Every society must decide how to design an economic system that will meet its specific and particular needs. This book explores the different kinds of economic systems that have existed in the past and those that currently hold sway today throughout the world-subsistence, barter, gift, market, command, planned, mixed, and Internet economies-and analyzes each one’s relationship to the three criteria of production, ownership, and government control. There are real-world consequences of economics and the economic systems that govern a people, and this book seeks to demonstrate to readers how economics is not merely an abstract, theoretical science, but one which plays out on the streets, in the stores, and at the kitchen table every single day.