Socialism ends this way every. Single. Time. “If only socialism was implemented correctly for a change!” The snowflakes chant. Ignoring history. Implementing more and more socialist programs at home. Sigh.
Since we've asked you several times to stop posting ideological boilerplate and political battle to HN, and instead you do this, we've banned this account.
I suppose I should add that no, that's not because we're $ideological_flavor.
It's obviously an ideological rant of the sort that has been repeated countless times before and is just the kind of thing we don't want here! That's not because we're socialists or some other ideology, but because experience has taught us what kinds of discussions degenerate.
Even if it were "facts", which it isn't ("The snowflakes chant"?), factness is only one concern. Others include how relevant the "facts" are, how often they've been repeated, and what sort of discussion forms around them. There are infinitely many facts people might discuss, and very different intentions go into picking them. The intention we have here is for thoughtful discussion.
Since socialism is so successful, maybe they should nationalize food production and distribution too? It's gotta be better than using a capitalistic market economy for that, right?
Except these countries are capitalist with a pinch of socialism here and there. And it is not all perfect over there. Besides their companies are often involved in corruption scandals wherever they operate. I call them hypocritical social democrats :-)
You've named the problem though I don't think you can see it yourself.
No matter where you are on a continuum of socialist and capitalist policies, a fascist dictator will always lead to abuses of power. Strong democratic principles do their best to mitigate and limit that, with varying degrees of success.
Venezuela did not have a strong democratic system. Military force was used to coerce elections, the democratic process to remove Maduro was initiated, completed successfully, and ignored entirely.
The lesson here is that this can happen to any country when our democratic systems are weakened. I'd argue that the United States has been on a glacial path to this for quite some time.
No I said what I was trying to say. Many countries not in NATO rely on the US for their security and defense. NATO has nothing to do with my statement.
I suppose I should add that no, that's not because we're $ideological_flavor.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15947441 and marked it off-topic.