Lenin was a great admirer of Ford Motor Company. His Soviet committees were copied directly from Ford.
You could think of the SSRs as divisions, and satellite countries as wholly-owned subsidiaries.
Fordlândia had its own version of Prohibition, and its own little revolt about the cafeteria.
It is interesting that we only see it in government. Most companies are dictatorships. Some might have a board of directors that is responsible for voting in it's own members, kind of like a tribal elders system.
It's interesting to see these different forms of decision making producing different advantages and disadvantages.
Bad externalities are the downside to dictatorships. The externalities of a corporation are much more limited, and there is more pressure to reduce them (from governments, other corporations, and their customers).
Continuing the dictatorship metaphor, this pushes corporations to be more “benevolent”.
That's an interesting conclusion. I guess one big difference is that in most places you have a choice in whether or not to work for a company, but you don't have this choice when being born in a dictatorship, unless you consider migrating elsewhere a reasonable choice. It seems there are also less good choices when considering where to work (i.e. they're all becoming dictatorships?).
It's also as bad when you consider paying or using a free service provided by a dictatorship company. Do we really have a choice anymore? You may not choose email provider X, but all your friends use X so in the end it doesn't matter, e.g. in terms of data privacy. You may not choose social network Y, but all your friends have so you're forced to participate in the dictatorship, e.g. if you want to have a normal life.