The point is not about the basic principles, but how these decisions were made. This is like being a higher up in a company making a call about something, which

The point is not about the basic principles, but how these decisions were made. This is like being a higher up in a company making a call about something, which goes from placing the bet on the wrong horse, political infighting between different departments, up to decisions which are based on incentives that go counter to the well-being of the company. We are talking about humans with all their flaws. Especially large corpos developed more and more similarities to how eastern bloc countries were operated, believe it or not. Very top down decision making (with all the problems), large bureaucracies, people who are employed but effectively don't do anything ("bullshit jobs" / David Graeber), company propaganda (all hail to the great company!), bothersome people getting "mistreated", and so on. I've experienced the eastern bloc from inside and I'm not sure whether I should laugh about or be terribly afraid of the things that are still to come. Edit: Forgot one big thing: Metrics / quotas. The other thing to keep in mind that "responsibilities" were split between members of the eastern bloc and the decisions who took over what that were often influenced by all kinds of things, just not what made most sense. There was also huge trade embargo, CoCom, in place.