Fingerprints needed to buy bread says government

Bread lines in the Communist paradise of Venezuela.

"One crust of bread per Sheeple please."

Venezuelans could soon have to scan their fingerprints to buy bread.

President Nicolas Maduro says a mandatory fingerprinting system is being implemented at grocery stores to combat food shortages by keeping people from buying too much of a single item. He calls it an "anti-fraud system" like the fingerprint scan the country uses for voting.

In announcing the plan late Wednesday, Maduro did not say when the system would take effect, but other administration officials suggested it could be in place by December or January reports the Associated Press.

 

The move was met with skepticism. Critics said the new system is tantamount to rationing and constitutes a breach of privacy. Others simply wondered if anything short of a systemic overhaul of the economy could help the socialist South American country's chronically bare shelves.

Venezuela has been grappling with shortages of basic goods like cooking oil and flour for more than a year. In the spring, the administration tried out a similar system in government-run supermarkets on a voluntary basis.

 

Rigid currency controls and a shortage of U.S. dollars have made it increasingly difficult for Venezuelans to find imported products. Price controls don't help either, with producers complaining that some goods are priced too low to make a profit and justify production

“From the proletarians nothing is to be feared. Left to themselves, they will continue from generation to generation and from century to century, working, breeding, and dying, not only without any impulse to rebel, but without the power of grasping that the world could be other than it is.”  
George Orwell
1984