> This type of thinking is exactly what led to mass starvation in the Soviet economy.

In this case, the problem was indeed that Soviet "scientists" - as bsedlm postulates - "were making up theories to 'scientifically' (but actually, just academically) justify whatever the ruling powers want to do" - in this case lysenkoism:

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism

There was mass starvation in Russia under the Czars too.

Tangent here: how do arbitrary, mass decisions differ when they are done independently versus when they are done in the open? Looking at this from the perspective of 'mob rule' which frequently makes very bad decisions.

Because markets are actually making a LOT of different decisions with incredible granularity and specificity across time and many other metrics. This is essentially computationally infeasible to do in a centralized way even if you make many simplifying assumptions.

It can go wrong of course! But there essentially is no alternative that is even close to working.

But those decisions are done in a fairly isolated fashion, i.e. you don't know what your neighbor is doing.

Markets existed long before “Economics”.

The Soviets had economists too. They just had different dodgey theories.