That's very wrong. You don't need a Sears catalog to sum the costs of production/acquisition all the way to the start of the value chain. You may need input to predict the demand for a given product but that, again, supposes a market.
> The direct result of which has been a drastic drop in living standards to starvation.
You seem to ignore the effects of embargos and arms races. The US can finance its colossal military expenditure by issuing long-term titles while the Soviet Union couldn't, but that won't last forever.