You are misunderstanding the Animal Farm. It was a criticism to the Soviet system and not socialism, Orwell literally fought for the anarchists in the Spanish Civil War.
Also took a bullet through the throat, which he rather miraculously survived.
He explains it in this preface: http://www.orwell.ru/library/novels/Animal_Farm/english/epfc...
I'm reminded that I need to read his Catalonian book.
This was for example the case with Venezuela, to name a recent one.
See: https://www.ozy.com/flashback/venezuelas-downfall-isnt-about...
You'd need a country with an already strong economy to try socialism to see where it goes. We have western civilisations with some socialist aspects (European countries) but they're all still majorly capitalistic.
A lot of countries labelled as socialist/communist were/are really just state-capitalist countries (China, to name a good example. Communist only in name, same way the nazi party was socialist)
Do you really think these are somehow justifiable with a glib "But socialism!"
Anyway - the Scandi countries do a nice line is social democracy, which includes policies that seem to be considered outright socialist extremism by US standards.
You should find out how they're doing. By all accounts they're not particularly unpleasant places to live.
I don't love our problems. But I hate every single other large country's problems more. I am open to change, but if your change wants to be some minor variation on the old, perpetually failing socialism-like ones that we've seen kill tens if not hundreds of millions of people, I'll pass.
I read the book with conflicting views on communism/socialism/fascism in mind. Need to read in more detail. Thanks for the clarification.