[Jacqued]

Well then I guess "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" is a republic with democratically elected officials.

There isn't a single communist country, and I don't think there has ever been any. You could argue that Russia was on a path to communism in 1917, but Lenin promptly put an end to it.

At most, China used to be (but isn't any more) a socialist country.

[leokun]

> There isn't a single communist country, and I don't think there has ever been any.

The Animal Farm problem I guess, maybe AI can help some day.

[gambiting]

Are you familiar with Ian Banks and his Culture books? This is basically what happens - people created "minds", computers which run their societies,but every person is provided with an infinite supply of anything they desire(it's fabricated on demand) and everything(and I mean everything) is allowed, with the exception of killing other people.

[theandrewbailey]

I haven't heard that the Great Firewall is gone. Seems you forgot about how the Arab Spring threw China into cringe mode, and arrested people like Ai Weiwei.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/libertycentral/2011...

[toyg]

Undemocratic ≠ socialist. This should be a fairly obvious statement, in the Year of Snowden.