alt Hacker News> You can’t make massive leaps in technology or medicine or many other areas without trust
The Soviet Union did manage to get massive leaps in some areas (in particular related to armament, but not only) such as
- armament/weapons
- space technology
- mathematics
- physics
> (a lot of money on a leap means if you don’t trust the other side or the government to keep conditions stable, you won’t see a return).
I guess you can immediately see how the Soviet Union "solved" this problem by the fact that you simply couldn't gain a lot of money from your innovation.
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Your examples do kind of reinforce the point being made.
Mathematics and (theoretical) physics are capital-light research sectors. Weapons platforms and space technology were state managed (I.e. didn’t require private sector capital financing).
For a while before the US and other democracies left them in the dust.
Mathematics and Physics maybe but not in a way that benefited the broader society overall.
The Soviet Union was able to innovate in the areas they chose to sink resources into but innovation was clearly not as widespread as evidenced by their decades of stagnation from the 60s onwards.
They were still innovating in military technology in the 80s but analysis since their collapse analysis that they were at least 20% of GDP on defence, if not as high as 40%.
The West managed to match and surpass Soviet military and scientific advances without sacrificing consumer goods or the economic wellbeing of their people.