# Planned Economy An economic system in which the state directs production, distribution, and pricing decisions rather than allowing market mechanisms to operate. The [[Soviet Union]]'s centrally planned economy — five-year plans, state ownership of industry, administered pricing — was the 20th century's largest-scale alternative to market capitalism, and its ultimate collapse is invoked across the American right as the definitive proof that government economic intervention leads to stagnation, shortages, and authoritarianism. In the vault's framework, the planned economy concept matters because it functions as the rhetorical anchor for anti-regulation arguments: any government economic intervention — from healthcare mandates to industrial policy to climate regulation — risks being framed as a step toward "central planning" regardless of scale or mechanism. ## See Also - [[Soviet Union]] — the primary 20th-century planned economy - [[Collectivization]] — forced agricultural planning under Stalin - [[Deregulation]] — the ideological counter-movement