Lets Talk Socialism...

by: Les Carpenter
Rational Nation USA
Purveyor of Truth

While looking for something of interest, since the daily regular debates are getting rather stale and becoming pointless in my never humble opinion, I stumbled upon The Free Capitalist Network and decided to stay awhile. During my meandering through the site I came across a interesting comment post. The comment was posted in 2011 by EmperorNero.

All socialist countries are poor, and all poor countries are, or have until recently been, socialist. All rich countries are capitalist, and all capitalist countries are rich.

I would be interested in some counterexamples or arguments against this rule. It seems to hold true as long as we are clear what we mean by "socialism". Socialism here is defined as government ownership/control of the means of production, and not in the 'European meaning' of capitalism with welfarism, or the 'original meaning' of absence of private property rights.(Emphasis mine)

Scandinavia is often used as an example of rich socialist countries. But when using unequivocal definitions they are among the most capitalist countriesin the world. What about Bangladesh, India or Haiti as capitalist countries? Nope. All of those have a strong history of government ownership of the means of production. We just didn't read about their history, so we assume they are capitalist.

Can you think of any exceptions to above stated rule? If it holds true, why don't libertarians ever state it this clearly?

"They all look upon progressing material improvement as upon a self-acting process." - Ludwig von Mises

Thoughts anyone? It seems quite often socialism gets bandied about without any frame of reference and often that results in misinformation or confusion.. Especially by conservatives and libertarians.