Let me, correspondingly, unpack the motivation behind my comment a little.
There is a continuum running all the way from "completely free unregulated markets" to "totalitarian central state determines what will be made and what it will cost". It looks to me as if Jiro was proposing some regulation and you responded by saying that totalitarian central planning has a bad track record. That doesn't seem altogether reasonable.
Further, when you say "central planning failed" you're working with a rather small sample and one with a bunch of confounding factors. Consider the USSR, for example. It had central planning, its people were rather poor, and in the end it collapsed. But, also: those people were always much poorer per capita than, say, those of the USA or Western Europe; the USSR spent decades locked in economic and (indirect) military conflict with a much better-resourced opponent; it had not only central planning but outright totalitarianism with some rather crazed leaders. Maybe the primary reason why the USSR wasn't a roaring economic success was that central planning is inferior to free markets, but I don't think we have enough evidence to make that claim with a lot of confidence.
Jiro was proposing some regulation
To be precise, he was proposing price fixing.
and you responded by saying that totalitarian central planning has a bad track record
No, I did not -- the word "totalitarian" is a gratuitous addition by you.
I don't think we have enough evidence to make that claim with a lot of confidence.
Oh, but I do think we have more than enough evidence (have you looked at China, for example?). I don't think that claiming "we don't know yet" is a reasonable position -- this question has been settled.
This thread is for asking any questions that might seem obvious, tangential, silly or what-have-you. Don't be shy, everyone has holes in their knowledge, though the fewer and the smaller we can make them, the better.
Please be respectful of other people's admitting ignorance and don't mock them for it, as they're doing a noble thing.
To any future monthly posters of SQ threads, please remember to add the "stupid_questions" tag.