Governments are on both sides of supply and demand: their powers to tax and spend mean they can put their metaphorical foot on the metaphorical scales to tip the balances whichever way they want, to a large degree, with rapid effect.

Central planning is only one of many ways to do this, it can also be managed more locally; and Soviet-style central planning is only one many ways to do central planning, most large businesses even in capitalist nations are also somewhat-centrally planned by the C-suite.

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WalterBright 3 days ago | parent [-]

Corporations do do central planning, but they do so at the high risk of becoming unmanageable and then they fall, and a competitor replaces them. Government central planning just raises taxes to cover the inefficiencies, until eventually the economy collapses.

	▲	ben_w 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		That's a similarity, not a difference. Even regarding the scale of the organisation, there is lots of overlap between governments — at all levels, from countries, through states, to incorporated municipal governments — and businesses. You could reasonably compare Foxconn to Iceland or Wyoming (I would also list a US city, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_GDP gives me a lot of US Metropolitan Statistical Areas rather than cities, that seems like it would extend beyond the bit with the tax collection rules?) Even governments get bailouts and/or bankruptcies, both from above (e.g. https://www.uscourts.gov/data-news/judiciary-news/2012/07/13...), and from outside (e.g. Greece). And corporations, when big enough, become monopolies, and raise prices to cover inefficiencies, until something breaks.