Why Central Planning Produces Surpluses and Shortages
The Physics of Misaligned Incentives
Why do the grandest plans of bureaucrats and ideologues so often end in chaos—empty store shelves beside overflowing silos, mass hunger amid agricultural abundance? *Why Central Planning Produces Surpluses and Shortages* unravels this paradox with the clarity of physics and the rigor of systems theory. By treating economies as dynamic systems driven by feedback loops, incentives, and equilibrium, this book reveals why severing the invisible threads of price signals leaves even the best-intentioned planners blind to scarcity, desire, and the relentless flow of real-world information.
From the catastrophic Soviet famine of 1932–33 to Mao’s Great Leap Forward, the text transforms history into a laboratory, dissecting how central planners’ disconnect from price mechanisms led to tragic inefficiencies. Readers will discover why markets, with their decentralized feedback, outperform top-down mandates—and how hybrid frameworks might finally reconcile planning with the realities of supply, demand, and human behavior. Whether you’re a scholar, policymaker, or curious mind, this book offers a fresh lens to decode the cycles of plenty and want that still shape our world today.
Nonfiction
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