No implication at all, I was simply curious. I think in the West we assume that the communist experience was bad, but I have no frame of reference for this, as I wasn’t there at the time. Then comes comparing between communist regimes, which is farther removed from my experience.

I wish the CIA would’ve let democratically elected communist regimes alone, like Vietnam or certain Latin American countries. It just grinds my gears I guess. We claim to support democracy, except when we say that they’re holding it wrong, or doing it wrong. Who are we to say that?

At the very least, the US should be taking responsibility for the political and economic fates of those countries they "Monroe Doctrine"-ed out of self-determination, including economic and stability-oriented military support (at a similar level provided to NATO countries, Japan, South Korea and Saudi Arabia) and accepting their refugees with open arms.

We have modern Venezuela as a ripe example.

I’m not sure that is the same. Would you consider Venezuela a democracy?

Modern day Venezuela has a larger amount of private, for profit economic activity and employement than France.

It's meaningfully a socialist economy, just an insanely corrupt mixed-market economy with a government pretending to be socialist to keep power.

> Modern day Venezuela has a larger amount of private, for profit economic activity and employement than France.

Is that supposed to reflect well on Venezuela or be a slight at France? Because Venezuela isn't exactly doing to hot in the economics department right now.

It's not supposed to reflect well on Venezuela, nor supposed to be a slight to France. I'm just saying that Venezuela is not an especially socialist economy.

Here is a source:

https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/venezuela/private-cons...

Compared to:

https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/france/private-consump...

As well as

https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/venezuela/public-consu...

Compared to:

https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/france/public-consumpt...

That makes more sense.

I thought you were claiming that the overall dollar amount was larger.