All socialist countries are poor, and all poor countries are, or have until recently been, socialist. All rich countries are capitalist, and all capitalist countries are rich.
I would be interested in some counterexamples or arguments against this rule. It seems to hold true as long as we are clear what we mean by "socialism". Socialism here is defined as government ownership/control of the means of production, and not in the 'European meaning' of capitalism with welfarism, or the 'original meaning' of absence of private property rights.
Scandinavia is often used as an example of rich socialist countries. But when using unequivocal definitions they are among the most capitalist countries in the world. What about Bangladesh, India or Haiti as capitalist countries? Nope. All of those have a strong history of government ownership of the means of production. We just didn't read about their history, so we assume they are capitalist.
Can you think of any exceptions to above stated rule? If it holds true, why don't libertarians ever state it this clearly?
Faulty statistics will be brought out.
Faulty correlation = causation will be brought out.
It will be claimed that the poor countries are so because of the actions of capitalistic countries (i.e. zero-sum game).
It will be claimed that even within the capitalistic countries, only a select few are rich and the rest are exploited by capitalism.
etc.
This is why it is more sound to use theory rather than history. The latter is usually more rhetorically useful, however - so you might have a point.
Every country is an exception to your rule. There are very few truely socialist countries in the world, North Korea and Venezuela come to mind. The ones that had been like Russia and China have shed any pretext of being completely socialist. The supposedly capitalist ones like the USA or UK have not had truely free markets in at least the past 1.5 centuries.
Now the USA and UK have been free-er certainly compared to Russia and China but really started down the hill of Fascism after WW2. They had built such leads in technology and production that forced other countries to change and have spurts of freedom to keep up, I would list Germany, Japan and the Scandinavian countries among these.
So the answer is that although the world is clearly getting free-er there are still varying levels of government control in the world with the USA and UK adding government at higher rates than most other places.
Socialist country?
... unable to process. improper use of terms....
In States a fresh law is looked upon as a remedy for evil. Instead of themselves altering what is bad, people begin by demanding a law to alter it. ... In short, a law everywhere and for everything!
~Peter Kropotkin