User blog comment:Centrist16/SOMETHING EVERYONE MUST KNOW/@comment-3398633-20150809140026/@comment-3398633-20150814232555

Once again, you're going by what you deem to be socialist states, not what the rest of the world consider to be socialist states. Everyone agrees that those nations meet the standards of what is properly deemed to be a socialist state. Only 60,000 deaths can be attributed to Operation Condor, and fewer than 10,000 attributed to the rule of Pinochet. In contrast, in Cuba alone, at least 100,000 people died under Castro's rules. That's one socialist state. Numerous attempts by socialist states trying to acheive communism in their nations resulted in the deaths of more than 100 million people in just one century of human history. You cannot sweep that aside as "non-socialist states" simply because they give socialism a bad name. We're not dropping states from the list because they don't meet your standards. Unless you want to argue with thousands of academics, economists, and historians, there is nothing to debate. They are socialist. And every academic, economist, and historian agrees with that statement.

You're saying Scandinavia "tamed" capitalism? Economic imperialism? DId you just get through reading the Communist Manifesto? Seriously, socialists probably don't like learning about capitalist economics because they don't want to know that everything they believe is built upon fairy dust and asinine dreams. How can you claim a system is wrong if you don't even understand how it works? I can't fix a car if I've never touched a car in my life. You see perceived "flaws" in an economic system you don't like, and claim that you can do better than the one that has existed throughout human history. Socialism ignores the very basic facts about a capitalism system, supply and demand. It's nonsense like socialism that creates shortages in all of the states it has been practiced in. I just can't with this line of reasoning.

Oh and the Zapatistas. If the people love them so much, how come there aren't more Zapatistas running around fighting the Mexican government? With all of the poverty and crime going on down there, surely the Mexican people would have thrown their support behind the socialist guerillas by now.