The term socialism has no clear meaning, and trying to group failures together is just as unhelpful as trying to group successes.
The key is to find a balance. Europe has had some success with socialising things that make moral sense (e.g. healthcare) while leaving everything else to the private industry. That's still socialism, it just isn't absolute socialism.
Even China is experimenting with the levels of socialism they want. They've been moving towards a more capitalist-style market and they've found a more workable balance.
Socialism is a dirty word in the US, but is a complex word everywhere else. Hopefully with a self-proclaimed "democratic socialist" running for your highest office we'll see people's understanding of socialism expand.
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2016/01/26/Bernie-Sand...
That's an exaggeration. Serious countries (France, Germany, even the US) employ "socialist" industrial policies in sectors that have nothing to do with morality (aviation, defense, tech research etc). Countries that don't do it at all are extremely rare in this day and age and usually don't end up well.
I agree with your overall point though.
I don't know where tech research is socialised. Government pay for it all over the world, sometimes in-house, sometimes externally, but I've never heard of a country banning tech research unless it is government ran.
This isn't about socialism. This is about what is a dictatorship in all but name.
I'd also re-examine the degree to which our representative democracies centralise power.
In most countries in Europe, for example, it's nearly impossible to start a company without lots of capital. This is because of the crippling amount of taxes and restrictions, which results in an economy comprising of near government and big corporation monopolies. You can see this in most of the nordic countries.
The problem with going the socialism route is that the system will need to take more and more income as new generations completely rely on it. At some point, you don't have enough money to fund it, and it collapses.
With the ability for any company to move to any country, there is also the real possibility that companies will just go elsewhere.
Along with the usual social programs they use a very decentralized goverment and are or were thinking of a guaranteed basic income.
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Not-Capitalism-Jason-Brennan/dp/04...
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Not-Socialism-G-Cohen/dp/069114361...
Socialism is the workers controlling the means of production, not anything deemed vaguely left wing by American standards.
Here's Noam Chomsky talking about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfdnbMd9BiE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsC0q3CO6lM
Many socialists are critical of Leninist style socialism because it's not representative of socialism and it tarnishes the name.
Heck, in the US, the government accounts for over 40% of GDP, and a higher figure than Venezuela...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending
Yes, some states run socialism worse than others. And some states run capitalism worse than others. Characterizing some states as 'socialist' but not ours (which does contain some socialist elements) isn't useful, because it's not always accurate.
I have a hard time calling the US' spending efficient (mostly military) so I think it's more complex than that we're doing socialism 'well'. But the US hasn't fallen apart yet. If both countries are doing it so badly with such a large part of our revenue, why are they failing? Maybe it's less about waste and more about making sure you don't screw up specific critical industries? The situation with California's cheap water even as they're running out is quite a bit like Venezuela's power. Why are we not rocked by such things more often? I'll have to think about this.
Venezuela's economy after the revolution wasn't really a great example of a 'planned' economy. More like:
1) Nationalize oil companies
2) Give free shit to all the people who they promised free shit to
3) Profit?
There's doesn't seem to have been a real direction, no attempt at developing the economy, just Zimbabwe-style redistribution.
At least in the case of the US, the 'waste' generally finds its way into the US economy (through the military industrial complex, the prison system, subsidies to farmers, etc..)
This the economics equivalent of a spherical cow [1].
I'm not naive enough to assert that socialism is a big bad evil straight out of the cold war.
They need to just start charging more for electricity. There will be less waste for sure. If people still use a lot and pay more, it means they need it and the money goes to building power generation. Very, very basic capitalism.