Jake Hawkes

p.1
9/7/14
2 aspects of free market and command systems + why it matters one
way or another to this writer, personally, to be living in one system or
the other.
First aspect would be the ability of a system to adapt supply to meet
demand. In a free market economy people will produce whatever sells
and so will always adapt quicker to consumer demand than the
governments boards of directors would in a command economy, which
would generally be sufficient to affirm the one system as superior to
the other (looking at the industrial success of the U.S. and Japan vs the
stagnation of the USSR underwent before its dissolution or North
Koreas current situation of being unable to produce enough food to
provide for its citizens effectively or develop at all, this would certainly
seem to be the case) but while this is the practical reality of the
situation the distinction between command and free market systems is
generally not so black and white. Dismissing communism as
impractical, socialist safety nets and a government commitment to
preventing infringements on individual rights introduce a humanist
element to the free market that allows gain-based corporate interests
and consumer/labor protection to exist side by side that has shown
itself to be a necessary part of any reasonably developed country that
cares about its citizens, but while these and similar types of
government interventions are quite effective at preventing the

proletariat uprisings predicted by Karl Marx, they also fall short of

allowing for a true free market system. At some level, money is being
pumped from its natural distribution towards the bottom and while
many countries dont do an efficient enough job at this for it to make
much of a difference one way or another the potential effect it could
have on the entrepreneurial spirit of capitalism is substantial or
not, considering people will always want more anyway and that alone
is probably enough to drive this thing even if everybodys fed. Seems
like a good way to go in that regard then. Some amount of government
interference is enough to make sure the demand of people that are in
straits dire enough they dont have enough purchasing power to direct
supply their way, which if done well wont noticeably effect economic
development in a diverse way (Finlands overall stability and economic
growth being a good example of this). European countries like that are
kind of a cheap answer to resort to though, given they started out
relatively developed and well off anyway post peasant liberation it
would be pretty much impossible for China to try anything on this scale
and N Korea really doesnt have the resources, though the former has
opened up significantly to free market reforms and has prospered
accordingly, despite still being somewhere I probably wouldnt want to
live.
Second bit would probably be looking at the cost of consumers
having their demands met and peoples wants being the driving

economic forces. That market forces only respond to people who can
pay is largely resolvable through government interference or is at least
not in and of itself not a fatal problem, but what about influences with
high short term gain that are in the long term corrosive? Meeting
foreign demand instead of demand at home because people elsewhere
will pay more, fostering the tourist trade instead of more stable
relationships etc. tend to sound bad but actually help developing
countries since they keep money flowing in and can lead to long term
development. Jeffrey Sachs thing with the sweatshops fits in here in
that even essentially parasitic relationships can be better for a nation
and its people than the alternative from a development standpoint.
Bhutan disagrees, but its experiment in GNH (gross national
happiness) and controlled or severely limited investments and
tolerance of tourism will need several more years at least before it
yields anything conclusive. The question there is will the allowance of
a free market and consequent industrialization, heavy tourism, and
less than responsible use of resources be the end of their culture; a
question to which current government administration seems to think
yes, though continued conservative isolationism will likely result in
their getting further and further behind both technologically and
economically. Which given how happy are most of us here in America
anyway and how much of this do we really even need isnt necessarily
that unreasonable. Id still choose to live here though or in this system

or Finland since I need access to information and resources that only

happen post-industry and well into the current technologically
advanced age. Had I been born in Bhutan and not read quite as much I
might think otherwise.