[roenxi]

Experimentally, we have found that there are two choices for who runs a country:

1) Politicians who are greedy, self-centred and ruthless.

2) Politicians who are liars, greedy, self-centred and ruthless.

The big issue with "I like communism" (for socialism the argument changes) is that any time anyone tries it they try to appoint champions of the people to their ruling class and discover they have actually got liars and monsters. This doesn't happen because they got unlucky - this is because there are no champions of the people at that level of power. There are only people with incentives, and communism really screws up the incentive structure.

The best incentive structure, by far, is free markets and democracy, even if the people who rise to the top are all scum. Somehow, "by luck" (bah, people don't get incentives) it all works really well.