And to preempt a rejoinder, a market economy has proven invariably better than the alternative. Remember, the Soviet Union collapsed because nobody wanted to wear Bulgarian shoes.
There have been advances in economic planning since the time of the USSR, even during the time of the USSR research was being done on technocratic planning systems, however they were never realised, partially due to lack of sufficient hardware and Soviet bureaucracy. For a good read on modern methods, take a look at Paul Cockshott's Towards a New Socialism in which he proposes calculation in kind paired with linear programming methods.
It's worth noting that the USSR's model was also ridiculously inflexible, and the whole idea of a "5 year plan" probably sounded silly back then too.
