunctional they don't even produce reliable statistics any longer,
so it really is hard to get your hand around
some of the numbers. But an independent economist has come
(03:14):
up with an annual inflation rate for Venezuela that's over
five hundred percent. So we have a situation too that
this has caused enormous numbers of people to leave the country,
some for economic reasons, some for political reasons. And obviously
we also know that Maduro empties a lot of the
(03:35):
jails and sent them to the United States. So the
end result is just over the last ten years, when
things have really gotten bad, the Smiths are about eight
million people have left Venezuela, which is about twenty percent
of the population in a decade. It's staggering.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
You mentioned some other countries. Let's start with Poland. We
got about a minute left in this segment. Give us
a quick snapshot of the comparison between Venezuela and Poland.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Yeah, if you go back to nineteen ninety nine, two thousand,
when things you know, kind of changed in Venezuela, Venezuela
and Poland were basically the same with regard to gross
national product. Today Poland has about uh, you know, six
seven times the GDP that Venezuela does. And why is
that interesting? Well, Poland lived under collectivism for many, many
(04:28):
years and decades under the Soviet Union, and they broke
free of that and shows a capitalism, a free market system.
Venezuela did exactly the opposite. And look what happened after
twenty five years. It's staggering.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Back with Scott Beek and the Bee Line blogger. We're
talking about Venezuela. I told you earlier in the week.
You know, we came back on the air Monday after
nearly three weeks away, and obviously the big story on
Monday was the capture of Nikol Maduro and his wife.
And I told you when I got Scott's peace that
(05:05):
I wanted him to come on the program to start
talking about some of the data to quantify just how
bad things are. You know that that's the mainstream media
is of course ignoring that, Scott. They're they're ignoring how
bad Even those stories have been leaking for you know,
a decade and a half or two about how bad
(05:25):
food sources have gone to the point where they're killing
zoo animals and eating anything that they can get their
hands on for food. You use the word collectivism. I
want to make sure that when people hear that, they
know what you're talking about. To find that for.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Us, well, you have you know, you have people in
Venezuela that took over that there were pure socialists or
communists who believed in the the rights of the of
the government basically, which it translates the leadership to control everything.
And you know, gradually they took over everything in the
(06:04):
country of any value. They took over the oil industry,
which is where you know a lot of the wealth
you know, came from in Venezuela. At one point and
you know, gradually they took the property, They took the
oil property from the companies that were there, they took
the private property, they tried to run up themselves. All
(06:26):
the people over time that were knowledge believen. The local
people eventually left and eventually they didn't have the oil
revenues that they had, and then that filtered into everything else.
For a while, the oil was still pumping and they
could as the food sources and other things went down,
they used that to subsidize the food or the gasoline.
(06:48):
But eventually, as things got worse and worse, those things
dried up too, so that after a while you really
don't have anything that's the productive left in the country
and you get people that you know, have to live
in poverty and eat dogs and all the other things.
And why twenty percent of the people left the country
because it's not sustainable.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
This South America in general, Scott, it offers us a
complete and total example of collectivism, socialism, communism versus capitalism
and free market principles, does it not?
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Oh? Yes? And as an EBB and flow we've seen
in a lot of South American countries. You know, we're
seeing it in Argentina, which you know went through a
lot of socialists to type individuals and then then really
kind of on the other side. Now Chile is another
example that has gone back and forth, but it seems
like every time that they break away from the socialism
(07:51):
and go the free market way, they prosper. But then
it only takes a little while for someone to say, well,
something's going to be better and they move the other way,
and then things deteriorate. So it's a classic example. As
you mentioned, it's almost like a laboratory of the failures
of socialism.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Well, Venezuela used to be, if I if I remember
your piece correctly, it was it was, and what I
remember in myself is it was the wealthiest nation in
South America. Now it's not. And Chile was at the
bottom and now it's at the top.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Exactly. You know, I knew someone I had a friend
a number of years ago there was a country manager
in Venezuela, and you know, just raved about the life
that they had there and loved living there and the
resources they've got, the beauty of the country and just
all destroyed.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
We're seeing in the news, Scott that just because Maduro
and his wife are out it doesn't change anything. They
still have entrenched corruption and they have a system that
is a failed system. So what are your expectations. What
do you think the glide slope is for Venezuela to
turn things and get back to a path of being
(09:06):
able to sustain itself as a nation.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Well. As difficult as it was to go in to
Venezuela in that raid that they did, and how bold
that was to go in and fetch you know, Maduro
out of the country with his wife and get out
and bring him to New York City to stand trial,
that's nothing compared to what the challenge is to move
(09:30):
Venezuela forward with the potential leadership vacuum that they have.
