[jltsiren]

Businesses are usually planned economies, and supply chain management is literal central planning.

Apple failed to predict the demand for Mac Studios. Many other companies in its supply chain likely failed to predict that Apple would come back asking for more. There is no excess stock for some key components or the spare capacity to make them on demand. Apple would have to scour them from the market, likely paying much higher prices than it will pay for scheduled deliveries.

[Grombobulous]

Hopefully I’m not being too pedantic, but I am saying that we can’t just use the words “planned economy” or “central planning” to describe a single company’s actions.

It’s just not what those words mean.

Apple is a large company but they are still just one company.

A single business can’t be doing “central planning,” it is by definition not in charge of the whole market.

Central planning would be if the government mandated that Micron to make ## of memory chips and distribute ## of them to Company A and ## of them to Company B.

Apple has no such power.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_economy