Of course a planned economy has the possibility to be much more productive than one left to be self-directed. In the self-directed economy, people will only work at jobs they dislike often enough to fulfill their needs, build up security for the future, and support the elective activities that they do with the rest of their time - the demand for work is elastic. In a semi-planned economy like the US, taxes and inflation will eat up the long term technologically-growing surplus (to build the empire), the purchasers of labor will keep the demand for hours worked per employee high in the short term, bureaucracy will ensure plenty of ultimately non-producing make-work jobs to keep up the status quo, and the people stuck working more than they need to in highly skilled jobs (being ahead of the aforementioned taxflation) will spend their surplus of money on the newest version of gadgets for status and entertainment.
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Of course a planned economy has the possibility to be much more productive than one left to be self-directed. In the self-directed economy, people will only work at jobs they dislike often enough to fulfill their needs, build up security for the future, and support the elective activities that they do with the rest of their time - the demand for work is elastic. In a semi-planned economy like the US, taxes and inflation will eat up the long term technologically-growing surplus (to build the empire), the purchasers of labor will keep the demand for hours worked per employee high in the short term, bureaucracy will ensure plenty of ultimately non-producing make-work jobs to keep up the status quo, and the people stuck working more than they need to in highly skilled jobs (being ahead of the aforementioned taxflation) will spend their surplus of money on the newest version of gadgets for status and entertainment.