So yeah, as they're wrote in the blog, I'm reminded
of all the late General Colin Palell citing the pottery
barn rule before the two thousand and three Iraq War.
You know, you break it, you own it, and so therefore,
you know, how do you move forward? And I think
they have learned some lessons from the past. And I
(09:52):
think even though it could be disheartening to think, well,
why do we have some of the same people the
inner circle, why are they still around? And I think
the answer to that is the reality is you need
some stability in order the country doesn't go into complete chaos.
And I think President Trump and Secretary of Rubio are
(10:12):
planning to hopefully work with some of the people that
have been in that inner circle for a period of
time for a transition and then their will, if you will,
to the United States interest and try to keep some
stability there while moving to democratic elections over time. Now,
as I cited in the blog post, you know that's
(10:35):
going to require a lot of patients. I think by
the Venezuelan people, I'm sure they want change immediately. They
don't like the fact that they've had to live under
the conditions they've lived for over the last twenty five years.
But it's going to take a while to get to
that next step, and that's not going to be easy.
But one of the things that you have to like
(10:57):
about Donald Trump, I mentioned this in the blog as well,
is to be great first, you have to not be
afraid to be great. And that's that's quite an attribute
just to have that. And one thing I'm sure about
Trump is that he's not afraid to be great. You know,
many presidents in the past over the last twenty five
(11:18):
years talked about Venezuela, but nobody did anything about it.
And he took the action and if he successful, you know,
he's changed the geopolitical calculus for the entire world because
this was the just Venezuela and the United States. This
directly affects what's going on in Russia, what's going on
in China, the effects it has in Cuba, and what
(11:40):
we're seeing in Iran right now. I mean, do you
think the people would be riding in the streets right
now if they didn't see what is going on in
Venezuela and giving them hope. So the stakes are huge,
and I wish I knew how it's going to work out,
but I know you couldn't have a possibility that we
have today without taking the steps that President Trump took
(12:03):
and taking Ma Duro out.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
You know, I have, I have shared with it just
a handful of people, you know that have been critical
about not installing you know, the right person, whoever that is,
like you can determine that immediately. Well, if you don't
have the military on your side, it doesn't matter. You're
gonna You're gonna create another firestorm of a problem. So
(12:26):
I think I agree with you. I think he's wise
to work with what's there. Hope that they're learning some lessons.
Early indications are they're learning some lessons about what the
capabilities of the country are. And I think that you're right.
I think that this is not just a message to
China and Russia and Iran. It's a it's a message
(12:47):
to Cuba, it's a message to the hemisphere, and that
it's going to be in everyone's best interest for us
to all get along on our side of the of
the globe.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Absolutely. Yeah. The love thing I would like to see
and I haven't seen it mentioned, you know. I would
like to see a major effort by the United States
to bring food into Venezuela. And we've seen some of
the farmers with the tariff situation, some countries have cut
us off and din the or whatever. I would like
to see a massive outreach the Venezuela with food and
(13:21):
very clearly showing a tangible thing that the United States
is on the side of the Venezuelan people and that's
something we could do very easily. It would help our farmers,
would also help the people of Venezuela. I would really
like to see that take place soon.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Do you see that as a barter we get some oil,
they get some food.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
I wouldn't do it at a barter situation. Yeah, I
would do it as a humanitarian situation and really to
show we're with you. Yep, you know we're with you.
And yeah, the the oil is aside you. A lot
of people want to make that this is a grab
for oil, et cetera. Really, the oil is the venice
the whale as people. I mean, certainly we can collaborate
(14:03):
them with refinery capabilities and cut off the flow that
was going to Cuba and Iran and sign a Russia
the bad actors to our own benefit. But you know,
really they deserve they deserve.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
That oil on they had, just like they used to.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Exactly.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Scott, thanks as always. I appreciate all the data that
you pull together and present in such a tidy fashion.
I appreciate it very much, and thanks for making time
for us.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Always enjoy at President, and again, happy new Year to
you and all your listeners.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Thank you very much. Scott Beacon with us this morning,
and again, subscribe, it costs you nothing. Sign up get
his newsletters. You will be a much better informed person
on all the things he writes about. Bline blogger dot blogspot,
dot com,
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!