[edblarney]

"There have been a wide variety of resource allocation mechanisms throughout history"

If you have currency, banking, credit, merchants raising capital, private property protections, rule of law, labour at some cost - towards projects ... then it's basically capitalism.

The Romans had all of that to lesser or greater degree.

There are no examples of centrally planned economies working out on any scale.

Communism is a completely dead idea, it's an effete academic concept only. That game is over.