> And average working people were so well off in the USSR that they never tried to leave, lamented its fall, etc... Indeed most average people were quite happy

> And average working people were so well off in the USSR that they never tried to leave, lamented its fall, etc... Indeed most average people were quite happy with the regimes. The dissidents, people trying to flee etc. were usually academics. (I'm from Eastern Germany, so this is anecdata, but at least the first-hand kind). I suppose this is also true for China: The young people there have seen huge intergenerational prosperity advances for three or sometimes four generations. This mixes up topics, though: central planning is largely orthogonal to political freedom. As a mirror, there were a bunch of authoritarian free market situations, e.g. in South America, but also Italy, Spain and Germany during their dictatorships. > The US is remarkably decentralized, Are you sure about that? My impression is that large parts of the economy are actually controlled by (quasi-)monopolies or oligopolies. > In the end, central planning does not survive any good intentions of its originators. Most European countries have a federal budget to GDP ratio of over 50%, suggesting that central planning actually does deliver in many segments of the economy, notably those where working market dynamics are very hard to achieve (esp. education, healthcare, pensions, social services, often also energy and water infrastructure).