As previously noted, socialist planners can have no direct experiential evidence of the value scales of individuals, and they must therefore depend on unreliable models in attempting to meet consumer needs (cf. pp. 5.4:38-41). In order to have any utility at all, such models must have some relation to value scales in the real world; that is, they must be based on observations of a free or quasi-free market. Because well-developed free markets are suppressed in socialist societies, these "planning" models need to acquire their input data from some coexisting society where a relatively free economy is operative. Because of geographical, cultural, and other differences between the two societies, however, such emulation-based modeling is far less efficient than a true free market.

If socialism is implemented on a global scale, then there can no longer be meaningful "planning" to meet the needs of the general population, but only what Mises called "planned chaos" (). Ironically, advocates of socialism are precisely correct when they claim that the true benefits of their system will become evident only when it is implemented worldwide.