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> The state run economy has actually done a very good job at recovering the country's economy in the first two post-WWII decades. Why did it do such a bad job

> The state run economy has actually done a very good job at recovering the country's economy in the first two post-WWII decades. Why did it do such a bad job in the later decades, when they had recovered from the war?

jandrese 5y ago
Centralized control always has an information problem. The people at the edges know what is going on but can’t communicate that up to the people in charge without overwhelming them. This is where market economies shine, the people near the edges make the decisions which avoids the communication bottleneck.
inkyoto 5y ago
It is an enigma to me. My best take on it is that the war machine coupled with the toxic paranoia of the senile Brezhnev government has caused the eventual demise of the USSR. The Khrushchev thaw spanning nearly a decade before that, in my personal, somewhat weakly substantiated view, was the last chance when the USSR could begin a gradual transition into opening up and becoming a Scandinavian like socialist state (I can have my own pipe dream, okay?). What followed instead was the economic stagnation focused on the preservation of the Soviet state, heavily handed suppressions of democratic movements in satellite states of the Eastern block as well as domestic policies targeting the dissent.
DeathArrow 5y ago
>Why did it do such a bad job in the later decades, when they had recovered from the war? Because nobody cared to make it work. From bottom to the top. Some were just pretending they worked, some worked poorly, some work good but with no good direction. When there's no competition and no personal incentive to improve, then why try to improve something?
- inkyoto 5y ago
  > Because nobody cared to make it work. From bottom to the top. Some were just pretending they worked, some worked poorly, some work good but with no good direction. They did care. The first two post-WWII decades were a time of a massive economic and social upheaval where everyone did care to regain peace and everything and everyone that had been lost in the war. People have united to rebuild the country from scratch. It started rapidly going downhill in late 1970's and onwards due to stagnation and growing indifference stemming out of it.

jandrese 5y ago

Centralized control always has an information problem. The people at the edges know what is going on but can’t communicate that up to the people in charge without overwhelming them. This is where market economies shine, the people near the edges make the decisions which avoids the communication bottleneck.

inkyoto 5y ago

It is an enigma to me. My best take on it is that the war machine coupled with the toxic paranoia of the senile Brezhnev government has caused the eventual demise of the USSR. The Khrushchev thaw spanning nearly a decade before that, in my personal, somewhat weakly substantiated view, was the last chance when the USSR could begin a gradual transition into opening up and becoming a Scandinavian like socialist state (I can have my own pipe dream, okay?). What followed instead was the economic stagnation focused on the preservation of the Soviet state, heavily handed suppressions of democratic movements in satellite states of the Eastern block as well as domestic policies targeting the dissent.

DeathArrow 5y ago

>Why did it do such a bad job in the later decades, when they had recovered from the war? Because nobody cared to make it work. From bottom to the top. Some were just pretending they worked, some worked poorly, some work good but with no good direction. When there's no competition and no personal incentive to improve, then why try to improve something?

inkyoto 5y ago
> Because nobody cared to make it work. From bottom to the top. Some were just pretending they worked, some worked poorly, some work good but with no good direction. They did care. The first two post-WWII decades were a time of a massive economic and social upheaval where everyone did care to regain peace and everything and everyone that had been lost in the war. People have united to rebuild the country from scratch. It started rapidly going downhill in late 1970's and onwards due to stagnation and growing indifference stemming out of it.