Since socialism is so successful, maybe they should nationalize food production and distribution too? It's gotta be better than using a capitalistic market economy for that, right?
Except these countries are capitalist with a pinch of socialism here and there. And it is not all perfect over there. Besides their companies are often involved in corruption scandals wherever they operate. I call them hypocritical social democrats :-)
You've named the problem though I don't think you can see it yourself.
No matter where you are on a continuum of socialist and capitalist policies, a fascist dictator will always lead to abuses of power. Strong democratic principles do their best to mitigate and limit that, with varying degrees of success.
Venezuela did not have a strong democratic system. Military force was used to coerce elections, the democratic process to remove Maduro was initiated, completed successfully, and ignored entirely.
The lesson here is that this can happen to any country when our democratic systems are weakened. I'd argue that the United States has been on a glacial path to this for quite some time.
