Perhaps I should have qualified “heartless” with “incomplete”, “too mechanical”, or “missing the human component”. Heartless was shorthand for ignoring the human element. I don’t apologize for it, but I didn’t intend to imply that an economy has emotions either.
Your three dimensions miss the most important one, human genius.
One can invest forever, but without people with the vision to see entirely new products, lifestyles stagnate. The key problem with central planning isn’t lack of investment or production. Oobviously the Soviets had abundent supplies of both. The key problem was that central planning restrict 99% of humanity from creating new things, despite the fact that 99 serfs hoeing the dirt have many times more genius than the 1 apartchik scheming up the next 5 year plan. But if all they are allowed to do is hoe, life improves at the pace of the Middle Ages. Occasionally, a Gutenberg breaks through, but it’s too rare.
Edison and Jobs were worth thousands of Buffets.
