Optimizing the USSR: Why Soviet central planning failed
Optimizing Things in the USSR
A data scientist's review of the book 'Red Plenty' reveals how Soviet central planning, despite using linear programming and computers, failed due to computational limits, poor data, and political interference. The planners couldn't optimize an economy with millions of products, and their attempts led to shortages and inefficiencies.
Since there were hundreds of thousands of commodities, and since the supply chains had many dependency steps, it was impossible to compute the full balance sheets for the economy.