That's not what central planning ever did, either. They changed priorities and quotas instead. And even that system (soviet version) was very short-lived. Gove

That's not what central planning ever did, either. They changed priorities and quotas instead. And even that system (soviet version) was very short-lived. Governments these days use pricing, including special case pricing and tax breaks to achieve a similar thing even more roughly. Unless there are shortages, in which case they intervene directly. So, what we have now is actually much less efficient.