When I was a child, we lived in Yugoslavia (Serbia) in 1980-81, after the death of Tito. It was similar to what is going on in Venezuela. We were the ‘rich’ family because we had the only car in the village. We would bring a suitcase full of things like toilet paper. We had electricity (and thus TV) for a few hours in the afternoon - enough for a showing of Bugs Bunny subtitled with propaganda and the government news. We would bring basic medical supplies (bandaids and gauze) and my mom would dress the wounds in the village and help as she could because medical care was an hour away if you could get in. It was an interesting experience, one that made me a conservative.
Yugoslavia was somewhat fortunate because it had a market economy.
One of the few things Tito did right after breaking with the Soviet Union was to abandon rigid central planning.
They’ve done just the opposite in Venezuela.
My family immigrated from Poland and I’m dating a POlish woman. I went to visit the family last year and they all can’t believe how much Obama sounds like the sock puppets the soviets installed and how stupid many people are for believing socialism. They have stories how people who were allowed to leave would bring back a bag of peanuts they took from the airplanes. They would all share. Or the times the entire clan would share tiny slices of a banana that had managed to make it from Cuba.
Now the wonders of socialism won’t even get you a banana in a banana republic...