Is this the worst example of Central Planning? Maybe not, but it is a key consideration in why the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. Why Commies Couldn’t Do Semiconductors
The Warsaw Pact wanted to match the West in technology. Technology was key to defense during the Cold War, and they were being badly outpaced in technology. And so the East Germans set out to develop a semiconductor industry. They succeed a bit, early on, but they ultimately failed.
An early success meant that they could produce color televisions.
“Strange inequalities in policy planning meant that color televisions were widely available, but consumer items like toothbrushes and toilet paper were in short supply.” Communist planning at its finest!
Central planners always think that they are smarter than the market. They aren't.
East Germany stole as many designs as they possibly could, but they couldn’t steal the intellectual expertise behind the numerous process tweaks, nor the furious swarm of technological innovation drive by Silicon Valley’s capitalist high risk/high reword startup culture that drove Moore’s Law for decades.
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