Mindlessly asking for a source on every claim or observation is one of the silliest and most annoying things people on HN tend to do. It’s an original observation, not some shit I regurgitated from a book. You’d swear 90% of the people here thought you weren’t allowed to have a thought unless you published it in an academic journal. If you read the thread under my comment, you’ll find plenty of people pointing out researchers and historians who came to the same conclusion, e.g. (apparently) Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, whose book I have ordered.

> Eastern bloc ( Soviets, Warsaw pact, Yugoslavia) were dictatorships that supressed any dissent, but had very decent welfare states

This is entirely compatible with my observation. They aren’t democracies.