>Economically speaking, this would introduce an irreducible ingredient of stability—much of what is needed, and therefore what is needed to supply what needed, and what is needed to…—can be known with a far greater degree of certainty than in the free market under divided power. Consumption/ends/goals are not the issue directly pertinent to the calculation problem (Which I am assuming you were wrestling with to some degree in your post). Factors of production/means/instruments are. The state can decide that x number of model y fighter jets must be produced each year. Let's imagine that the state really just wants these fighter jets because they are awesome to have. That is an 'end' of the state. The state can purchase or confiscate whatever materials it needs for these jets just fine. No calculation problem. The state runs into issues when it reaches beyond ends and starts to dictate 'means'. The end/goal of x number of model y fighter jets is specific. The state knows when it has i
So, if I ask "how autonomous does the market have to be" I suppose the answer would be "how big a price are you willing to pay?" You are pointing to choices the state would have to make if its preferences extend beyond the object of consumption--if it doesn't, say, just want the fighter planes, but also wants more workers to be hired in high tech industries and is therefore willing to slow the development of automation so that there will be more workers willing to keep up with the process of automation. Is it not possible that in some fields of the economy competition is wasteful and monopolization would be more efficient, while sometimes you would want to introduce competition? The autonomy of the market is encroached upon to some extent, usually a considerable extent, by all states--does that only involve costs, i.e., trade-offs between economic cost and some perceived social or political gain? If the state says that not only does it want the fighter jets, but it also wants the workers to be paid x amount and it wants only materials from a particular region to be used and it wants the company making the jets to contract out to a specific tech lab and pay enough to support x number of workers and the plane must manufacture the planes in a particular city--ok, that's obviously bit much and it will probably be impossible to meet all these criteria. But the problem is to set criteria that shape the social and cultural context of production (that keep major industries at home, that provide workers with a decent living, etc.) and I don't see why the state couldn't keep getting better at refining these criteria so that they are not only impositions of cost. (Leaving aside the obvious point that sometimes they will be costs.)