“No 585 people who ever trod upon this earth are smart enough to efficiently and “fairly” direct the economic activity of 300,000,000 million people. It now looks like the Soviet Union will get the last laugh.”

As Hayek points out, nobody CAN be smart enough to know and understand the ever changing, constantly churning ideas, attitudes and opinions of any large body of humans. How do you get the data that exists no where else but inside the skulls of 300 million people? How do you process it in a timely enough fashion to do any good?

It boils down to this, central planning is trading the minds of millions, for the minds of a few, or even one. No one mind knows as much as a million minds. You don’t fix an important problem by putting fewer brains on the job. You put as many brains as you can to find a fix.