You're missing the smaller players. Cuba saw a really increased standard of living, I think, so has vietnam, so did burkina faso and the DRC before both of their governments got dunked on by the CIA. The larger players are more obvious because the CIA isn't able to meddle with them as much, which means they can get away with much more, but they're still not usually the best example.

The rapid increase in standards of living in china didn't come about as a result of free market intervention, but mostly as a result of the rapid upscaling of a command economy and industrialization in their earlier years. Same for the soviet union. In fact, the biggest downscale in standard of living in the soviet union as I understand it came about after it's collapse, at the hands of vampires like thatcher and reagen getting buddy buddy with big gorbo, while their economy got chopped up for parts. They were pretty fucked by that point anyways though. The biggest problem with those economies, outside of their goofery, is mostly stuff that we've solved in the intervening years since their latent demise with computers. Probably there's also an argument to be made that monopolies like walmart have realistically solved most of those problems and already operate as a command economy as noted in the book "The People's Republic of Walmart", though you could probably make that argument about a lot of different sectors of the economy.

But then I also see a pretty big divide between autocratic, authoritarian controls that centralize power, and more democratized controls, and mostly the argument for socializing goods like housing comes from the probably correct instinct that the average person can exercise more democratic control over their local government than they can any given business, even small scale. Nobody would want a walmart controlled by the government if they made like the same quality of shit and served the exact same function, you know? I dunno I'm sure some .ml freak will be along here to support my arguments with more hard evidence. Any day now. Aaaaany day now.

Here in Sweden we have publicly owned housing. Each municipality has its own company that acts as a landlord. The main issue is queue times, but that could honestly be solved quite easily if the government decided to prioritise housing. They don't, however, and instead opt to try and privatise it, leading to private landlords that have driven up the prices and cost of living, while slowly eking out the life of the publicly owned housing.

We need to look to history for insights into what works, and what doesn’t. In my humble opinion, some form of socialism is the obvious answer. We must move past the minority ruling over the majority. For the sake of humanity, and the Earth, a new system must be implemented. This system doesn’t have to look like China, the Soviet system, or even any socialist system of the past. The key is recognizing that change is inevitable, and necessary. But that change must be decided by the masses, not the select few.