ABSTRACT
Command economy is usually portrayed as the socialist alternative to competitive market systems, even though directive planning could conceivably serve the goals of any sovereign, including pharaohs. The concept stresses the formal equivalence of providing households with goods determined either by negotiated or command processes, given consumers’ or planners’ preferences.1 The approach can be extended to public and civic goods by distinguishing outcomes governed by people’s democratic preferences from those set on authoritarian principles,2 but this is seldom done.
