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One of the main problems of Gosplan, the Soviet committee for economic planning, was that with the massive size of the Soviet economy, it became to hard to manage it all effectively. Decisions made by Gosplan had to go through various sub and regional committees, they had to go through individual factories who would verify what they were able to do, then it would all go back to Gosplan for the final decision making. The fact that bureaucrats frequently messed with data didn't help either. Anyway this process took a very long time and on average decisions made by Gospan took 2 years to implement. This was an obvious problem because with this system the Soviet economy could not keeep up with technological advances and so their industry was always less advanced then that of the United States.

Now let's say hypothetically, that an economy exactly like the one of the Soviet Union pre Gorbachev, was reequipped with modern computers. So what would be the effects? Now remember that the only change here is the introduction of computers. No free market reform of any kind will be attempted by this hypothetical Gosplan committee. Now I understand that the consumer goods planned economy wouldn't be improved too much as it would still be very hard for Gosplan to predict the supply and demand of the consumer market. However things will certainly be done at a faster and more efficient rate.

So to what extent would computers help a Soviet like centrally planned economy?

If you believe that all centrally planned economies are due to fail regardless of technological changes, then explain why computers wouldn't help in any way.
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