For many years now people such as myself have been writing that Venezuela was going to end up like this. It was absolutely clear from the very first day that Hugo Chavez took power.
And now we have Americans toying with the idea of socialism again. One wonders how many examples of disaster and death they will need to have stacked around their feet before they realize that socialism is a dead end. But perhaps the key to the persistence of this ideology is the word "kleptocrat". Perhaps American socialists all imagine that they will be in the inner circle of leadership who, like Maduro and his friends, enrich themselves by running their country into the ground.
Overly simplistic thinking masquerading as journalism. Venezuela was destine to destroy itself, not from socialism alone but as you hint at by authoritarianism.
Hugo Chavez, and those around him at the time, should have taken Venezuela to different outcomes. With one of the largest oil reserves in the world Venezuela should have a mechanism of wealth not unlike Saudi Arabia, but they made too many economic faults. The risk was so much of their economy based on one commodity, but other nations have pulled this off and some have far greater leans to authoritarianism of some sort than Venezuela has (had.) Saudi Arabia and Iran for examples, not exactly shining beacons of freedom and market economics.
A heavy lean to socialism is one of those economic faults Venezuela made, engaging in a level of spending that their own bolivar could not keep up with. Sound familiar? It should, many nations spend beyond means but the difference is Venezuela has to rely on outside nations to print their money for them. No one uses their currency as reserves and it stands to reason that valuation of the bolivar is tied exclusively to domestic economic indications. Valuation is painful for them to control but they tried anyway. They still relied on printing sprees and that made the bolivar fall in valuation against the international basket of currencies some 95% in just 3-4 years. Fell 99% against the dollar over the same period. They blamed everyone but themselves. Rigged elections. When all else failed Venezuela literally tried to legislate what inflation was and more importantly what it could not be. A complete failure and those efforts ensured an eventual economic collapse.
But there was another problem. Chavez, those around him and those after him, engaged in what always happens with centralized power. They took massive money out of their own system to the point that they hid their fortune in currency other than their host nation's currency, separating their wealth from what they ruled over. Socialism tends to do that but then again all wealth from all economic systems tends to do that, move wealth to more save havens regardless of what is happening at home.
In terms of economics, this is why most modern economies are a mixed model. Taking parts of one economic model to throttle the pitfalls of the other.
This is true of market economics, or capitalism, that on a long enough timeline destroys itself with the worst amplitude of the economic cycle by mixing it with planned economics, or socialism, as a means to lessen that amplitude. All modern economic and monetary theory is based on balance. Most nations arguing for this or that economically are only talking about sliding where we are on the scale between strict market economics on one side and strict planned economics on the other. Very few, even the democratic socialists of today, are asking for strict socialism as that would mean government seizure and ownership of all means of production and distribution of all goods and services.
In this nation that is not the argument, the issue is throttling the pitfalls of capitalism... in our case crony capitalism.
The tie of wealth based aristocracy to government based aristocracy is well documented and beyond debate. And to not pretend for a moment that is not happening, we all know it is therefore it is natural for those without power to attempt to slide the scale away from wealth collection that is in bed with governance. To the point that many large organizations today are entirely dependent on their relationship with governance to function. You may call it Americans trying to go with the Venezuela model, but it would be wildly inaccurate to the point of intentionally misleading.
All we are talking about is throttling what economics in this nation has become, and very few (if any) want a Hugo Chavez type in the US to try to remedy it all.