I don’t completely disagree. You can’t compare apples to apples in this case. Throw it out if you wish, but I still think the thread’s article is short sighted as it only relates to American companies in the last 30 years. Capitalism is a relatively recent phenomenon in it’s current form so you may be hard pressed to find any examples of companies making bad business decisions before say 1850, but that does not mean bad decisions weren’t made. There was always some form of a marketplace, but the actual decisions were made by nobility, govenment, and church. Merchants and traders existed and worked the free market, but did so as individuals and not as companies and could only amass so much wealth before their lords would confiscate. Manufacturing and services existed, but weren’t competed, but instead ordered from a guild with preset wages.
In regard to sovereign purse strings, you might find this Otto Von Habsburg article interesting.
http://erhj.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/dr-otto-von-habsburg-monarchy-vs.html
“I still think the thread’s article is short sighted”
Oh, I absolutely agree. The list is ridiculously limited chronologically and territorially.
“There was always some form of a marketplace, but the actual decisions were made by nobility, government, and church”
The government has only become more entangled in the economy as time has passed, and as such it veritably impossible to distinguish business decisions uninfluenced by the law, much less teasing out relative levels of coercion. The less centralized previous form presents other problems, and it is perhaps even harder to distinguish what was and what wasn’t caused by the influence of the sort of government that was the nobility or the church. Add to that how without our modern legal system the lack of easily identifiable private property let alone clearly defined business entities and it seems impossible.
I don’t agree with your 1850 guidepost, and am not as unconfident as I sometimes seem about distinguishing business from political decisions in the olden days. In any case there is no such confusion as between business on the one hand and the Spanish armada on the other. That was definitely, definitely not a business enterprise. Attempting to invade England was certainly a political move. I have no doubt there.
I don’t agree with the author’s facile dismissal of the vast difference in tax burden, interference in private lives, etc. between modern democracies and the old way. The bankruptcy, total war, hypercentralization, etc. of the last century just weren’t possible before. Granted, you take the good with the bad. Before you were a serf and a pariah if the priest didn’t like you, and now you work half the year for the feds and can be drafted to die overseas with no one in particular knowing why, but at least you have computers and fast food.