Final answer:
Political forces impact the price mechanism through the legal system by introducing laws and regulations that can distort the market's natural response to prices,
which supports option (b) as the correct answer.
Step-by-step explanation:
The question is exploring how political forces impact the price mechanism in an economy. According to economic principles, particularly the laws of demand and supply, political interventions often manifest through legal mechanisms to affect market outcomes. Governments may introduce price controls and regulations, which are meant to interfere with the free market's determination of prices, potentially in order to pursue social or economic objectives. These actions can lead to unintended consequences, where the natural behavior of the market in response to prices can be distorted, sometimes even undermining the original intent of the policies.
Out of the provided choices, the correct option that reflects this concept is: b. Political forces affect the price mechanism through the legal system. This is because governments use laws and regulations to adjust market outcomes which can have a direct impact on prices, unlike cultural norms or scarcity, which are not directly manipulated by political action in the same way. Hence, the assertion that political forces do not affect the price mechanism is incorrect, because they clearly do through governmental interventions in the market.
Therefore, with reference to the provided information and understanding the underlying economic principles, we can mention that the correct option in the final answer is (b) Political forces affect the price mechanism through the legal system.