Scarcity is the fundamental challenge that all individuals and nations must confront. Everyone faces some limitations, so we all have to make choices where we limit or allow ourselves to something.
Economists generally recognize four types of economic systems traditional, traditional, command, market and mixed.
A traditional economic system is shaped by tradition. The work that people do, the goods and services they provide, how they exchange resources… all tend to follow a pattern. The traditional system is bad at addressing scarcity because scarcity is formed off of new requirements people have through the ages and a traditional system would not evolve just as our requirements would.
In a planned economy, the government controls the economy. The state decides how to use and distribute resources. The government regulates prices and wages; it may even determine what sorts of work individuals do.
Socialism is a prime example of a planned economy. Socialism does not work because it is not consistent with the fundamental principles of human behavior. The failure of socialism in countries around the world can be traced to one critical defect: it is a system that ignores incentives.
Market economies allow all economic decisions to be made by individuals. The unrestrained interactions between individuals and companies in the marketplace determine what happens to all the good and resources.Individuals choose how to invest their personal resources and individuals decide what to consume. Within a pure market economy, the government is entirely absent from economic affairs.
A mixed economic system combines elements of the market and command economy. Many economic decisions are made in the market by individuals. But the government also plays a role in the allocation and distribution of resources.
If scarcity is looked at on a macro level, the best economic system is mixed because it allows the government to also plays a role in the allocation and distribution of resources, while the individuals still stay happy because they have some control. The only problem is the eternal question of what the right mix between the public and private sectors of the economy should be.
There is no point to look at it on a micro level because almost no country is small enough to be considered on that level.
