Why the Soviet Union did not build a nationwide computer network (2008) [pdf]

There were amateur radio operators in the Eastern Bloc countries, with equipment capable of transmitting a signal to the opposite side of the Earth on a good day. But they were licensed by the government, and were aware that their activities were being watched.

The old regime really hated not having control over you. That was the most important thing. As long as they knew what you were doing, and approved, they were fine with almost anything.

I've built a few low-power FM transmitters back then, and I was aware of the possible dangers. It was more of a high-schooler's hobby. But teenagers like to push boundaries anyway.

On the other hand, it's misleading to draw too many inferences from extreme cases. I was arrested recently for having a bag of very ordinary picket signs while not being anywhere near a political demonstration in time or space, but the repression in question was local in scope.

They lived in the country, but not in an usually isolated area. 100% of the areas in rural areas had these in that region until the late 70s.

Some of the infrastructure was just retrofitted to provide private line service. I saw wood based mechanical switches in production (in very isolated areas in New York) circa 1997.

One of the reasons Cybersyn failed was because it was difficult to get private enterprises to cooperate with the central authority--either the Cybersyn group (which in the grand scheme of things was a relatively small affair), or any other government group. This was deeply frustrating to the government and to Allende. The pace of government takeovers was accelerating rapidly until Allende's assassination.

Of course, part of the reason private enterprise refused to cooperate was because of it's antagonistic relationship with Allende's government and the left generally. We could "blame" the capitalists for this failure. But that's sort of beside the point. The fact remains that for those and other reasons, Allende was on the path to something akin to communism (Venezuela if not Cuba) simply because that's where circumstances were leading him. He couldn't go around, under, or over the opposition; the only way to achieve his originally modest goals was to conquer the opposition--that is, nationalize the bulk of Chilean industry so he could directly pull the levers necessary to achieve his goals.

Is this necessarily true? The rapid development is a because they opened up to other economies from a position of underdevelopment, but there has to be a set point somewhere considering they have a massive population and more or less the means of production.

Asking the population to report on itself has limitations. They have to know what is to be reported. They need to know what is good and bad. But what if the dangerous idea is something that you don't want the population to know anything about? What if you want to supress an idea without anyone knowing what you are doing? That's the modern context: removing data and changing stories without anyone knowing that you are pulling strings.

But access to health care, or (in many neighborhoods) even reasonably nutritious food and safe drinking water - that's quite another matter.

> the difference between capitalist societies and dictatorships, communist regimes, and the like is, the majority of that the powerful have access to the every man does as well. there is no restriction from buying as much as you can afford. there is no one saying you need to wait for your turn to buy food or what brands you can buy.

No, that's the difference between a society with scarcity and one without. Rationing has existed in the West, too - outside of war time.

The difference between a communist society and a capitalist one is who owns the means of production, and how the economic profits from it are distributed.

The Communist Party of the USSR owned the means of production, but distributed the profits from it incredibly unequally. [1] (For decades, the party promised that communism would be reached Soon(tm). And we just need everyone to work hard for a few more years...)

Capitalists (And, to a smaller extent, people with 401Ks) of the USA own the means of production, and distribute the profits from it incredibly unequally. (While telling half the population that they too are going to be wealthy. Just work hard for a few more years... And vote Republican - because taxes and regulation and foreigners are the reason they are poor.)

The reason you can buy Coca-Cola at 7-11 is because the USA produces more then enough staples. Were there a serious, long-term food shortage, you'd see ration cards[2] being implemented before you could say 'But, markets!'

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

> In a kolkhoz, a member received a share of the farm's product and profit according to the number of days worked, whereas a sovkhoz employed salaried workers. In practice, most kolkhozy did not pay their "members" in cash at all. In 1946, 30 percent of kolkhozy paid no cash for labor at all, 10.6 paid no grain, and 73.2 percent paid 500 grams of grain or less per day worked.[5] In addition the kolkhoz was required to sell its grain crop and other products to the State at fixed prices. These were set by Soviet government very low, and the difference between what the State paid the farm and what the State charged consumers represented a major source of income for the Soviet government.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odd%E2%80%93even_rationing#U.S...

Lenin himself set up the Soviet system and he himself put Stalin in control. It was a brutal dictatorship from literally day 1.

This socialist fairy tail of the 'good' soviet union that was destroyed by the evil Stalin is socialist self-rationalizations.

The USSR was communist in the sense that it was lead by people who strongly believed in communism and had a socialist economy that they hoped to transform into communism.

Stalin was a strong ideological believer in communism and his communism was just as real as that of Trotsky or Lenin. His actions, specifically collectivization, very clear target the achievement of an ideological goal, that the majority of the party ideologically agree on.

It did not have any reservations before expropriating crops from peasants and then killing said peasants with chemical weapons when they uprisen. Meanwhile in cities OGPU will happily shot you after a trial by three people, or even without one.

Leo Trosky, who is still unfortunately sometimes considered as "Stalin done right", reasoned like this:

Communists in power have to extract production from workers whether they like it or not, and maybe in the future the socialist state with advance to the condition where these workers will no longer feel expropriated. But until then, just use force.

Also oddly enough, all the students from grade school and on where indoctrinated into the communist mindset using communist texts and rhetoric.

The failings of the Soviet Union are the failings of an ideology whose explictly stated goal was the overthrow of every existing social institution. Stalin merely implemented the Bolshevik vision on a much grander and bloodier scale.

Unless your argument is that the Bolsheviks were wrong (which would include people before Stalin).

That's almost 15 years of technological progress, of course the web/internet would replace it, the same way it replaced all other dial-up/BBS services.

>The Minitel was technically free to get but expensive to use since you had to pay heavily taxed services at the minute instead of data volume.

This, historically, was the telecom model. In the US (pre breakup) the telephone company would hand you a free phone for your home and it would be paid for by monthly fees. You never bought it nor ever owned it. This isn't a novel thing nor a real criticism imo.

In China, policies like the great firewall exist because the internet does challenge the central government. China is stable because 1.) people are happy with the CCP's economic results, 2.) the state controls large Chinese tech companies, and 3.) the government regularly "disappears" vocal dissenters. Expect a state crackdown if their economy starts crumbling.

One of Sam Walton's big points is that Wal-Mart's success was not due to scale. It was because they were moving data around instead of inventory. Retail used to involve lots of product taking up space in warehouses, store back rooms, and shelves in the store. All that costs the retailer money. Wal-Mart was the first big chain to get this under control, so that product flow followed sales flow very closely. This has an enormous financial benefit. Big retailers typically pay 30 days behind shipments. Wal-Mart (and presumably Amazon) usually have sold the product before they even have paid their supplier. So their inventory cost is negative. Now that's cash flow management.

Wal-Mart was one of the first retailers to bar-code everything. They meant everything. Wal-Mart has a buying center in Bentonville, known in retail as the Corridor of Doom. They put up signs along the line of "If your product isn't bar-coded, don't bother coming in". In typical Wal-Mart fashion, they made the suppliers apply the bar codes, both at the retail item and case level. (They've been trying to move to RFID, but it hasn't worked out as well.)

Gosplan was always very slow. They had a monthly information cycle and an annual decision cycle. Wal-Mart had a daily information cycle and a weekly decision cycle years ago, and it's probably faster now. If Gosplan had made it to the bar-code era, they might have been able to make centralized planning work.

The general idea that 60s cybernetic thinking has little relevance to the concrete present possibilities of economic coordination via internet, that seems sound to me.