304 sats \ 3 replies \ @ca 16 Nov 2023 \ parent \ on: _Broken Money_ book club, part 4 bitcoin
The piece of the puzzle that you're missing is that value is also subjective.
It can only be done at the individual level effectively, since every individual is different. When you attempt to centrally plan, it simply means that you're not capturing those differences at all and therefore you allocate resources sub-optimally when compared to what each individual, with his differences, would have done.
The state can only choose "1 thing for many people". "Many people" can choose "many number of things", all different from each other.
I'll grant that value is subjective, but it's also the case that, despite the fact that people are precious snowflakes, people have lots of things in common and there's overwhelming agreement on many of them, like a central limit theorem analogue of subjective value.
When dealing with hundreds of millions of people, a lot of these things smooth out.
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Not at all.
Even something like a chair, that everyone might need could not be centrally planned.
Every house is different, each table height might be different, climates across the country might be different which would require different preferred materials, etc.
Absolutely no personal good or service is better when chosen by somebody else than you, the only one who has perfect information about your personal needs.
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The issue is less whether a chair, or your underwear, could better be chosen by some faraway superbrain than by you.
The issue is more whether locating a highway, or coming up with an industrial policy, or making the assessment to not allow straws in NYC, is a decision that can better maximize human flourishing than aggregated individual market choices.
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