A centrally "planned" socialist economy also exhibits severe deficiencies as an information-processing system. Even if we assume that the planners are benevolent and have the "best interests" (in some undefined sense) of their citizens in mind, the structure of the system prevents them from obtaining and coordinating all the value-scale information needed for efficient and rational planning. Since individuals consume and produce according to quotas and directives enforced from above rather than their personal choices, little or no experiential evidence is available regarding their value scales—e. g., the subjective disutilities (or utilities) that they attach to various kinds of labor, the products they prefer, or the quantities of those products that they desire. Consequently, the "social planners" must rely upon highly inferior models to estimate what quantities of what goods should be produced and how they should be distributed:

They may substitute their personal value scales for those of the population for which they are "planning," while supplying their own best estimates of existing stocks and natural resources.