[ordu]

> My feeling from the article was that he worked outside the box, and THAT was simply unacceptable to the authorities, no matter how good the underlying technology was.

USSR had a planning economy, so they decided ahead what good and in which quantity must be produced in a coming five years. And then comes some genius and makes a computer better than planned. What should they do?

Something alike was with Setun[1], there was no place for Setun in 5-years plan.

Moreover I suspect that what will be included into the next plan was a big politics. No low engineer could change that. Centralization is evil.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setun

[aleph_minus_one]

> USSR had a planning economy, so they decided ahead what good and in which quantity must be produced in a coming five years. And then comes some genius and makes a computer better than planned. What should they do?

They should do what most management textbooks tell you: adjust the planning to include this innovation in the plan.

[naveen99]

Centralization is also fragile, a single point of failure, which fails without fail. even quantum mechanics doesn’t make a decision in advance.

[mordae]

> Centralization is evil.

This.

It doesn't matter what the official regime is, as long as the decisions are made by a disconnected committee with no way for the periphery to steer, it's always shit.