Automating away the centre? Optimal planning and the menace of bureaucratisation

Abstract

Within the wider discourse on economic planning, this paper critically interrogates practical challenges in applying optimisation algorithms to achieve allocative efficiency on the scale of national economies. In questioning whether contemporary information technology solves the shortcomings of Soviet command planning, the paper provides a historical introduction to optimal planning and engages with four fundamental problems optimal planners would face, namely: the concern of computational complexity, the challenge of generating the economic data necessary for the constitution of such a system, the issue of reconciling a static optimum with the dynamism of real economies, and ultimately the relation of optimisation solvers to a hierarchy of ends. Besides epistemic concerns, the greatest risk of such a planning framework is constituted by the possibility of a slow descent into an authoritative system that would mirror the Soviet experience because of its reliance on bureaucratic institutions to make this machine work.