I suspect the main reason why central planning fails is not actually the planning part. The problem is human hubris - the idea that if the plan fails, then all

I suspect the main reason why central planning fails is not actually the planning part. The problem is human hubris - the idea that if the plan fails, then all you need is a "better" plan that accounts for more things. In the real world, things break constantly for various reasons. And there is a trade-off between efficiency and robustness. If you try to make something very very efficient (i.e. optimal), then you also make it very brittle. So for instance, in the communist economies (not that they wouldn't have other problems, they were dictatorships after all), the planners would decide that it is "optimal" to have this one factory producing something, like computer chips. But then something got delayed there, and everybody who expected the thing to be delivered had to wait. These unexpected delays accumulated through this "optimal" solution. I think main reason why capitalism works is actually because it is terribly inefficient. It duplicates a lot of work, through competition. But the robustness is much higher. And that's why it's a success and has higher overall economic throughput. You can see this paradox in large corporations, which are, as many people noted here, centrally planned economies. They suffer from the same problem - human planners are trying to be too optimal, the robustness suffers, and the result is often spectacular internal failures. It's like with spacecrafts. Of course it would be more efficient if the spacecraft had only one engine, one computer, and so on. But what if it breaks? Then the whole mission fails. That's why it needs backup engines, backup computers, and so on.