[sradu]

You must not be from a former communist country. The system worked for two-three decades during the initial industrialization phase. When that phase ended growth was hard to find (the whole system was based around factories and moving villagers to cities). That's when the numbers started going down and the system started faking numbers to give the appearance that all is well and nobody could disagree with them.

At a country level (not talking about Amazon) these systems are fragile and don't handle volatility well.

Re: Amazon - you can't compare countries with private corporations.

[archarios]

I wonder if the growth problems that SU came across was more due to external pressures than inherent systemic limitations of a planned economy

[goodpoint]

> The system worked for two-three decades

Yes, that's my whole point.

> Re: Amazon - you can't compare countries with private corporations.

...and why? The similarity is more than evident.

[Jensson]

Amazon has competitors, a central government do not. If the central planning fails to deliver a product then there is nobody there to deliver the product, if that product was food then people starve. This lack of competition is both bad for robustness as I described, and bad for efficiency since it means that people has to get their goods from the government and can't choose to get it somewhere else, so there is no selective pressure to keep the government deliver goods people want. You could say that other countries pressured them via war, but the people couldn't choose to buy American, the competition happened at a way too high level to matter.

Or rather, ultimately the people made their choice, central planning was scrapped and people could but American goods. So in a way the competition helped, people ultimately picked the superior option and the inferior option went under. But it took a very long time for that to happen, capitalism is way faster.

[goodpoint]

> Amazon has competitors, a central government do not

Countries engage in international trade and also go to war. If anything they compete more ruthlessly.