I suppose I would tend to agree with you that a fully planned economy will be destined to fail, just like a fully unplanned economy would, but no economic syste

I suppose I would tend to agree with you that a fully planned economy will be destined to fail, just like a fully unplanned economy would, but no economic system is ever pure. Certain Asian Tiger economies, like South Korea and Japan, had large scale economic plans to begin manufacturing electronics for export. This was an intentional, top-down strategy. A successful one, at that. Other types of economic planning that we see have included nuclear energy, damns, highways, railways, satellites, and so on. The US only began funding space exploration after they realized that the USSR was ahead. The US was able to be more resilient over time, and still incorporate a lot of the top-down innovations.