Why is a free market economy more beneficial than a socialist form of economy?

This is not strictly true. Each have their benefits and cons.

A free market economy is one in which the allocation of scarce resources and the price set to the consumer is completely set by market forces.

Pro's:

-People who have jobs benefit a lot since they are not having to pay for others welfare. -Prices can often be lower due to greater efficiencies and competition.

Con's:

-People who end up in a bad situation in life will struggle to get out of the rut and could end up dying due to a lack of welfare support, this breeds great inequality.

-There is little or no way of controlling business due to a lack of government intervention meaning that firms can start monopolies and cartels which can easily lead to abuse of the consumer.

A socialist form of economy is completely the opposite and would sort of take the form of a Communist one; the other way to describe it is a Command economy; one which is controlled by the Government.

For example the UK is a mixed economy which until recently was 60% Free Market and 40% Command; it was one of the fairest systems in the world equality wise but suffered from great inefficiency.

On the other hand the USA of the same time period was around 90% Free Market and 10% Command (Don't quote me on that however may have been 80:20). Now this was very efficient however they suffered from hugely deprived areas with large Multinationals abusing consumers; especially in the wake of New Orleans.

A good book to read on this subject is Naomi Kleins: 'Shock Doctrine.' Furthermore for an extreme socialist economy look up the bad old days of Russia when it was still the Soviet Union.