The disadvantages of central "planning" relative to the private planning of a free society only increase as society becomes more complex and technological. According to a popular myth, free markets are appropriate only to simpler times and cannot adapt to the complexities of the modern world. The truth is quite the opposite. As human values and conditions become increasingly dynamic and complex because of technological innovation and accompanying rapid social changes, the inherent unresponsiveness of central "planning" becomes an ever more critical weakness. Only the decentralized, parallel-processing information system of a free market can operate successfully under such circumstances.

According to another argument, certain new technologies may require that standards be imposed upon producers or consumers by a central planning authority. For instance, several competing formats may initially be offered for a technology such as High Density Television (HDTV). In order for HDTV to become economical on a widespread scale, it is contended, a uniform format must be coercively imposed upon all manufacturers. In the Information Age, however, technological change constantly outpaces any single observer's ability to foresee the future, so that no one individual can accurately predict the long-run advantages and disadvantages of the alternative HDTV formats. Moreover, no single bureaucrat can know what further technological advances might be precluded because alternative formats were prohibited. Such insight into the future is necessarily speculative, and speculative ability, as we saw in Section 4, is best encouraged by economic freedom and competition (pp. 4.10:15-24).