[virgilp]

But it is - they could because the party leadership wanted to/ decided it was important. My point isn't that communism can't achieve anything, it's that you can't have private initiative that's against the party line - and that's not an accident of one particular implementation, that is a "feature" of communism itself.

"Unanimous" agreement on the collective good/collective interests only works, at all, in small groups (primitive societies) and dictatorships. That was really my point.

[syki]

A person (or persons) with sufficient power/influence decided to pursue space flight and it happened. Which example does the previous sentence refer to?

[virgilp]

When Musk decided to pursue space (or EV for that matter) he had very little power. Wasn't even a billionaire yet. There are thousands of people with similar fortunes that you never hear about.

[syki]

So you don’t know which situation I was referring to? The fact the Musk accomplished what he did with SpaceX is prima facie proof that he had sufficient power/influence to accomplish the goal.

[virgilp]

Which is exactly what I'm talking about. Communism = "for sufficient power to influence/accomplish a goal, you must be in the party elite (tens, at most hundreds of persons)". Liberal democracy: "for sufficient power to influence/accomplish a goal, you must start at least reasonably well off" (3 to 4 orders of magnitude more people)

"power" is distributed in democracies; The centralized nature of communism is its weakest spot, and it is by design.

[mantas]

Another person with sufficient power/influence decided that computing is evil and USSR fell behind in (micro)computers and chips terribly.

Also, a lot of USSR space advancements were made thanks thanks to captured Nazi scientists. If they had to rely purely on homegrown science, they'd have had much harder time.

[syki]

Look up Wernher Von Braun. A group of people thought Jim Crow was a great idea. A group of BP executives thought it was a great idea to not fix oil leaks in Nigeria and poison a bunch of people. I think you miss the point. People with power in any system can use that power for bad. It’s not the economic system that causes this it’s shitty humans that do.

[mantas]

Thing is, in democratic market economy system there're various checks & balances. Sooner or later (usually, sooner) we learn about all of those issues. If somebody just bids on a wrong evolutionary path... Well, there're many investors bidding on all possible paths. Some win, some loose.

In soviet central planning system, few people make decisions that affect many and there's was redundancy. No free press. No political opposition. No economic rivalries to challenge. Same in civic/industrial evolution. If a committee decides to pursue idea X and drop idea Y.... So be it.

There was no democratic feedback mechanism either. Public is not happy that state money is used to prop up revolutions all around the world while one's citizen are living in poor condition? Tough luck, party line is never wrong.