Can a Computer Replace the Market?

THE ECONOMIC-CALCULATION DEBATE

The economic-calculation debate asked whether a planner could allocate resources rationally without private exchange, money prices, profit, and loss.

Its most important claim was not that the planner needed a larger database. Market prices are outputs of a particular institutional process in which people own, choose, trade, compete, and revise. Remove that process and the planner does not merely lose data; it loses the mechanism that creates economically meaningful comparisons.

AI revives the debate in a new form. The question is not whether machines can calculate prices. They can generate unlimited numbers. It is when those numbers still arise from—and remain answerable to—the discovery process that gives a price meaning.