Finally, the number of sellers in a market can also affect the level of supply. Generally, markets with a larger number of sellers are more competitive and have a greater supply of the product to be sold than markets with fewer sellers. But in some cases, the technology of producing a product makes it more efficient to produce large quantities at just a few production sites, or perhaps even at just one. For example, it would not make sense to have two or more water and sewage companies running pipes to every house and business in a city. And automobiles can be produced at a much lower cost in large plants than in small ones, because large plants can take greater advantage of assembly-line production methods.
All these different factors can lead to changes in what consumers demand
and what producers supply. As a result, on any given day prices for some
things will be rising and those for others will be falling. This creates
opportunities for some individuals and firms, and problems for others.
For example, firms producing goods for which the demand and the price are
falling may have to lay off workers or even go out of business. But for
the economy as a whole, allowing prices to rise and fall quickly in
response to changes in any of the market forces that affect supply and
demand offers important advantages. It provides an extremely flexible and
decentralized system for getting goods and services produced and
delivered to households while responding to a vast number of
unpredictable changes.
Creative Destruction
Taking advantage of new opportunities while curtailing production of
things that are no longer in demand or no longer competitive was
described as the process of creative destruction by 20th century Austrian-
American economist Joseph Schumpeter. For example, Schumpeter discussed
how the United States, Britain, and other market economies helped many
new businesses to grow by building systems of canals (such as the Erie
Canal) during the mid-19th century. But then the canal systems were
replaced or “destroyed” by the railroads, which in turn saw their role
diminished with the rise of national systems of highways and airports.
The same thing happened in the communications industry in the United
States. The Pony Express, which carried mail between Missouri and
California in the early 1860s, went out of business with the completion
of telegraph lines to California. In the 20th century, the telegraph was
replaced by the telephone. Time and time again, one decade’s innovation
is partially replaced or even destroyed by the next round of
technological change.
In the modern world, prices change not only as a result of things that
happen in one country, but increasingly because of changes that happen in
other countries, too. International change affects production patterns,
wages, and jobs in the U.S. economy. Sometimes these changes are
triggered by something as simple as weather conditions someplace else in
the world that affect the production of grain, coffee, sugar, or other
crops. Sometimes it reflects political or financial upheavals in Europe,
Asia, or other parts of the world. There have been several examples of
such events in the U.S. economy in the 1990s. Higher coffee prices
occurred after poor harvests of coffee beans in South America, and U.S.
banks lost large sums of money following financial and political crises
in places such as Indonesia and Russia.
The ability to respond quickly to an increasingly volatile economic and political environment is, in many ways, one of the greatest strengths of the U.S. economic system. But these changes can result in hardships for some people or even some large segments of the economy. For example, importing clothing produced in other nations has benefited U.S. consumers by keeping clothing prices lower. In addition, it has been profitable for the firms that import and sell this clothing. However, it has also reduced the number of jobs available in clothing manufacturing for U.S. workers.
Many people think the most important general issue facing the U.S. economy today is how to balance the benefits of quickly adapting to changing economic conditions against the costs of abandoning the old ways. It is vital for the economy to adapt quickly to changing conditions and to focus on producing goods and services that will meet the most recent demands of the market place. However, when businesses close because their products no longer meet the demands of the market, it is important to make retraining or new jobs available to workers who lost their means of making a living.
PRODUCTION OF GOODS AND SERVICES
Before goods and services can be distributed to households and consumed, they must be produced by someone, or by some business or organization. In the United States and other market economies, privately owned firms produce most goods and services using a variety of techniques. One of the most important is specialization, in which different firms make different kinds of products and individual workers perform specific jobs within a company.
Successful firms earn profits for their owners, who accept the risk of losing money if the products the firms try to sell are not purchased by consumers at prices high enough to cover the costs of production. In the modern economy, most firms and workers have found that to be competitive with other firms and workers they must become very good at producing certain kinds of goods and services.
Most businesses in the United States also operate under one of three different legal forms: corporations, partnerships, or sole proprietorships. Each of these forms has certain advantages and disadvantages. Because of that, these three types of business organizations often operate in different kinds of markets. For example, most firms with large amounts of money invested in factories and equipment are organized as corporations.
Specialization and the Division of Labor
In earlier centuries, especially in frontier areas, families in the
United States were much more self-sufficient, producing for themselves
most of the goods and services they consumed. But as the U.S. population
and economy grew, it became easier for people to buy more and more things
in the marketplace. Once that happened, people faced a choice they still
face today: In terms of time, money, and other things that they could do,
is it less expensive to make something themselves or to let someone else
produce it and buy it from them?
Over the years, most people and businesses realized that they could make
better use of their time and resources by concentrating on one particular
kind of work, rather than trying to produce for themselves all the items
they want to consume. Most people now work in jobs where they do one kind
of work; they are carpenters, bankers, cooks, mechanics, and so forth.
Likewise, most businesses produce only certain kinds of goods or
services, such as cars, tacos, or gardening services. This feature of
production is known as specialization. A high degree of specialization is
a key part of the economic system in the United States and all other
industrialized economies. When businesses specialize, they focus on
providing a particular product or type of product. For instance, some
large companies produce only automobiles and trucks, or even special
parts of cars and trucks, such as tires.
At almost all businesses, when goods and services are produced, labor is divided among workers, with different employees responsible for completing different tasks. This is known as division of labor. For example, the individual parts of cars and televisions are made by many different workers and then put together in an assembly line. Other well- known examples of this specialization and division of labor are seen in the production of computers and electrical appliances. But even kitchens in large restaurants have different chefs for different items, and professional workers such as doctors and dentists have also become more specialized during the past century.
Advantages of Specialization
By specializing in what they produce, workers become more expert at a
particular part of the production process. As a result, they become more
efficient in these jobs, which lowers the costs of production.
Specialization also makes it possible to develop tools and machines that
help workers do highly specialized tasks. Carpenters use many tools that
plumbers and painters do not. Commercial bakeries have much larger ovens
and mixers than those used by people who only bake bread and pies once a
year. And unlike a household kitchen, a commercial bakery has machines to
slice and package bread. All of these tools and machines help workers and
businesses produce more efficiently, and lower the cost of producing
goods and services.
The advantages of specialization have led to the creation of many very
large production facilities in the United States and other industrialized
nations. This trend is especially prevalent in the manufacturing sector.
For example, many automobile factories produce thousands of cars each
day, and some shipyards employ more than 10,000 workers. One open-pit
mine in the western United States has dug a crater so large that it can
be seen from space.
When the market for a product is very large, and a company can sell enough goods or services in that market to support a very large production facility, it will often choose to produce on a large scale to take advantage of specialization and division of labor. As long as producing more in larger facilities lowers the average costs of production, the producer enjoys what are known as economies of scale.
But bigger is not always better, and eventually almost all producers encounter diseconomies of scale in which larger plants or production sites become less efficient and more costly to operate. Usually that happens because monitoring and managing increasingly larger production facilities becomes more difficult. That is why most large manufacturers have more than one factory to make their products, instead of one massive facility where they make everything they produce. In recent years, many steel companies have found it more efficient to build and operate smaller steel mills than they once operated.
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