Socialism - by which we mean the proper thing, not simply some intense form of social democracy - never does actually work. At which point a certain hat tip to The Guardian. Over the years their opinion pages have been full of laudations and paeans to that Bolivarian socialism imposed in Venezuela. How the arrival of a properly democratic economy, the full use of Modern Monetary Theory, fixing prices to make sure that food is properly affordable, sticking it to those Damn Yankees, have or will, real soon now, create a paradise upon Earth. Their news pages have, at the same time, reported rather more faithfully on what has actually been happening:

The continuing exodus of millions of Venezuelans is reaching “a tipping point” as the response to the crisis remains critically underfunded.

More than 5.6 million have left the country since 2015, when it had a population of 30 million, escaping political, economic and social hardships.

A useful guide to the success or not of a polity is to look at the direction of the population flow. Of course, individuals might move in either direction for any number of reasons. But if the net flow is outward then we can assume that there’s something that socioeconomic system isn’t offering which other places are. If inward then something is being done right. When 20% of the population walk out of the place it’s a reasonable assumption that something or other isn’t on offer.

Funny how those migration flows have tended to be out of those socialist places really, isn’t it? Almost as if the system doesn’t produce something that humans find desirable.

Still, in that spirit of finding silver linings wherever possible we do have to admit that the Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart doesn’t have the machine guns pointing inwards.

Yet.