[kaashif]

> In actual shortages where there's a strong political motivation to efficiently distribute goods (e.g. wartime), we switch to central planning (i.e. rations) because we know that's what works,

There's a big difference between war and peace. Markets allow individuals, who do not necessarily have winning a war as their number one objective, to pursue their own objectives with their own demands, as communicated by prices.

In war, there is a political motivation to override individual objectives and force everyone to serve the needs of the war effort above all, even if they don't particularly want to.

Central planning isn't used in war because it's the most efficient way for every individual to achieve their own objectives, it's the opposite - central planning is the most efficient way to erase individual objectives in favor of a single overriding objective: winning the war.

This isn't an argument in favor of price gouging, my point is that full-on central planning isn't a means to general prosperity, and that's not even why everyone centrally plans during war. Central planning is about control and the erasure of individual freedom. Sometimes that's needed in a war. Inefficiently pursuing one objective (the war) is more effective at winning a war than efficiently pursuing a whole range of objectives, most of which have nothing to do with war.

The old socialist arguments about central planning being more efficient even during peacetime have been dead and buried for decades.