# Socialist economy > What would a socialist economy look like? The answers to this question vary, but most of them involve [[planning]] > > – [[How to Make a Pencil]] > A socialist economy, by contrast, would be “consciously regulated… in accordance with a settled plan,” to borrow a line from Marx. > > – [[How to Make a Pencil]] > One camp has placed particular emphasis on computers. These “digital socialists” see computers as the key to running a [[planned economy]]. Their focus is on algorithms: they want to design software that can take in information on consumer preferences and industrial production capacities—like a gigantic sieve feeding into a data grinder—and output the optimal allocations of resources > > – [[How to Make a Pencil]]