Gosh, planning is really difficult, isn't it?

When even The Guardian points out that a centralised and centrally planned system doesn’t work perhaps it really is true that a centralised and centrally planned system doesn’t work? As they are about testing for the coronavirus:

With 400 public health offices forging ahead with testing, the country is a model for others to emulate

As the coronavirus crisis tests the resilience of democracies around the globe, Germany has gone from cursing its lead-footed, decentralised political system to wondering if federalism’s tortoise versus hare logic puts it in a better position to brave the pandemic than most.

Our own system has been to spend £4 billion a year and change on Public Health England - a centralised and centrally planned organisation - to lecture us on the dangers of Cocoa Pops. That might not have been the right decision.

At least one forecast is suggesting that Britain’s outcome from this pandemic will be the worst in Europe. Leading to the thought that if the outcome is worse given exactly the same cause then it must be the system itself which is less than efficient.

However, the real point here is that we can see how difficult planning is in the face of uncertainty. We don’t - no one does - know what really should be done because we just don’t have the necessary information to be able to do so.

Which is all rather Hayek really, isn’t it? That centre cannot gain the information necessary to be able to make decisions. Therefore we cannot rely upon the centre and its plans.

But here’s the thing. Decision making in a pandemic is easy. Easy as compared to decision making about an economy in the absence of a pandemic that is. Currently we’re trying to decide whether to be poorer while retaining more of us or leave some more to die and not be so poor. If not a binary decision then at least close to it.

Now try managing a normal peacetime economy. 65 million people with unique and individual utility functions. At least one billion discrete items are on offer for sale in this economy. That number both growing and morphing as technology marches on and tastes change. That centre is going to be able to plan this?

No one is saying that the current planning - however well intentioned - for the coronavirus is being done all that well. It is though an obvious example of the impossibility of that same centralised and planned process performing a difficult task such as running our economy.

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The zero sum fallacy