There are some crucial points missing from and/or obscured in this story. Yes, Venezuelay has run some massive social benefit programmes, including subsidising many standard goods, mosts especially fuel and food (both of which, on reflection are fuels), for years. So has virtually every other oil state.

The situation in Venezuela devolves in large part, though not entirely exclusively, from:

1. The globally depressed petroleum market. After massive price spikes in the late 2000s, increased extraction, mostly from very highly-financed unconventional wells, and an ongoing global economic recession, have caused oil prices to fall.

2. The highly-financed well operators, much as Venezuela, have the problem of high fixed costs, mostly debts, which must be serviced in order to avoid bankruptcy. This creates a perverse incentive to increase supply as price falls. Since these operators have high marginal costs, their profits are also lower to start with.

3. Venezuela's oil reserves, among the largest in the world, have always been less desireable than West Texas or Persian Gulf oil, both of which are "light sweet crude" -- comprised largely of smaller hydrocarbons, and low in contaminants, especially sulfer. Saudi crude flows like syrup, Venezuelan more like molassas on a cold day. Venezuela previously had more light and medium crude oil, but production of these has fallen by 37% since 2004 (Reuters, below).

4. Much of recent US domestic oil supply has been of NGL (natural gas liquids) and condensate -- very light fractions of hydrocarbons, some of which are only very barely not gaseous at normal temperatures. (This is also, incidentally, why oil train wrecks and fires have been so volatile -- the lighter fractions of oil are exceptionally volatile and burn explosively.) Much of this supply is not suitable for use in transport fuels. You cannot produce petrol, kerosene/jet fuel, or diesel from them, and the US has been (quietly) looking for ways to export this anyway. See this Wall Street Journal article from June, 2014:

http://blogs.wsj.com/corporate-intelligence/2014/06/25/what-...

Oil industry critics have argued that counting condensate/NGL in US crude oil extraction statistics isn't defensible.

http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/The-Condensate-Con...

Exports of condensate began only in 2014 following regulatory rule changes:

http://fuelfix.com/blog/2014/06/24/feds-open-door-to-condens...

5. Venezuela is using the US imports as dilutants for its heavy oil. I suggested this in an earlier reply, and confirmed the fact in a Reuters artice:

Each barrel extracted from the Orinoco belt needs some kind of diluent to be transported and exported. Naphtha is typically used to transport crude to the upgraders, but when these facilities are not fully working or are under maintenance lighter crudes are needed to formulate blends for exports.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-oil-venezuela-imports-fact...

Venezuela previously imported distillates from Nigeria in the 1990s.

6. As the NY Times article does manage to mention, Venezuela faces large debt and financing obligations to multiple creditors, including China, and several US firms, including Halliburton.

As with several previous Venezuela stories on HN, there's been a swarm of comments attacking the Venezuelan government and political systems. At best, those criticisms tell only a part of the story, and quite possibly a minor part.

>Why aren't people taking drastic action against this failed government?

They don't have the 2nd Amendment.

Curious American asking any Venezuelans out there: how does this situation get any better? What do you look to for hope? I'm not familiar with the Venezuelan media perspective (any non-state-affiliated stations left?), but from here, it seems like there is no serious effort to change course; on the contrary Maduro seems to be driving ahead with the notion that, somehow, more of the poison will cure the patient.

When does the change in direction come? What brings it on? Will Maduro step down? Will his successor do any better? Or will his successor be even more dictatorial? It's all very worrisome, my heart goes out to those who live under such incompetent rule.

I'm not sure that's how the black market works. I don't think I can exchange dollars for bolivars. That sounds like a losing proposition for the black market.

Funny thing is that socialism tends to reject religion, but price controls originated in Christian thought.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_price

What a lot of people don't realize is that prices aren't inherently good or bad in and of themselves, they just are. If somebody else is willing to pay 20k for a diamond, that's the price of a diamond.

No amount of legislation or argument will drive down the price of a diamond to what it "should" be.

See http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527023034600045791921.... The prices of electronics dropped in price after a governmental mandate. Guess what? After the store inventories were depleted, they never got any more TVs to sell.