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.