BUT OF COURSE: Venezuela’s Meltdown Creates a Nation of Desperate Capitalists.

Hyperinflation and scarcity have the Bolivarian revolution’s socialist heart pulsing with entrepreneurship. Desperate citizens are eking out a living with ventures such as digging home water wells, bartering bananas for haircuts and transporting commuters in animal-cargo trucks. The economy’s erosion has created markets and market players where none existed.

“I had to improvise in this crisis,” said Ramirez, 31, who always had a knack for fixing things, tinkering with television remotes and microwaves. “Many people today have to pick food over buying things like lightbulbs. I do things well, and I help them afford a good product that will last.”

When the Soviet Union collapsed, I joked at the time that Friedrich Engels was half-right: The socialist state did indeed wither away — so that people could go back to practicing a little capitalism.