I've never understood why anybody would think that central planning would ever work. The very idea is total hubris - before you even get to the decision making

I've never understood why anybody would think that central planning would ever work. The very idea is total hubris - before you even get to the decision making process, you need accurate data to work from. It should be painfully obvious that data about (and especially provided by) humans is at best an approximate representation of reality. Often, it is completely wrong. Real-time noise is still noise. If you want proof of this, consider why work-to-rule[1] works. While it is obviously intended to be used as a type of strike or similar direct action, the idea is that you are technically doing you job too accurately. The work continues to function thanks to the fact that almost nobody does everything they are technically supposed to do. We speed on the way to work, we overlook minor mistakes, we fix instructions and reinterpret orders. Reports are regularly sent up the chain of command that "yes, project $FOO was finished on time" even though everybody involved knows it wasn't. The idea that you can take known-bad data, apply it to a fantastically complex model, iterate that model to add unknown amounts of chaotic noise, and get usable results is completely insane. Given the realities of how bureaucracies work, that noise will simply be re-interpreted until it says whatever the people involved want it to say. In the end, it is still a situation where the people making decisions are distanced from the consequences of their decisions. If you want to fix some of the problems we have, I suggest that we need a lot more of the opposite of central planning: local decision making authority. A control system tends to work better when it can get accurate and immediate feedback, and in human terms that means experiencing - or at least directly seeing - the consequences of any decision. We, as a species, are notoriously terrible at evaluating any decision where the consequences are not felt immediately and personally. [1] http://libcom.org/organise/work-to-rule http://libcom.org/organise/work-to-rule