Effects of Soviet rule

[phongn]

You mean like water bottles in the US?

If you're referring to "bad decisions at the bottom" - yes, that is a pretty good example.

[K. A. Pital]

The market system has its many flaws, but I'm not convinced that a command economy would succeed in the kind of necessary planning to go from "advanced minicomputers in labs" to "microcomputers on many desktops" to "my oven, my car and my antitank missile are controlled by embedded CPUs"

How many market economies has went from "advanced minicomputers in labs" to "my oven, car and tank and AT missile are controlled by embedded CPUs"? Only one: the US centered, First World economy.

Yes, you did phrase the argument kinda poorly, but neither was I a paragon of explaining it well. Let's give it another try. We both agree that a command economy, with the right decision, can push computers down everyone's throat if it be so willing. You are then asking where from would come the advancement in CPUs? That's fairly simple.

The command economy, once it installs computers everywhere, will see them quite the same as all other means of production, which need modernization - it will develop indicators which show the relative productivity of computers and seek to make them more advanced because that makes production lines and technological products more advanced. In essence, the main strength of the command economy - it pays attention to something once it becomes universal and ubiqutous in it; like the process of making ferroconcrete was greatly improved between 1950s and 1990s, because it was a ubiqutous technology, or metallurgy which required extensive advancements in chemistry, even in daily production.

Now, it may certainly not be the same level of computer development reached now, but it is clear that the development of computer technologies would be much faster than it was in reality in the command economies.