It's a sad irony that Venezuela recently had power blackouts over half the country, despite its large oil reserves. The socialist nation is so badly run that it cannot keep its power lines maintained and "the lights on" even with all its oil wealth. Marxist strongman President Hugo Chavez has had to impose energy rationing to try to deal with shortages.
It's equally ironic that Chavez is emulating Communist Cuba's economic policies - even though Cuba recently more or less admitted the failure of its policies by finally agreeing to let Cubans own and sell land and cars. The island nation is permitting limited free-market reforms to try to pull itself out of deep poverty resulting from its more than 60-year experiment with Marxism.
How many socialist and communist states must fail before the world recognizes once and for all that government-run economies don't work?