Dear Friends,
It seems to me, central planning unites all dark systems. If one were to draw a Venn diagram of every system of government that has delivered evil, they would overlap at central planning. Communists and fascists are notorious enemies yet both share central planning as a core element. The Islamic Caliphate invests all power in the Caliph, which is central planning taken to the extreme. This is because real evil can only happen when power is centralized. Distributed power allows for distributed evils but only centralized authority provides the mechanism for genocide, world wars, and all other crimes against humanity. While evil exists in decentralized power, the scale of a dark system, however, is impossible. To the future central planner the promise of central planning is too good to pass up.
A dark system is one that results in systematic evils visited on the people. The Nazis built a dark system by that definition. It promised a golden age but delivered genocide, crimes against humanity, and total destruction. Mao’s Chinese Communist Party, the CCP, promised a classless utopia and delivered famine on a national scale, industrial mismanagement of the economy, and a one-child policy that has devastated China’s demographics. The Caliphate Ataturk inherited was in absolute decline. He tried to change it to follow the Christian model of capitalism and freedom. Meanwhile, the Young Turks visited their inhumanity on mankind under his reign. There are plenty of other examples in history. Every empire and civilization rose in virtue and freedom, then declined in corruption and central planning.
Central planning is any system where power is elevated to the elite and away from the people. The more decisions are made by an elite the more centrally planned it is. Meanwhile the more decisions left to the people the more decentralized it is. Intellectuals for generations have touted the advantages of central planning. They argue if decisions are made by the most qualified, then the best decisions will be made. They then define the most qualified as the experts. People who have credentials, educations, and proven intellect should make the decisions. They further argue that decentralized authority leaves important decisions in the hands of laymen and laywomen. Would you rather have a trained doctor removing your appendix, or a janitor? Their logic goes on in this fashion.
Plato suggested a centrally planned system could work if the central planners were “philosopher kings.” Our central planners consider themselves those philosopher kings. Creating a dark system couldn’t be further from their minds. Many earnestly strive to improve the lot of man by totalitarianism. They diligently work to make the best decisions they can, but with so many decisions to make about so many arcane subjects, no expert can put the proper time into them. So they do the best they can. Even irrelevant questions like how long, wide, and what material to make replacement shoelaces are daunting. So, would you rather have a heartless doctor take five seconds to remove your appendix with a jackknife… or a janitor who loves you, with unlimited time, training, and equipment?
This is why central planning always ends up creating a dark system. Not only is it impossible to make all the decisions in an economy by an expert, but the incentives feed back into the nature of humanity to bring out the worst in us. If you know your decision will harm thousands, but it will help millions, it hardens you. Cognitive dissonance demands it. As one makes ever more heartless but “necessary” decisions, Arendt’s Banality of Evil arises. Evil gets baked into the system, not out of malice but out of efficiency. It turns out the most qualified to decide are those with the most to win or lose and first hand knowledge, not a distant bureaucratic expert. This is how and why central planning leads to a dark system. The answer is to decentralize power and leave decisions to the most qualified.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
