TL;DR
Big Data and AI cannot solve the fundamental problems that have always plagued comprehensive social planning. Historical failures (Soviet shortages), philosophical limits (theory underdetermination), and reflexive feedback loops still apply to algorithmic systems. While machine learning excels in narrow, stable domains like meteorology and industrial optimization, it distorts complex social systems when given sweeping control over economic coordination. The dream of replacing democratic deliberation with algorithmic optimization ignores essential insights from economics, philosophy, and history about the nature of social knowledge and human choice.
China’s government is building the world’s most ambitious experiment in data-driven governance. Under its new digital ID system, citizens submit facial scans and personal information to police databases, then use anonymized identities to access online services. The state maintains a comprehensive ledger of every person’s digital activity while companies see only streams of anonymous data. Chinese planners envision this as creating a unified national “data ocean” – treating data as a factor of production alongside labor, capital, and land. The goal is to harness unprecedented information flows to optimize economic coordination and social management through algorithmic systems.
The dream of scientific management refuses to die. From Soviet planning bureaus to today’s tech evangelists promising “real-time economics,” each generation rediscovers the appeal of replacing messy human judgment with algorithmic precision.
