Reply #10: "magically transform crude into electricity?"...

[rayofreason]

...Somehow capitalism does so regularly.

Socialist economies always produce massive inefficiency and shortages. Every one has (USSR, etc.) and every one will. The reasons include:

1. Planners can never know everything, therefore they make bad decisions even if they are smart people. (Where "bad" means poor use of resources).
2. Politics trumps everything, and people are people, so corruption thrives.
3. As a corollary to 2, bad/stupid apples are protected for political reasons. In market economies, bad/stupid apples fail and are washed out of the system (except where crony capitalism holds sway - and the similar economic problems result).

So all of this produces shitty planning and oversight, and good planning will produce only somewhat less shitty results.