Economies

              The Economy is that institution or system within society that functions to produce, circulate, and distribute the goods and services that are scarce within that society.


Classic notions had that the economy had 3 sectors:

  1. The Primary Sector: involving extraction (such as mining, forestry, hunting/fishing) and agriculture.
  2. The Secondary Sector of the economy would be manufacturing; making objects of value, or of more value out of the material coming from the primary sector.
  3. Tertiary Sector would be those activities that are called 'services'.

 
National Economies

Capitalist - (merchantile, industrial, free-market, techno-servile)

1- Private ownership of means of most production
2- Gain through transactions - profit driven
3- More or less open marketing
4- Infrastructure and Regulations governed by state/government

Socialist - (state capitalism, social democratic, communist)

1- State ownership of most means of production
2- Central (state) decision on products - Planned rather than supply/demand/price dynamic
3- Marketing subordinate to central command
4- Not-profit driven, welfare driven.

Transnational/Global Economy

Large transnational corporations operating across national borders organize/distribute capital flows, labor usage, production and distribution of commodities.

The sum total of all the goods and services produced by a society's economy over a period of time is called the GDP or Gross Domestic Product. In the states (2004 data) our per capita income was $40,000/year. This figure is derived from dviding the GDP of the U.S. by the number of people living in the U.S.

For Mozambique, this per capita income in 2005 (according to World Health Org Statistics) was $270.00. That is seventy four dollars on average for each person in Mozambique to live on.

There are ways to generate wealth and satisfy need that are not economic, that are not part of the economy.At least they are not part of the visible, measured economy. As the economy becomes globalized and service-based, those 'non-economy' ways to satisfy needs are, in a way, mined to become transformed and then marketed.

Read John Mcknight to see how the activity 'consoling the bereaved' becomes a commodity service. In The Careless Society, "John Deere and the Bereavement Counselor". http://www.northwestern.edu/ipr/people/mcknight.html

 
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