[dsc]

"6) capitalism (by your 4000 year scale)
You're daft. Capitalism -- in one form or another -- has existed since the dawn of time. True, it required an Industrial Revolution to give it its present incarnation, but people have been buying and selling at a profit for eons."

What we call "capitalism" is nothing more than the way people naturally act when nobody has a gun to their heads.

Hey, I've got wheat, and I need milk. Joe has milk, and needs wheat. Maybe we can work something out.

Von Hayek offers some very lucid discussions of this in "Road to Serfdom" and "Fatal Conceit."

[papertyger]

Von Hayek offers some very lucid discussions of this in "Road to Serfdom"

I wish someone would come out with an e-text version. I wore out two copies.

[mudblood]

I simply meant capitalism as a societal objective ala Wealth of Nations. I didn't mean "hey you've got a rock, I've got a stick - lets trade". I meant the government understanding that people have a right to pursue happiness, rather than giving everything to the priesthood or being taxed to death. But of course, you are right, people have always traded.