有人在reddit上問Venezuela政權為什麼還沒倒

This might be totally tangential to the gist of the thread, but having lived for most of my life in Africa; I know it takes a lot more than power blackouts, gazillion percent inflation and scarcity of basic commodities to bring a regime down.

Mugabe survived all this - and so can Maduro.

Westerners are used to comfort, so they aren't aware of how resilient human beings are, or how human beings prefer order, any kind of order, to chaos. The belief that sanctions and the hardship caused by sanctions will lead people to topple their governments or support those who do so is badly mistaken. During a period of sanctions, people are obsessed with survival, not toppling the government (it is more difficult to get three square meals, so that is what you focus on).

I've lived through sanctions, and the end result is typically the same; the regime wades through, but ordinary people suffer.

NB: Sudan's Bashir was removed by street protests AFTER sanctions were lifted.