> Now I wonder: what should the central planners give as metrics? Is there anything that works? No. You can't set a metric and let the metric do your governing

> Now I wonder: what should the central planners give as metrics? Is there anything that works? No. You can't set a metric and let the metric do your governing for you. There needs to be a human in the loop. In other words, the system has to be run by people who are making a good-faith effort to achieve the real objectives. Markets partly solve the problem. You can have a market economy that optimizes the production of nails and other widgets according to the metric of profit, but if that's all you have, you will end up with corporations that produce lots of widgets at a huge profit, but in the process burn out workers, pollute the environment, and fill news channels with scandals about how Acme knew for the last thirty years that its products were poisoning consumers, but kept the truth hidden. So you need regulations to mitigate these problems. But this in turn requires that the regulators are acting in good faith instead of trying to game a metric. There always needs to be someone in the loop.