Alberto Isaac Perez Levy - Global Activist

The "Venezuela Effect": The Blueprint of What Not to Do Every crisis leaves wounds but also creates opportunities. One can choose whether or not to capitalize on that crisis. If one does, the approach can vary: avoiding the repetition of past errors to prevent a recurrence; repeating those mistakes and reliving the crisis later; or leveraging the experience and lessons learned to transform the situation into an opportunity. The goal is to gain a comparative advantage that leaves us far better off than we were before the crisis—and, of course, to ensure a wide margin of safety against falling back into a crisis state. Ultimately, there are three options: bad or worse; the same or better; or even excellent. The Norwegians saw this clearly and took heed of the warning signs. Upon discovering oil reserves, rather than celebrating, they calmly chose to study the situation. They commissioned academic research and expert analyses to determine how best to capitalize on this fortuitou...

 Family lore has it that one day, while at his home in Camurana, Caracas, he looked up, saw an aircraft passing overhead, and exclaimed: "That should be forbidden—flying over people's homes." Others say his concept of sovereignty was so expansive that it encompassed not only the subsoil and the resources found within it but also the surface and the space beyond the planet. He assembled a rudimentary power plant to light the home he had built with his own hands—an act that was, in essence, a protest against the city's electric utility monopoly. A vegetarian, he grew his own food and eschewed air conditioning; he drove only when absolutely necessary, preferring to walk most of the time. He was a man devoted to his family and his home. On the family lands in Turgua, rather than fighting off squatters and encroachers, he engaged them in dialogue and even helped them secure amenities like a school. He carried a stick on his long walks—not to kill snakes, should he encounte...