In particular, many people mistakenly believe that the [planned] economies must be inefficient based on an assumption that they do not allow for decentralized decision making and result in long waiting lines and shortages. Waiting lines, shortages, and waste did often exist in [the people’s republics] because the government purposely set the prices of many goods too low to clear (and also because richer capitalist countries placed embargoes on the export of the high technology goods to [the people’s republics]). However, the low fixed prices (and the right to a job with income) did ensure that everyone in [the people’s republics] had the right to essentials like food, housing, medicine, and clothes, unlike in capitalist countries where a large portion of the population do not have access to such essentials even in far richer capitalist countries such as the USA. Also, the centralized fixing of prices greatly reduced the amount of time spent on wasteful tasks performed in capitalist countries of price shopping, price negotiation, and attempts to avoid marketing manipulation and fraud.

[…]

Given that East German income would have been higher than in West Germany without the reparations payments, it can be deduced that it would not have been necessary for East Germany to have the Berlin Wall if West Germany had made its share of the reparations payments for [Fascist] Germany’s war crimes. In particular, the burden to East Germany would have thereby been enormously reduced and would have allowed its income to be substantially higher. At the same time, West Germany’s income would have been reduced by it making its share of the payments. In this situation, it probably would not have been necessary for East Germany to have slightly longer work weeks (since it would not have been necessary to catch up with the West), nor to have such severe shortages (that could have been alleviated with greater wealth), nor to spend so little on pollution control (that reflected East Germany’s relative poverty), nor to restrict political freedoms (that East Germany did not want the richer West Germany to take advantage of), nor to have such an obnoxious secret police (whose primary purpose was to keep East Germans from leaving the country for the greater riches of West Germany). All the relative disadvantages of [economic planning] in East Germany may therefore derive, at least partially, from its postwar reparations (and not from communism).

(Source.)