Mixed Economy

A mixed economy combines features of socialism and capitalism to form a market system of resource allocation, commerce, and trade in which the government intervenes to disrupt the “invisible hand” and “chaos” of free market forces. Almost all modern economic systems in the world today are mixed economies with some combination of public, private, legislative, judicial, and regulatory components. For example, the modern global economy limits government intervention in free trade, but it retains mechanisms for governments to make exceptions to free market rule in order to [Page 2285]address social welfare weaknesses in capitalism. Alternatively, mixed economies have emerged from socialism when government makes exceptions to the rule of state ownership to capture economic benefits from private ownership and free market incentives.

There is not a ...