The socialist calculation problem isn’t about not having enough computing power, it’s about it not being possible to aggregate all of the relevant information to estimate correct prices and quantities because that relevant information mostly sits in people’s heads

Markets solve this by using what amounts to perpetual bidding process that a centrally planned economy explicitly rejects in favor of setting prices from the top.

A centrally planned economy could maybe recreate this bidding process, but that defeats the purpose of planning.

The point of central planning, after all, isn’t to perfectly mimic a market economy. It’s to do things better than a market economy. So you need all of that information, and then you need to somehow “improve” upon the outcome, according to whatever normative objective you have.

Recreating the bidding process is only possible if you will then distribute resources on the basis of the bids. Otherwise the process is no longer “incentive compatible”, which is just a fancy way of saying people no longer have an incentive to truthfully reveal their preferences

“Give me your bids, and if you bid truthfully I’ll give the goods to the other guy” doesn’t work, for some very obvious reasons.

So, except in certain limited circumstances where markets fail on their own, central planning is not a workable system. The government can’t improve upon the market outcome because a market bidding process (real or facsimile) is the only way to get all of the relevant info.

Apparently I missed the obvious solution to this, which is to put a GPT model on everyone’s phones. This will, uh, read their minds I guess?

Okay, this thread may be hitting escape velocity, so I’m going to mute it. Have fun arguing in the replies.