• They may observe and emulate as much as possible the prices, wages, and production quantities in relatively free countries. This approach, used in the late Soviet Union, is highly approximate, since it cannot account for geographical and cultural differences; moreover, it is available only to the extent that comparable relatively free countries remain on the globe. Furthermore, if the method were followed consistently, planners would in effect succeed only in emulating a market economy, thus sacrificing most of the supposed egalitarian advantages of a "planned" socialist society.
  
• They may turn to modern computer models (a much-vaunted technique among socialist theorists). Such models, however, do not remedy the underlying problem, namely, the dearth of data about the value-preferences of the citizens in the model. Computer calculations are no better than their input data—a principle enshrined in a phrase familiar to computer technologists: "garbage in, garbage out" (GIGO).

To the extent that central "planning" is imposed, private planning becomes impractical, if it is permitted at all. Even if the central "planning" is of a very general nature, the central "planners" must be accorded flexible power in order to cope with situations as they arise. But this very flexibility renders state policy unpredictable, making it impossible for private planners to formulate realistic plans of private action. Central "planning" essentially reduces all producers outside of the central "planning" staff to automatons. Such systems ultimately fail because people (the most important economic resource) no longer function in their fundamental capacity as thinking beings.  

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