In the United States, these costs include rising #monopolization of the tech sector, because control of data creates entry barriers, and the development of #business models based on constant online engagement and individualized digital ads, which breed emotional outrage, #extremism, and echo chambers online, with damaging effects for democratic participation.
The article develops a powerful critique of central planning, arguing that no centralized authority can adequately collect and process “the dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all the separate individuals possess.” Without knowing each individual’s preferences among millions of products, let alone their ideas about where to use their talents most productively and creatively, central planners are bound to fail.