All economies are planned.

From communist Russia and corporatism in Italy under Mussolini to a Rothbardian anarcho-capitalist free market, all economic systems involve planning. This is not in dispute.

The intellectual battle gripping the planet for hundreds of years, however, is who gets to do the planning?

As Friedrich Hayek wrote in his 1948 book Individualism and the Economic Order:

"This is not a dispute about whether planning is to be done or not. It is a dispute as to whether planning is to be done centrally, by one authority for the whole economic system, or is to be divided among many individuals."

How Best to Deal With Scarcity

The key question when analyzing the efficacy of economic systems is how they deal with the issue of scarcity.

All economic goods are, by definition, scarce. By this, economists mean that resources such as raw materials, capital goods, and labor have many alternative possible uses but can only fulfill a very finite number of ends. For instance, a single steel beam can be used in a skyscraper or a bridge, but not both.