Arguably the big trend in recent decades has been the non centrally planned corporation. Google and Facebook are the poster boys for this approach in which mana

Arguably the big trend in recent decades has been the non centrally planned corporation. Google and Facebook are the poster boys for this approach in which managers see themselves primarily as enablers for the workers, in which those workers have a great deal of individual autonomy and there's relatively little central planning except in "wartime". Many other companies have adopted this style to a lesser degree. You can argue it has downsides, Google's brand dilution for example, but these are very rich and successful companies by any metric. The core problem with central planning is handling change. If the requirements placed on an institution never change, then central planning eventually takes over because the plan is so stable that it can be managed centrally, and that may even have economies of scale. Businesses like Walmart are basically giant factories. Supermarkets are not a business that experiences great or rapid change. Tech firms in contrast experience and create change at a much faster rate, so central planning is more harmful there. Economies as a whole are in near constant change. That's why centrally planned economies lose. They're always optimizing for yesterday's goals, like how many tonnes of steel can be produced per day, but can't react to changes like maybe now computers matter more than steel.