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A study of lights at night suggests dictators lie about economic growth (2022)
(www.economist.com)
this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2025
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Of course they do. Another thing to keep in mind is that in dictatorships the lies start at the bottom. Since people know they can be punished for not meeting quotas or for making the country look bad they will lie. Instead of saying they produced 10 tons of rice per hectare they say they produced 12. The lie may seem small but when everyone is doing it the results compound and at the top level the reports become useless. It's how you get famines while the data the government presents shows that they are producing a surplus.
It's a mess and data from these countries should never be taken at face value and should always be independently checked.
Example: how a region in China hid the presence of Covid 19 for months because they knew what would happen if they revealed it.
I'd say that command economy can actually allow for some jumps in GDP. North Korea, for example, ramped up its missile production very rapidly and according to some claims - had supplied more of missiles to Russia than all the West combined provided to Ukraine (there are some caveats like quality but anyway).
Not really caring about such silly things like human rights or, ironically, worker rights and of course forced labor, absolutely allow for sudden relocations of resources, that would be impossible in a "free country" and very quick adjustments to "market demand", that is virtually infinite in case of Russian army.