> It makes no sense at all to pretend that humans are too stupid to understand what is and is not good for our planet. The whole point of having language and intelligence is that it should be used, not just discarded with some discredited hand wave that "if we just do nothing, everything will work out for the best!"
Centrally planned economies have been tried. The Soviet Union discouraged a lot of research into areas like psychology that they saw as pointless; artists had to conform to traditional styles. It didn't turn out very well. Letting the market allocate resources has a lot of inefficiencies, but it works better than any alternative that has been tried.
> Letting the market allocate resources has a lot of inefficiencies, but it works better than any alternative that has been tried.
I don't think we've ever tried having the market solely allocate resources. I think pretty much every government has regulated trade, collected taxes, that sort of thing. What seems to have worked best would be letting the market allocate resources to some extent, but collecting taxes and investing in long term goals (such as research and infrastructure). But maybe this isn't necessary, maybe in a truly free market there would always be genius entrepreneurs like Elon Musk appearing every now and again to progress humanity. Still, there's a massive difference between the kinds of long term planning that modern western democracies already do and a communist dictatorship.
The question of Neoliberalism versus The Soviets is a completely false dichotomy. In the real world, Western-style social democracy has appeared to work best when tried, and that is not, by any means, a pure market system.
(Indeed, in a certain sense, neoliberalism can no longer be called a "pure" market system, since the government becomes property of the financial and landowning rentier classes, and is used to fight a class war by actively suppressing all other profits and wages in order to increase rent and debt.)
I don't understand how you can think this is the be-all-and-end-all of economic thought. You are literally regurgitating a line ("Letting the market allocate resources has a lot of inefficiencies, but it works better than any alternative that has been tried.") you were probably taught in middle school without the slightest hint of irony.
I'm not saying it's untrue because it's taught early, but I am saying that it seems you haven't done much due diligence beyond that.
Centrally planned economies have been tried. The Soviet Union discouraged a lot of research into areas like psychology that they saw as pointless; artists had to conform to traditional styles. It didn't turn out very well. Letting the market allocate resources has a lot of inefficiencies, but it works better than any alternative that has been tried.