Thursday, April 29, 2010

Graphic: Central Planning

Below is an example of how central planning looks like. (hat tip: Russ Roberts)

It's a powerpoint presentation which attempts to define the conditions in Afghanistan




Try figuring it out.

As a military official commented,

"'When we understand that slide, we'll have won the war,' General Stanley McChrystal, the US and NATO force commander, remarked wryly when confronted by the sprawling spaghetti diagram in a briefing."

Just goes to show of the impossibility of comprehending every bit of information in a constantly changing world.

As F.A. Hayek once wrote, "The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design."

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