[bluGill]

Dictatorships (which is what communism always amounts to in the real world) are always good at big visible projects. they fail because things not on the dictators 'radar' don't get anyones attention as there is no reward for small projects that keep the world running until the dictator notices the lack. If the dictator doesn't notice the lack you have to be really good at marketing yourself if you do them otherwise you will be 'purged' for wasted effort when you do them.

[ashoeafoot]

Usually its just the corrupt dictators uncles 2nd nephew rerouting all the funds so basic maintenance cant be done. New projects are always "planned", there are enormous models, cgi movies of cities on endless loops and thats it. Oh at 6:00 clock the septic truck arrives.

[fpoling]

It is a myth that dictatorships are good at big projects. Just consider the history of atomic bomb. If not the access to the spied US blueprints Soviet Union would be much delayed with own version. Then it took China about 10 years before they could test the atomic bomb even after receiving initially a significant help from Soviet Union.

Or consider sending a man to the Moon. Soviet Union eventually abandoned own efforts and was able to create a rocket with similar capabilities as Saturn V only in 1986.

Or consider that the best semiconductor production process comes from a Taiwanese company followed by South Corea and US. China is still not able to catch up despite all the efforts.

Or consider high speed trains. It was Japan and Europe that developed comprehensive network first, not China. And Soviet Union and later Russia never came close to implementing anything like that.

[bluGill]

I never said that non-dictators cannot do big projects. I said that dictators tend to do them as well as anyone else. Big projects don't always go well for anyone, you can find plenty of big projects that fail in the US. Dictators can lose interest just as much as anyone else.

The point is dictators fail most often by ignoring things they consider small and not letting someone else take care of it.

[Fnoord]

There are counter examples, too.

The space race first astronaut (cosmonaut) was Yuri Gagarin, and Laika. Stating the space race was lost by Soviet Union is myopic at best. The Soviet Union defaulted due to being unable to compete, the costly Afghan War, and the inefficient system. But nowadays, how relevant are NASA and BMW ?

The liquidators of Chernobyl [1], to name another example. Another feat is winning the Great War. Shenzhen is also one of a kind. Where is the West's Shenzhen? China's equivalent of F-35 (J-10) shot down two Dassault Rafale a couple of days ago.

Far fetched in West? We got corruption, too. We got Boeing, and Trump.

As for train system, Russia's main transportation is via train and it is robust, but slow. That happens when your country is such a vast amount of land, without solid (direct) sea connections.

But in general, it is a myth, albeit a different one. It is part of the myth (façade) of the strongmen.

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

[fpoling]

Chernobyl was a direct consequence of a dictatorship in the first place. A reactor with positive reactivity would never be designed unless ordered from top. And handling the consequences in the first hours Soviet style made things inherently worse.

As for other counter examples I do not claim that democracy is inherently better. Rather that for big projects at least it is not worse than a dictatorship.

[tehjoker]

Have you considered that (a) communism != dictatorship, while there have been many capitalist dictatorships, often U.S. sponsored and (b) succeeding in big projects is a lot easier when you're rich, which surviving ww2 unscathed and exploiting the world will make you?

[bluGill]

It is a one direction relation: communism requires a dictatorship, but dictators often are not communist.

[tehjoker]

Every fascist regime is capitalist. Think about it. Fascism is capitalism in crisis.

[bluGill]

Capitalism is a straw man invented by communists to mean whatever they want to tear down.

Fascism is not capitalism - fascists don't even think in economic terms except how it helps them.

I'm a classical liberal. Something like capitalism derives from liberalism, but it is derived from freedom of the individual, and not a value in itself.

[tehjoker]

Capitalism specifically means: an economy oriented around private ownership of the means of production. There is a world of implication from that simple statement.

Fascism is what happens when workers get too "uppity" and the upper classes decide it's better to let a strong man reign in the lower class via a combination of spectacular appeals, mythology, militarism, crackdowns, and external expansion. Working conditions in Nazi germany were terrible because they destroyed labor unions. Fascism to a great extent is operationalized anti-communism.

Communists like myself also value the freedom of the individual, but we value the freedom of all individuals and want to make it real, not a thing you just say and then shit on a homeless person or abuse an employee.

[FrustratedMonky]

" fail because things not on the dictators 'radar' don't get anyone's attention"

Funny, because in the US right now, if something isn't on this one particular person's radar, then its is ignored. So by this reasoning, the US is a dictatorship right now.