Actually, almost everyone in Venezuela has a great many problems. Starvation, for example. Shortages of basic goods. Dysfunctional and understaffed hospitals, which lack medications. A corrupt and increasingly militarised government determined to protect the incumbent president, Nicolás Maduro, at all costs.

Shortages, inflation, and protectionism cripple the economy.But businesses, especially factories, face another, more specific problem. As Venezuela's economy has ground to a halt and its currency has depreciated by nearly two thirds in the past year, the raw materials needed for manufacturing have become prohibitively expensive, or simply impossible to come by. This is not helped by the government's steep import tariffs and currency restrictions, nor by the rock-bottom price controls, which make operating a business an utterly unprofitable enterprise.

This disaster is entirely of President Maduro's own making. But rather than acknowledge that 17 years of Chavismo socialism have been a terrible mistake that have wrecked Venezuela, Maduro is tightening the iron fist of state control.

The government has seized a factory for the crime of shutting down.The BBC reports that the Venezuelan government has seized a factory that makes hygiene products like toilet paper, owned by the US company Kimberly-Clark. Kimberly-Clark's crime? Closing the factory, due to an inability to obtain raw materials.