Prices are a communication system that links supply and demand. Politics are irrelevant.

Kantorovich, of course, couldn't call these prices (the USSR had gulags), but these ideas continued to appear in economic planning problems.

Kantorovich developed linear programming in the 1930's to centrally plan the Soviet economy. His solution method relied on dual variables ("resolving multipliers"), which measure the sensitivity of each constraint.

Do Marxists ultimately invent surge pricing?

Kantorovich's efforts to plan an economy quickly led him to dynamic pricing for resource allocation.

theodiamandis.com/blog/2025/pr...

Everything else comes from more abundant energy. (graph from Ian Morris' The Measure of Civilization)