It was 1922 when Ludwig von Mises published Socialism and predicted not only that the socialist (by which he meant both socialism and communism) systems weren't adequately setting prices in practice but that they would never, ever be able to set proper prices even in theory. Socialism was irredeemably broken. In this, he has been proven utterly right.
The broken economics of socialism does have one thing going for it. It's perfectly suited as cover for kleptocracy, a cover that Ukraine's Yanukovych government took advantage of in thuggish and increasingly violent ways that were so brutal that the local methodology was incompatible with the EU's softer version and so Yanukovych made his misstep of turning towards Russia and even the rubes caught on and gathered in the Maidan, eventually causing him to flee.
But the events in Ukraine are overshadowing another example of socialism's failure in Venezuela. Maduro has little of the blinding charisma that kept Chavismo popular and the curtain is progressively pulled back to reveal the same old disaster that socialism has produced everywhere it is tried. Yet failure is not an option. Failure must be couched in a betrayal of the system. The socialist system must always be preserved for the next try and the failure exclusively blamed on the implementation. The platonic ideal of socialism always remains unbesmirched to the true believer no matter the cost in blood and treasure.
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