Last week, officials from the Venezuelan government (unsure who, as the economic minister Ramon Lobo is denying this happened) seized control of the General Motors plant down there. This comes after Kimberly-Clark had a factory seized, Coke, Pepsi, Mondelez (they make Oreos) and many other companies have abandoned or severely curtained operations in Venezuela. Supermarket store shelves are empty, bread makers have been enslaved to make bread, the list keeps expanding.
The Venezuelan economy has collapsed 18% in 2016 alone, which has been going on since 2014 when the oil market bottomed out.
This is what happens in a government-controlled economy. Let me apologize ahead of time. If you think a government bureaucrat, either at the state or federal level, should be making decisions on how you should run your business, you're an idiot. Here is Bernie Sanders admitting to that at the 2:20 mark of this video:
Here are Bernie's words, in response to the business owner's question, "So my question is, how do I do that [provide health care] without raising prices to my customers or lowering wages to my employees?":
"You see, the difficulty is also, is that I'm not much of an expert on hairdressing in general, and certainly in Fort Worth."
Unless that governmental official has owned a successful business in a particular industry, they will not have the expertise on how to run/control/grow that industry, any decisions made by them will ultimately end in disaster. Sure, they might get a couple of things right, but only through pure chance.
So, when bureaucrats nationalize, then destroy an industry, what do they do after there is nothing left? Nationalize another industry! Wash, rinse, repeat.
This picture seems to sum up how command economies "expand." From the power that comes from the barrel of a gun.
Margaret Thatcher sums it up thusly:
I would much prefer to bring them [the Labour Party] down as soon as possible. I think they’ve made the biggest financial mess that any government’s ever made in this country for a very long time, and Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people’s money. It’s quite a characteristic of them. They then start to nationalize everything, and people just do not like more and more nationalization, and they’re now trying to control everything by other means. They’re progressively reducing the choice available to ordinary people.
So, now I need someone to tell my why governmental control of an economy would be a good thing. Venezuela is collapsing, the Soviet Union collapsed, China is transitioning to a market economy (at China's speed, which will take another 50 years). Don't point to the Nordic States. They have open markets with large social supports (and a tax rate that starts at 40%). No command-driven economy has ever flourished like open market economies.