Overcoming the Siren Song of Central Planning

The concepts of state entrepreneurship and mission economy are the latest attempts to justify greater central planning despite the explosion of human flourishing in free market societies over the last few centuries. This is a puzzle. Why do we keep falling for this old wine in new bottles? I argue that our genes predispose us to be too skeptical about having faith in complex and evolving systems involving large numbers of people. This is because we fail to recognize that there are two different ways to control evolution. I then briefly discuss how moral beliefs might overcome this predisposition.