So, 'zoning' == 'communism leading to essential collapse'? Strangely enough, Europe appears to be full of countries that place all sorts of 'circumventions' on the free market and that have failed to collapse on schedule. More specifically, none of the 'free market' economies in the West have had anything approaching open slather on zoning and appear to have survived so far (not saying zoning policies are always good, just that they don't seem to lead to obvious disaster).

Suggestion: any time you find yourself having to lard statements with phrases like "By all accounts" and "attempted" and "essentially" you should strip out these circumlocutions and ask yourself whether the statement that remains is obviously untrue.

Free markets have categorically failed to deliver; competitive markets have been successful.

I'm starting to suspect that there's an intentional disinformation campaign to obfuscate that point. (Okay, I'm being coy: I'm fairly certain that people who dislike functional capitalism are using the term "free markets" to lead us away from working capitalism and back into serfdom.)

I'm feeling like people have forgot what made the west what it is as if people think its some sort of fluke accident that made the west prosperous.