>Mind you the Chilean government was being starved of dollars at the time as a form of colonial pressure, just as the Venezuelan government is now in 2019. The results were hilarious.

Yes, a coup, a dictatorship and tens of thousands tortured and executed, haha.

The whole TFA screams of facile dismissal and cheap comic shots (people smoked on airplanes at the times and well into the 80s even in the US, so there is nothing to strike as funny about having ashtrays on the chairs in everybody that wasn't born yesterday and only remembers a world after the smoking ban/decline).

Yes, it was just a fancy control room inspired by sci-fi and wanting to look futuristic, no, they didn't think they were running the Enterprise.

And their failures were more largely attributed to foreign influence, blatant sabotage and sponsored subversion, and diplomatic pressure, than their economics approach or the design of the room. They might have failed economically too, but not for being communist. They were just more socialist than it was acceptable / allowed for a Banana Republic in Latin America at the time (or now). Similar measures in sovereign countries in Europe wouldn't bat an eye...