<i>Well yes it involves math, but ultimately it involves decisions by people on what to do with natural resources and consumption.</i><p>Yes.  And both theory and history have shown that there is only one way to compute a chaotic system: let it run :)<p>That is, the only way to effectively allocate natural resources and consumption at the scale of a modern industrial economy is based upon market prices.<p>Austrian Economics has provided the theory of why this is so, and several large-scale experiments (including North Korea and the USSR) have demonstrated that the theory is correct.<p><i>We&#x27;re starting to see countries with %20+ unemployment and simply describing that as an issue of mathematics would seem inadequate.</i><p>I didn&#x27;t - or at least, I didn&#x27;t mean to.  What I meant to say was that socialism is fundamentally, theoretically, and practically broken.<p>If you&#x27;re going to try to fix issues like 20% unemployment, unaffordable healthcare, horrendous pollution, and unaffordable housing, then you need to pick a mechanism that actually works :)