The more one centralizes power, the more opportunity there is for graft, corruption, and mismanagement to do a lot of harm. Let's avoid a stupid "definition of

The more one centralizes power, the more opportunity there is for graft, corruption, and mismanagement to do a lot of harm. Let's avoid a stupid "definition of terms" fight and just talk about why the USSR was such a complete disaster for a few minutes, whatever you want to call their system. That system was one that centralized a lot of power. What jobs people did, what prices things sold at, where people could love, how much of what they would try to make or grow, and also who could say what, what ideologies were allowed, what kind of media people could see, what foreign ideas were allowed in. It turns out that that's a pretty rich field for graft. All the graft opportunities that were available in other countries, plus a big slice of economic control, plus a big slice of ideology control made for some powerful government officials, and they could use corruption to turn that power into personal gain.