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Advantages And Disadvantages Of The Command Economy

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In this essay I intend to look at and compare the main economic systems, which are: the command economy where all economic decisions are taken by the central authorities, the free market economy where all economic decisions are taken by individual households and firms, with no government intervention, and finally the mixed economy where economic decisions are made partly by the government and partly through the market. (Sloman & Garratt) I have chosen the issue of climate change as my example of market failure and will explore this later in my essay.
Firstly the command economy where both land and wealth are communally owned allows money to be distributed equally and fairly among all people so that there are no inequalities and there are no …show more content…

The government decides what will be produced and the quantity of this product that will be produced therefore they can prevent the production of socially unwanted goods and reduce the problem of duplication. On the other hand this can also be viewed as a disadvantage because a country following a command economy will not respond well to supply and demand as the firms are told exactly what to produce and how much to produce. This also leads to poor product quality as there is no incentive to make profits. Also human needs are endless so how can the government decide what products the population will …show more content…

The price mechanism is a ‘System of interdependence between supply of a good or service and its price. It generally sends the price up when supply is below demand, and down when supply exceeds demand.’ (BusinessDictionary.com, 2014) The price where demand equals supply is called the equilibrium price and when this price is achieved there is no shortage or surplus, therefore this is optimum use of resources. However this allows consumers to buy demerit goods that perhaps are not good for them for example: cigarettes and alcohol, in place of merit goods that they should be buying such as: healthy food, dental care and gym

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