The Fascination for Free Markets and Competition
So why is it that economist have and put so much trust in the free competitive markets? Well, this is mainly due to that the interaction of the supply and demand leads to a result in which each unit that is produced of a certain good satisfies two very excellent conditions, these are:
Goods are produced at the lowest cost possible and this therefore avoids waste or inefficiency of materials.
The benefits exceed the costs. In other words, only the product that makes people more content is produced.
Another big reason that economists are really into free competitive markets is because they give us a paradigm against which to judge all the other economic institutions. As a matter a fact, economy experts call market failure to a lot of economic problems precisely because these are cases in which if the markets could work in an adequate way, the problems would go away very quickly.
In the next part we are going to be showing you how the free competitive markets guarantee that in everything that is produced, the benefits outweigh the costs. We will also show you that the free competitive markets achieve the optimum amount of product for society – which is the level that maximizes the benefits that society can obtain in their supply of limited resources. We are also going to show you how competitive industries adjust to the changes in the supply and demand to guarantee that everything that is produced is obtained with the least possible cost for society.
The Beauty of Free Competitive Markets: Society only has a limited amount of land, work and capital out of which things can be produced with. As a result, society has to pay a lot of attention when they try to resolve how to turn their limited resources in goods and services that the people most want.
Economy experts really like competitive free markets because if they work correctly they guarantee that the resources become assigned in an optimum way. In particular these markets assure that the resources only direct to the production of goods whose benefits exceed the costs.
This can be showed easily through a graph of supply and demand. There are certain conditions however, by which the free competitive markets can work correctly, and as a result, give us those results.
