… there is no deep epistemological chasm separating socialism (or at least social democracy) from liberalism. Both, however, are quite distinct from a public policy based obsessively upon mathematically calculated planning devices. The latter justify themselves to the extent that they can claim perfect or near-perfect knowledge of future outcomes (not to mention present information). Since neither present nor future information – whether about economics or anything else – is ever vouchsafed us in perfect form, planning is inherently delusory, and the more all-embracing the plan, the more delusory its claims (much the same can be, but rarely is, said of the notion of perfect or efficient markets).
– Tony Judt with Timothy Snyder, Thinking the Twentieth Century, Vintage Books, London, 2013, p. 92
