) are highly unstable, having what we might call a brief "half-life," for reasons to be explored later. Like unstable elements in the chemist's periodic table, they are included here for completeness, but they can be created only under unusual circumstances and have only an ephemeral existence. When we trace the internal dynamics of a mixed economy, for instance, we shall find that that over time individual freedom is increasingly subjugated to "social" goals and to special interests; hence this form has been placed in the second row of the table. Furthermore, political authority in the mixed economy tends to become increasingly centralized and autocratic, as regulations are issued by executive or bureaucratic edict, while the institutions of popular representative government are eroded. Like an unstable chemical element, the mixed economy tends to decay into a more stable totalitarian form of government. Of course, even the survival of more stable political systems depends on the surrounding cultural and ethical climate.
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Popular Government | Centralized Authority | Anarchy | |
| Representative | Direct | |||
| Freedom | liberal republic | * | * | anarcho-capitalism |
| "Good of society"/Personal Ends | mixed economy | direct democracy | communism, fascism | civil or feudal war |
indicates unstable systems Previous |
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