> My personal opinion is that he 1) hates the US 2) hates eastern Europe because it defeated socialism.

He doesn't hate the US. He hates that the US has been captured by warmongering elites and hates its poor. And he'd probably school you on the USSR's state authoritarian capitalism not being a good example of socialism.

Is there a good example of socialism?

I'm not sure it falls under socialism, but I always enjoy reading about the "Miracle of Wörgl" and Wörgl's mayor Unterguggenberger. There is even a movie about it!

https://unterguggenberger.org/the-free-economy-experiment-of...

I'm unsure as well but either way this is fascinating; I've only ever heard the term 'scrip' used with negative connotations so this seems like a very refreshing change. The way the currency value was kept stable also looks to me like a great benefit. Welp, now I gotta write a blockchain that tries to match this experiment as closely as possible

That would be Freicoin. One of the earliest altcoins, btw.

Wow yes, I had looked into Freicoin several times but the reasoning behind the demurrage fee hadn't stuck with me until now.

Look up "largest economies by purchasing power", then write me a long reply hemming and hawing about how that's not real socialism

The 'socialism' that Chomsky is defending is Soviet, not Scandinavian.

True, the Stasi was indeed pretty good at what they did.

Is this ironic?

East Germany? Why do you call that a good example of socialism? Post-wall coming down it was mostly East Germans coming to West Germany, less of the reverse. Even today the eastern half of Germany is typically socioeconomically lower on most stats, and a lot of that stems from decades of decisions made in DDR.

* actually deleted my reply, a non-troll cannot say this

What would then be a good example of socialism?

The DDR

It was so good that to this day there is an economic rift between former west and east Germany.

That economic rift is not the fault of the DDR.

1. The West of Germany, particularly the Rhine, had large amounts of natural resources and much industrial capacity. This was true long before Germany was split. Take the steel production of Germany in 1944, for example. 59% of Steel production was in the West, 18% was in the East, and 16% was in the areas outside of Germany. This is not only more production, but more production per capita.

2. Like most of the former Easter bloc, the privatization of state companies resulted in economic downturn in that region. Especially since many of these state industries were simply closed and cashed out on. Jörg Steinbach, economy minister of Brandenburg, is quoted as saying "Some 70 per cent of East German industry disappeared".

Democracy and socialism aren't categories of a kind.