Wait till the authoritarians get a load of this. It’ll be a favorite to emerge as a Presidential Executive Order…

Venezuela has a new ‘forced labor’ law that can require people to work in fields

Apparently, President Maduro signed a decree allowing the labor ministry to order  “all workers from the public and private sector with enough physical capabilities and technical know-how” into the fields for 60 days, with a possible extension of 60 days beyond that.

This sort of thing is pretty much the natural end result of dogged determination among a collectivist government in the face of reality. A pragmatic Venezuelan government would toss Madura out on his ass and change the constitution to make it a treasonous offense for the government to nationalize businesses or try to control prices.

Note: not a whole lot of data available on this one. Search for it online and all the links so far come back to this news.vice.com story. So… who knows, maybe it’s a hoax. But it sure sounds like the sort of genius policy a Socialist would dream up. And Amnesty International seems to think it’s for real, and they don’t seem to be fans of the idea.