ryHave you ever been on a baseball team? Or any other kind of organization? Then you must know that you need to work and cooperate with a number of other people in order to be successful. More importantly though, there is a coach, an instructor, a boss. This head honcho organizes all aspects of your team and keeps order. The head of your organization tells what you are going to learn, how to use and acquire the talent, and they will inform you what the target of your new skill is. Without a coach there is chaos and misunderstandings on the baseball field.
Only the best players on the team will get to play and many feelings of being inferior compared to the rest of the team arise. This is an example of the contrasts of the market economy and the centrally planned economy. Countries are established very much like baseball teams, which is the reason why I chose to use the analogy above. The economy of a country affects everyone living in it and the type of economy changes your values, your hopes, and especially your reality. I feel that total government control has many more advantages than a market economy and controlled economy gives a country a connected feeling. My first reason promoting total government interference is that the govt.
supports handicapped and people with physical disabilities. I attended a speaker in our school's conference and she told us a great deal about the mentally ill. Many of them live in a free market system and they are homeless because they are unable to get jobs to support themselves. Competition is much too great in the market economy.
In the controlled system, the mentally ill would get the same benefits as any other working person. Because of this, the mentally ill are able to eat, to be clothed, to have a roof over their heads, and basically survive. The government and the work force meet their basic needs.Secondly, in a controlled economy there is little supply and demand. The government controls everything and does not allow the prices to rise and dip as extremely as $11.
00/barrel of oil to $29.00/barrel of oil. This makes a controlled economy much more steady and secure. Sudden drops and hikes are virtually unknown to a centrally planned economy and the economy benefits from that.
The government of a central economy can control monopolies in large companies. In the late 1800's a man named John D. Rockefeller owned 90% of the oilrigs in America. Because he had horizontally integrated this business, Rockefeller could control the prices of the oil by supply and demand.
Society was greatly hurt by this because if he felt like making a few extra bucks one week, with the snap of his fingers he could have all the citizens of America paying extra prices for oil. Eventually the government intervened and put an end to his monopoly, but if he had been doing business in a pure market economy, Rockefeller would be a very controlling and powerful individual. In a centrally planned economy, there are no legal monopolies because the government interferes for the sake of public good.In a centrally planned society today, there is a sense of equality. There are no extremely rich businessmen controlling the market, but still there no one is so greatly below the poverty line that they could possibly die from starvation.
An important value of sharing is taught by a controlled economy. The working citizens realise that because they are fortunate to be employed they must try and financially help the ill and injured. They feel an obligation to help wherever they possibly can. This idea of Marxism greatly increases the values that are stressed in everyday life.Finally, I would like to comment on how a central economy functions as a whole. The government looks ahead to the future of their country and sees the areas that will eventually be needed or will have a shortage.
The govt. then takes young children who are talented in one area such as a ballerina or a soccer player and puts them in a special development school so that their talent will grow and bloom and hopefully bring honour to their country. In Alberta right now there is a dangerous shortage of nurses. The reason for this is that the country of Canada, a mixed economy, did not look to the future and predict this scarcity. The lack of nurses in Alberta can be blamed on an absence of planning and promotion to boost the number of employees working in threatened jobs. In a central economy, this problem would have been foreseen and prevented as best as possible, which is another advantage to total government control.
That concludes my arguments in favor of a controlled economy. A centrally planned economy is certain to meet everyone's basic needs, there are no monopolies allowed, no supply and demand wheel affects the economy, good values of equality and sharing are taught, and a central economy looks ahead at the 'big picture' and makes sure that there is a balance in society. Even though I have grown up in a mixed economy, I feel that a controlled economy suits everyone's needs nicely and there is a sense of order involved. Baseball teams have always needed coaches to help in the organization process; just because things are changing very quickly doesn't mean that the image of a boss will ever be lost.
Bibliography:
