Venezuela

[Pat Mustard]

Venezuela has a centrally planned socialist economy and has failed miserably as predicted. It wasn't just rhetoric bolstering a position. He did what he said he would do and the results are disastrous. Socialist economic policies do not work, period.

Now, consider the difference between Venezuela and China. The difference is that China has established a capitalist economy, with oversight of course, but the difference is drastic. You can endear yourself to socialist political goals all day long, but as soon as someone goes all in with a socialist economy the result is a cubic shitload of poor people.

First of all, the crony oligarchy set up by Chavez was socialist in name only. Like with the USSR power and wealth was concentrated into a small oligarchy with lip service only being paid to the ideals of equality and communal ownership.

Secondly, I've not yet seen an economic system in the real world which hasn't failed at some point. In fact, I would say that most private wealth systems of economics (such as capitalism) are actually designed to fail on a periodic basis. It is an easy way to ensure that those at the top remain at the top, and in a lot of cases increase the gap between themselves and the rest (like what happened after both 1929 and 2008).

So when you go off on an ideological rant about the evils of socialism, first of all point to an actual socialist system (to be honest the closest we'll get for a long time is a European style mixed economy, humanity currently doesn't have the mentality to sustain a socialist economy) and second of all check your prejudices to see if your favoured way of doing things is not as crippled as what you believe you are arguing against.