Yea the overall economy makes decisions on what to manufacture. Do you make a bunch of entertaining fluff or focus on essentials? Wal-mart merely optimizes the supply chain of fluff.<p>As far as markets vs centralization, it was always this way. There was never a purely capitalist or communist society that lasted long and supported a large population. The argument was always the implementation and balance of centralization and privatization.<p>Starting from scratch in a radically different system is too disruptive, even if the final result would have been better. A lot has to do with culture, as people say you can write Java in any language. You have to change an existing system very slowly.