They fail because central planning is a bad thing. Think about it. If planning is impossible because it would require God-like powers, then it is impossible, period. If it is impossible and it is attempted, it will lead towards totalitarianism.
Darwinian evolution actually says nothing about the cause or reason for variation. Darwin allowed for planned or intelligent variation. At the time, this was called Lamarkianism, and it is not incompatible with Darwinian evolution.
What Darwin said was that "natural selection" describes what survives and what doesn't, regardless of the source of variation. This is also the way capitalism works. People plan like crazy, but no one can really predict the marketplace. Viewed on a large scale, the inputs to an economy are random. Natural selection shapes goods and services regardless of the plans and intentions of entrepreneurs.
The reason biological evolution is believed to be random is not because randomness is required for Darwinian evolution, but because randomness is what we observe. Biologists have searched for 150 years for any evidence that variation follows Lamarkian rules or that variation anticipates need, but no such pattern has been found. If it is found tomorrow it will not alter the fact that natural selection shapes overall change, just as it determines what goods and services survive in the marketplace.
Darwinian evolution actually says nothing about the cause or reason for variation. Darwin allowed for planned or intelligent variation. At the time, this was called Lamarkianism, and it is not incompatible with Darwinian evolution.
Of course they did not know about DNA and microbiology back then, so variation was not something they could speak about authoritatively. But things have changed since Darwin's time.
If I understand correctly, variation is believed to be caused by "mutations." As a matter of fact, I don't think there is even any alternative mechanism. If it's not mutation, then it's nothing.
It seems the main issue concerns how powerful a force mutation is, and if it is capable of creating more complex creatures over time.
They [communist economies] fail because central planning is a bad thing. Think about it. If planning is impossible because it would require God-like powers, then it is impossible, period. If it is impossible and it is attempted, it will lead towards totalitarianism.
No, it's not impossible period.
What's interesting is that there are many, many instances where central planning has no ill effects at all, and is even beneficial; but it depends upon the scale of the planning. All corporations have some sort of central planning, and they are all, certainly, totalitarian in nature! This goes for universities, government agencies, and even small businesses. We could even take this down to the family level. I would go so far to say that those who fail to plan, plan to fail.
That's why I don't agree that central planning is the culprit. The real problem is the scalability of central planning.
When corporations start getting into hot water, the first thing they do, as a rule, is sell off divisions that are not part of their "core" business; even if those divisions are profitable! Recently GM sold off it's Electro-Motive Division, which has been making diesel locomotivies profitably for over 60 years. But it's not part of GM's "core" business, so off it went, so now GM can sink that money into it's failed attempts at building autos that people actually want to buy. I think they would have done better to stay with the diesels, and sell of the automotive divisions. The only competition for railroad diesels is General Electric, while with cars it's the whole frickin' world.
But the point is that corporations really hate complexity when they are having a hard time. They can no long plan and cooridinate effectively. So it seems as if there might be a size of corporation that is "too big" to for men to handle.
Of course, this size issue is NOT stopping other companies from wanting to become the GM of the future.
While a country can plan "too much" and risk certain failure, I think it's also a real possibility for countries to plan too little, and risk failure from not properly understanding their own strengths and weaknesses.