A Venezuelan 'illness'? : Like motorists everywhere, Venezuelans love to complain about the price of gasoline, and they have been doing a lot of that lately. But one thing sets them apart from almost everyone else in the world : At less than 40 cents a gallon, gasoline is cheaper than bottled water here. The constant griping about gasoline prices among Venezuelands is emblematic of their complicated and conflicted relationship with a commodity that so dominates their national life that it accounts for half of all government revenue and four-fifths of all exports.