Emanuele Martinelli
University of Zurich
Mises (1963) and Hayek (1945) have crafted compelling arguments against central economic planning. For some time, these have been taken as definitive proof that a centrally plan economy managed by the government could not be possible (Polanyi 2013). As a result, the market order has been declared the superior form of economic system. However, the exponential rise in the capacities of AI soon opened to the possibility that not human bureaucrats but supercomputers could have what it takes to plan the economy better than the aggregate action of market actors. The debate thus reignited, and the ball has been tossed back and forth quite inconclusively up to date. Arguably, this is because neither Mises nor Hayek have clearly and conclusively given a conceptual reason why central planning of the economy is impossible in principle. In this paper, I want to deliver such argument. I find that the most promising way to do it is to frame the problem of economic planning as an agent-environment interaction.
In §1, I will sum up the ‘Mises-Hayek thesis’ as a multi-faceted objection against economic planning, and I will highlight the problem of qualifying the claimed impossibility. In §2, I will introduce my own approach to the problem of economic planning, which is ‘agent-based’ in the sense that it moves from an ontology of the agents involved in the workings of the economy. I will here advance a general ontology of agents and then apply it to the problem at hand to show the different sets of agents that are considered a) in a market economy scenario where the price system is free to operate, and b) in a centrally planned economy equipped with the most sophisticated AI technology. In §3, I will present the most respected models that try to conceptualize a centrally planned economy: the Lange-Lerner model and the Cockshott-Cottrell model. In §4, I deliver my ontological argument against central economic planning, claiming that public institutions as planning bodies can substitute the market order, no matter the AI technology that aids and support them. The reason is that the elimination of the market entails the elimination of crucial kinds of agents that cannot be recreated through AI and careful social planning. More precisely, I will highlight the limitations of the socialist models presented in §3, based on the fact that public managers or AI systems that automatize their decisions cannot replace the proactive action of entrepreneurs driving market allocation.
Chair: Ryan McLaughlin
Time: September 13th, 15:20-15:50
Location: SR 1.006, online
SOPhiA 2026 