The most striking moment to me in my IPE class was when the professor, after we'd covered how governments and, in democracies (by proxy), We the People, bring m

The most striking moment to me in my IPE class was when the professor, after we'd covered how governments and, in democracies (by proxy), We the People, bring modern economies into being and choose, to some degree (other governments and a variety of natural factors have more than a little say), the shape they'll take, innocently asked, "so, why have an economy?" Yours is a better answer than what any of us came up with at the time.