Centrally planned economies go a step further though, it's not just deduplication it's forced personal uniformity to enable deduplication - and then that's probably a cover for megalomania. I'm not suggesting we have a state clothing and state haircut (though that would be highly efficient!).
Let's take UK national tests - which we used to resell/reuse around the world - why do we need separate entities vying to meet a target but provide the easiest test. How is that better than a single test?
If local decisions are always more efficient why don't we see each McDonalds drive-through redesigned from the ground up, purchasing its own meat to make patties, procuring flour individually for its own bakery service, designing their own kitchen lay-outs (they're franchises in the UK, even the buildings are largely prefabbed; all food is made off-site and cooked on the premises AFAICT).
What would be the detriment to all councils using the same CMS for their website - wouldn't it be better to spend centrally on one CMS rather than have every council get a new one made. Really any of the major FOSS ones could be modified to suit for a fraction of the real spend. I'll bet Walmart don't redesign their checkouts for every new district.
