In Soviet Union, Optimization Problem Solves You (2012)

Yes, however, when it happens in market economies, it is not caused by planning for greater efficiency (saving money). Nobody really decided there to be only one factory that produces hard drives; it is a consequence of hard drives being particularly difficult to produce.

"I think the author expressed it clearly that the planning algorithms depend on linear programming, and that non-linear effects"

I disagree with that. I think planning itself (algorithms) is not the issue here, I think the objective is.

"I don't see why robustness can't, at least in theory, be included as part of the optimization process."

In theory, perhaps. But in practice, it's difficult to prove to the people in charge (whoever that is) that you made the system more robust, compared to proving that you made the system more efficient. So there will always be an inherent organizational bias towards efficiency.

Airlines are an interesting example of industry which strives for efficiency, yet has strong robustness guarantees through regulation enforced by central agency. (Although in this case, it is not economic robustness.)

Maybe the robustness of the economy as a whole is given by how much choice you have in being conservative or take an experiment. So there really cannot be "robustness" as an objective, since it depends on continual experimentation with different models of operation, where most of them fail.

Power energy markets are run using LP & MILP algorithms and a huge topic right now is accounting for non-convexivities.

And to be honest, I am not really sure there is less bureaucrats (which are only sometimes bullshit jobs) in the market system. I actually suspect the opposite, because there are much more hierarchies, and there is less people needed in agriculture and industry.

Some Soviet categories of goods, and brands were pretty decent. My grandparents' fridge has lasted a good 40 years, without any issues. Their television was broken more then it was working.

Competing on a few key sectors is easy when you sacrifice the livelihood of your whole nation, spoil their property, and send millions to the Gulag to deter any political opposition.

And the Soviets did not compete in "Science". They competed on military and space exploration mainly, but most of the other areas of Science were left dry by the Soviets, or left to crazy experimentation based on pseudo science in agriculture. Most of the genetic discoveries were done in the US, most of drug development happened in the US, computer development was way ahead in the US as well - there is no world where the Soviets were competitive across the spectrum.

And let's not forget that the US continuously shipped grains to the URSS because they could not produce enough food for their own people consistently. You can't do Science if you can't even grasp agriculture.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1979/10/04/h...

Maybe the simpler ones, like blow dryers. Cars made in communist Poland usually broke down within first couple of hundred kilometers of purchase. People used to take a new car to a (private, as in not-state-owned) mechanic, who would dissasemble it and then reassemble, to make sure everything was put together correctly. Not to mention that communist Poland, a nation of 40 million, was unable to design its own car and had to licence it for production from capitalist corporations.

USSR just did not have enough resources to properly feed everyone using planned economy. It had to admit the very smallest pieces of market economy (sell apples from your orchard, don't go to jail) to keep people somehow fed.

I think this too. There has been recent work by Paul Cockshott (a computer scientist) on new models of central planning with modern computers. I'd urge anyone interested to check it out.

You just cannot afford high-quality product.

If you replace USSR with "period up to the late 80s", that statement is repeated in many countries, so maybe the central planning part is not the distinguishing factor.

Even in the space, USSR achieved much more launches than the US for a simple reason -- Soviet satellites crapped out in months instead of years.

That's a platitude, not a fact. We just are moved to believe that the market is naturally redundant by propaganda, our governments in the west urge us not to look at the instances where it's not, like economic collapses caused by banks or other government investing groups that are "too big to fail."

This can easily be rephrased to:

"when all the major politicians have stakes in all the major companies, there is zero interest for things to work out the way they were intended to."

And now there's no actual argument to what you're saying. Both systems have flaws. That does not prove one's better, you need more then that.

Seeing the flaws is the first step to asking yourself the question, "is there a better way to do this?"

Do you think we're better off because our corporate funded politicians have all the power, and we're just living in their fiefs? Is that the sign of a good system?

Capitalism uses minor successes in it's lower classes like bread and circuses. They're distractions. Don't say to yourself, "at least I'm not starving in some South American country", ask yourself "why can't we all be doing better?" Is this system really the best mankind can do?

There absolutely were times when being a few minutes late to work (not during the war either) would get you a long prison sentence at the very least.

Also, it never were "a normal western-sh country". Russia hasn't been, and USSR in toto had no reasons to be either.

Works of marxist "economists" shouldn't even be dignified with a discussion, but is is greatly concerning that there is such a thing as whitewashing of the soviet regime, and that it is considered to be far more acceptable that whitewashing nazis.

Breaking up the existing communes and murdering the Soviets (then using their name) were terrible things, but its impressive that a landlocked country with minimal infrastructure and an uneducated populace could fight off Germany and liberate most of Northern Europe, push the bounds of science, and be a world power for a number of decades despite having half the populace of the other world power of that era.

In other words, all Marx said is that value is created when labor creates value. Duh. Circular reasoning of this sort is a hallmark of kookery, and it takes a rather brainwashed mind (or absence thereof) to miss this obvious logical fallacy.

There are other ways to demonstrate the idiocy of the labor theory of value: for example by constructing a realistic scenario when clearly "socially useful" labor (for example, work at a factory) destroys value of a "free for all" resource which wasn't created by labor at all - i.e. by polluting the air). Incidentally, Soviet Union was full of grossly polluting factories.

I think a personal anecdote is in order: unlike Western Marx fanboys I happen to be formally educated in Marxism, at the top university in the USSR, no less, (this was mandatory, I wouldn't poison my mind with that junk willingly). The professor reading the course of Political Economy was the well-known Marxist/Leninist textbook author and certainly was quite smart. So after his first or second lecture (I don't remember exactly which, it was 30 years ago), I asked him to clarify exactly the point above: how to define which labor is useful and which it is not. He called me into his office and told me in no uncertain terms to never ask questions like that again if I wanted to stay out of trouble (didn't help), and that the best answer was "whatever Party directs us to work on". This pretty much clarified everything regarding Marxism to me, and I took his advice to heart, so I still have my transcript from MSU with "with distinction" ("отлично") marks for Marxist/Leninist Philosophy, Political Economy, and Scientific Communism. I guess I should thank him for a sound advice on surviving cult indoctrination.