When does it fail, and why does it fail? As I've noted elsewhere, per capita income in China has increased about 130x (in constant dollars) since 1960. They've

When does it fail, and why does it fail? As I've noted elsewhere, per capita income in China has increased about 130x (in constant dollars) since 1960. They've gone from abject poverty to Western standards of living for most of their citizens. That's astounding. Small nations that have stayed with old-school communism and are mired in poverty - North Korea and Cuba at this point - have been almost totally isolated from the rest of the world for decades, unable to trade with large, obvious, prosperous neighbors. Is it the five year plan, or the sanctions? The USSR eventually failed, but they did improve a great deal over the economic situation Russia was in at the time of the revolution. And honestly, there's no guarantee that a financial collapse won't wipe out the world of western capitalism, either. The US came perilously close to that in 2008.