At the end, the author talks about the free market versus central planning and how the emergent, chaotic nature demonstrated in I, Pencil renders futile any efforts to manage. It seems like a bit of a fallacy, though, to say that because it didn't work in the past, it's been proven hopeless. Soviets didn't have the Web, for instance. Still, it is good not to underestimate the self-organizing intricacy of the ad-hoc situation we have, especially for people who think it's simple to replace with a managed solution without all the information.
It is highly doubtful that central planners can in fact gather all the necessary information much less being able to understand and decide what and how to allocate resource in a way that satisfy the population best.(Let say that central planner's goal is to satisfy the population to the most extent possible)
More over, since the population do not have the same taste, wants, or preferences the central planner must cater to all tastes. Since even group with the same preferences are made of individuals, the central planner must also produce enough to satisfy all the needs.
He must balance all parties' conflicting needs and wants and must decide what to produce and not to produce since the end that there are only so much resources to go around.
