An interesting aside...in the period of the 1920’s through the 1940’s when socialism was really starting to get some traction, one of the big arguments they used to implement central management was that the free-market system (those eeevil capitalists) created an inherently unstable and unpredictable economic environment.
Their argument was that central management would eliminate that unpredictability and create an environment of expectations that could be relied upon.
History has proved that the greater the power of the central managers and the more they try to manage the more frequent the swings in all aspects of the economy and the more wild the swings.
Some would try to explain this as complicated, but it is actually quite simple.
When a handful of people try to dictate to millions what employment there will be, how much it will pay, how much manufacturing can produce, how much they can sell their goods and services for, they are trying to push with a rope. One little snag anywhere along that rope and it binds.
By allowing the market to drive the economy, millions of people pull the economy rope along, when there is a snag, legions jump in to fix that snag and keep the economy towing along.
I dunno, a command economy could be simple and successful!
Rule #1: Anyone with money (personal or loaned) can open a business.
Rule #2: Business must sell their good/service at prices that net an overall profit.
Rule #3: If demand increases, supply will increase (either by increasing capabilities of existing business, or because new businesses will spring up to meet the gap).
Rule #4: see Rule #3, now flip it to the negative side (ie: if demand decreases...)
See, simple!
:-P
Re-read that essay “I, pencil”. Realize not one of these “central planners” knows how to make a pencil.
The ‘Revolution’ promised “bread and freedom”, they were not too forthcoming with the freedom - so they figured they could at least give out bread.
Bread was cheaper than the grain that went into it. So farmers fed their pigs bread.
Now the pig doesn't care that you ground up the wheat and wasted fuel cooking it, or that you mixed in finer ingredients - they grow just as fat on wheat.
With a “command” economy it is inevitable that such discrepancies will happen - and that people will take advantage of them. And you end up ‘feeding bread to pigs’.