The reason the USSA runs better than the USSR is that the american soviets are less brutal and more sophisticated than the russian. Have nonzero ability to appreciate the future beyond the immediate. That's it. E.g. a congressional committee is exactly a soviet. It's merely that americans aren't gauche enough to call it a soviet, like some uneducated peasant. You have never heard of any of the important soviets, nor do you know the names of anyone on them. They are very, very unelected. By design.
In america you're allowed a thin veneer of Capital-adjacent behaviour, provided the soviets are too busy to stop you. For example, the soviets have very little control over small businesses. However, someone told DC that crude regulations disproportionately harm small businesses, and therefore they doubled down. For example covid lockdown relief. Lobbyists - the soviet funding bodies - ensure the regs don't conflict too much with the large businesses. They're owned by the government after all, what's the point of shooting your own foot off? Regulatory "capture" is in fact the large businesses being captured by the State. Small businesses clash too much to have a unified lobby cooperative - which is how they remain, in turn, superficially free.
Regardless, if you do anything in america, it's either with soviet permission, with soviet inattention, or you end up in jail. As all appreciable businesses are government-owned, annoying a soviet will result in getting fired and blacklisted. Alternatively they merely repossess "your" children or wife. The latter is the government's woman, it's merely lending her to you, on account of not currently using her body.
Conveniently the soviets are always very busy trying to prevent the other soviets from eating their lunch. In poolitics, it is always backwards day, so [united] means [divided]. DSSA, it's not divided at the state level, and is a world Empire, not restricted to america. [Checks and balances] means even the government isn't allowed to legitimately own things; other soviets are permitted to take stuff away if they can finagle a way or means. Usurper Regime. With all this background noise citizen-slaves can get away with a lot provided they don't brazenly cause a soviet to lose face, and even more if they don't try to muscle in on State monopolies.
Don't try to start a pepsi competitor unless you've paid your full danegeld for the last ten years. And know exactly who to start paying jizya to, and how much. Meanwhile the Amish get away with mogging !!america!! in every way because they're poor. They can do whatever they want provided they're not obviously superior.
If !!capitalism!! means anything in the Empire, it's that paying off your local soviet isn't considered corruption in !!america!!. Instead it's the expected minimum. If you're rich enough you can in fact pay the correct soviets to let you do whatever you want. As it turns out [whatever you want] is 15-year-old whores rather than, for example, inventing the airplaine, but never mind. Owning your own houseblimp is on the table, but too expensive even for the most voracious leeches. In soviet russia a billionaire's fortune would be redistributed - usually directly to stalin - but in !!america!! you can pay your soviet enough to let you keep some of the money. As long as you don't tell anyone who the soviet is, how much you paid them, in what way you paid them, etc etc.
Generational wealth is not real in !!america!! on account of these extraordinary payments. If the stock market could keep your sons and daughters comfortable you wouldn't be permitted to invest in the stock market. Anyone rich and not in a soviet must either quietly bleed money or work enough to pay the soviets to allow them to keep working to pay the soviets.
Large businesses, especially banks, are [bailed out] by the government because the costs were going to be eaten by the government either way, what with being wholly-owned government enterprises. Why bother raising new State-owned businesses - especially re-running all the nonsense about pretending they're private - when you can simply keep the old ones? Of course when I say the government eats the cost I mean they counterfeit the money and tax the base more.
The phrase [eating their lunch] is amusing but in fact every time one soviet eats another's lunch, nobody gets lunch. That lunch is simply gone forever, and america is permanently poorer. This will be a source of ever more vicious infighting as every soviet spoils a slice of pie before one of their competitors can take a bite, making the pie smaller and smaller until, like rome, washington loses 90% of its population. Goes full detroit, in other words.
In the mean time, voters are realizing voters get the shaft, and joining the soviets. The pie-bakers, as in rome, notice they're getting a bad gig and quit the bakery. The pie needed to feed everyone on the "to each according to their [[[need]]]" side grows larger and larger as the available pie erodes from both ends, from waste and supply shocks.
The only thing not too small to grasp that the government does not own are the univerities, because the ownership goes in the other direction. The universities own important parts of the government. Universities are run by soviets, which subordinate the soviets in mere Official capacities. The universities don't get taxed, they get paid taxes. This includes their VCs; venture Communists. If you get university investment, your investors have no taxes to pay, and you outcompete everyone who does have to pay taxes. Perhaps if taxes were some reasonable percentage...but instead they're normal Communist rates for everyone who doesn't own the tax office lock stock and barrel.
Using these tax-preferred university investors, america pretends to be Capitalist for the dumb monkeys who can't (and don't want to) add 2+2. These investors decide who wins and who loses in [the marketplace] with a minimum of open, heavy-handed sanctions. If you refuse to bend the knee they can always start and fund a competitor. Conveniently the schools and universities don't teach you do to math. What a coincidental and convenient coincidence.
They're told to pay huge bribes. For example, pharma companies don't violate FDA rules once a year by accident. "Whoopsie doodle we made a new endemic virus what a shame who could have seen this coming." Where do you think these billion-dollar fines end up? Any pharma company that doesn't find a way to launder money into a soviet's pocket will quickly find their business becoming illegal. As long as gates keeps kicking back a large portion of his blood-sucking into "foundations" and "political campaign contributions" the taxpayers will ensure he is never poor. Or in jail.
Until a competing soviet manages to eat his soviet's lunch, that is. Sorry epstein's body double. Should have backed the winning horse if you didn't want to be suicided.
If you learn the names of any of the important soviet members, kindly don't let me know because I don't want to be suicided either. I don't plan to shoot myself three times in the spine and then throw myself off a low bridge to drown, but you never know where life's gonna take you I guess. Unless someone speaks the wrong name over an insecure line.