VENEZUELAN INSTITUTIONAL CULTURE/ Original from Kravelious

When we talk about institutions one of the things that is mostly in the imaginary, is a building of a public power like the BCV -Banco Central de Venezuela-, some ministry or even the reception of a hospital, but when you talk about these not only formal institutions must be taken - those we already know and associate - but there are also other institutions that are informal institutions that, although they are not considered important, are widely known. Among these informal institutions can be perverted and can range from "metro culture" to "Creole cleverness"; a way of understanding that they are the institutions we could use the vision of Berger and Luckman that speaks of them in a way that they are created by and for men through a constant repetition, which implies a social acceptance on the part of the individuals that participate within society, in addition to understanding that institutions are not corrupted unless it is through the consensus-direct or indirect-of social actors.

Among the great advantages of having strong, independent and functional institutions would be that it is not necessary to know the other personally to know what is the appropriate action, a well-known example is a traffic light which has a relatively universal language of traffic rules, that if respected and used as it should be, it would avoid accidents on the streets efficiently. But the real problem of these rules of coexistence are more beneficial to comply with or violate, and that happens for many reasons. In Venezuela, institutional failure is a burden that we have been carrying for a long time and that with each generation is deepening precisely because of the lack of incentives for these rules to be fully complied with. On the contrary, following them makes you look like a "gallo" "Or some other disqualification even among the group of personal friendships.

Ironically there is a double discourse with respect to the ways of acting in everyday life known as the "Creole cleverness" has some ambiguous connotations since depending on what specific moment you refer is taken positively or negatively, the problem is not to understand that this "Creole cleverness" ends up being neither more nor less than the institutionalization of corruption. This perversion of moral positions -which despite being a very extensive philosophical issue, I prefer to reduce it to socially accepted positions in favor of the collective- distorts the way in which we interrelate with other social spheres - among them formal institutions- assuming a kind of social Darwinism where "familiarism" or "cronyism" takes center stage at the time of taking part - despite knowing that a crime is being committed - which defeats the role of the State as a modernizing apparatus.

Certainly in Venezuela there is a lot of talk about the institutional crisis due to the political situation we are experiencing, but the reinstitutionalization approach, and it is no wonder that the prosperous countries worldwide have in common a strengthened institutional framework in which counterweights function in If a megalomaniac president wants to dispose of the country at his whim, he can not do it. Among the serious problems involved in not having internalized the role of counterweights is that we have the highest inflation in the world that closed at 180.9% in 2016, 434% in 2017 and now it is estimated that around 3000%, first time in all the history of the world in which a market economy and consumption have these figures, since Venezuela does not have a high level of nationalization. . Certainly the government expropriated a significant part of private companies but that is one of the main causes - but also It took away the independence of the BCV to apply sound economic policies such as not monetizing the debt - injecting money into the current money supply, without being supported by reserves -, being able to give performance figures throughout the year with what could be Do research and propose solutions and most importantly, do not serve the executive as one of your small boxes.

Another institution that was perverted and used is that of PDVSA, which in 1998 was among the first oil company at the regional level, producing an average of 3.2 million barrels per day and at this time between 2.1 and 2.3 a significant decrease as to the installed capacity. However, this is not the only problem with PDVSA due to the fact that between 2004 and 2014 it had an average of $ 79 per barrel and an approximate of $ 300 million -what is equivalent to about 23 Marshall plans- of which at this moment we only have 12,000 M in international reserves and only 2,000 in liquidity, due to not saving with the Macroeconomic Stabilization Fund which requires that when the price exceeds the estimate in an average of the previous 5 years that money is saved to avoid negative fluctuations of the market - something that obviously was not done - but that PDVSA ended up being a company that sold chicken and gave away sports shirts.

Not to mention the "democratic" institutions that are assumed by constitution - the most presidential of AL- were going to ensure the well-being of the republic, and what ended was in the extrapolation of informal to formal institutions, where decisions are made from the individual - includes the hegemonic party or political affiliation.

In short, what we must be aware of is the importance of this institutional counterweight, but we can not ignore the public culture in Venezuela falling into the pessimism of thinking that we are not like Switzerland or Germany. It is essential to promote education, it is true but that is not an immediate solution we have to understand that educating a new generation takes at least 15 years, although for that to work we must do it from the midpoints, it's no use talking about changes in high places without that being pressured by the rest of the citizens. And despite thinking that it is a bit "pavosa" the slogan of "nothing changes if you do not change" at a critical moment like the current one, where basic needs prevail over the collective, it is absolutely essential to promote citizen culture , where social pressure can be a factor of change an example that still exists is the "metro culture" where the person seeks to take care of spaces without the need for a direct punitive act and where it is necessary that punishment is applied without intermediaries of cronyism.