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Comment by nine_k | Hacker News Reader

I suggest that you pay a visit to Venezuela at your free time, to see such policies applied at a national scale.

Ponder this: the very same economic policies attempted in Venezuela are almost equivalent to those attempted in Norway. The difference is one country had well-functioning democratic institutions and pre-existing prosperity, the other had widespread corruption and limited freedoms. The results are in plain view, and so are the lessons to be taken: democratic social ownership of common riches (in this case, oil) is a good idea, but stress on the democratic part.

Is there any country in the past or present, that has implemented communism with any degree of comparable prosperity and individual freedom as democracies?

No country has had proper communism. So there is no compassion to be made.

No country has had true scotsmen, either.

Every country has had communism that I say has had communism.

No country in history has implemented communism in the strict sense of the word.

As for the success of socialist principles of economic management (i.e. common ownership of property/means of production), it varies (there's Norway, and there's Venezuela), much like the success of capitalist economies varies.

Of course not. Oppression is baked into the system. It's by design. Marx explicitly describes it as necessary for abolishing the capitalist state and suppressing those who would undermine by attempting to engage in individual market activities.

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