If I were you I would apply to privates and hope to get into an Ivy/Top school. Transferring would save you money and you would graduate at a young age, but I really regret not having had that freshman experience. I applied to a private school and in their rejection letter it said they wish they had more room in their class (the transfer class here was 25 students!), it made me feel horrible. Not saying that if I had applied as a Freshman I would have gotten in since that “we wish we had more room” response is pretty universal/generic but I certainly wished I could have redone my life and done well enough in high school to have applied as a Freshman. For top schools it’s much more difficult to get in as a transfer. At public schools like UC it’s generally easier to get in as a transfer.
You are very fortunate to have been able to do so much at this community college while still technically a high schooler and I think that sets you up well to apply to top universities/ivy’s. You can always double major in Economics since you already have most of it complete, while taking STEM classes and without having to worry much about GE’s (I imagine you took most of those already).
As a transfer you’re kind of expected to know what major you want to be in, and there are caps with financial aid and stuff where they only want you to stay in school for 2 years. You won’t feel as supported as you would as a freshman, you’ll be treated more as an untraditional or mature student and won’t get to share in as much of the fun that your freshman peers got to experience. If you enter as a freshman you could always explore more and since you’ve taken many college courses already you have even more freedom to truly explore what you want to do without having to worry so much about fulfilling GE or lower division courses since you’re already set with Econ if you end up falling behind.
Majority of transfer students are older than their straight-from-high-school Junior peers. Meanwhile you’ll be younger than either of those groups. Perhaps you would enjoy it but at some point you do miss interacting with people who are the same age as you who aren’t burdened down by work or family/children/spouses. It’s a much different experience and you’ll probably be generalized into that “mature/nontraditional” group vs your young self.
I say this as somebody who is generally pretty young yet whose closest friends at community college have all been 25-30 year olds. I personally feel I’ve missed out and didn’t get to experience socializing with people my age. But I’ll be transferring this Fall so hopefully it won’t be too bad of an experience, but already I feel I’ve missed out on the friendships and opportunities to simply have fun and get to know people. Study abroad is another thing that is more difficult for transfers. You have a smaller window to plan this out because you have to meet residency requirements (such as, take your senior year on campus or take your first/junior year on campus, ect.) and most study abroad applications are do about a year or so before the actual travel semester/quarter. It’s possible, but it requires a lot more planning and initiative from the very start. It’s not something you can just wait for at the very end of your Junior year to randomly decide to do.