While his company and name seem to trigger a whole lot of people, Charles Koch has applied such a free market philosophy throughout his company, which is undoubtedly successful. I would recommend reading his book (Good Profit) to get a viewpoint of his approach, though unfortunately bias will preclude many from this.

Do you have any sources which aren't the person in charge congratulating themselves?

> My impression is that the people who argue against central planning always rationalize backwards from a pre-established conclusion.

If you study the origins of central planning and the birth of the progressive movement in the early 20th century, you'll see that private capital loved central planning. Notions of ultimate efficiency through experts directing organizations through central planning went hand-in-hand with a lot of evil stuff. The obsession with perfection through "science" and tending to the "societal organism" was really contra the idea of free markets, individual rights, etc. They drew on evolution in precisely the worst way(narcissism and hubris).

Whereas Hayek draws on evolution to say that culture and society develops through independent actors discovering traditions, organizations, etc. Through the observation of many people/organizations attempting things and either failing or succeeding, society picks up things to copy and reproduce - the lesson being that we can't direct evolution, it emerges!

I agree, it’s well documented that private capital loves fascism and totalitarianism. I’m speaking of socialist central planning though. The idea that free-marketism provides the ideal environment for human freedom and societal development is just demonstrably false in so many ways.