I’ve been re-reading some old economics texts recently. What the heck, they’re great bedtime reading.
Anyway, Smith describes mercantilism pretty well. What I think we have today is a perverse form of mercantilism, where it is sort of turned inside-out.
The same people benefit, however, and they access the same levels of government to do their bidding as in Smith’s mercantile examples.
If you go back 3000 years or more, they had Palace Economies. Everything went to the palace. And the king decided who would receive the goods. Very centralized economy, all about controlling distribution.
Jump forward many centuries, you have Mercantilism. Sure, it's different, but perhaps not much. The government controls the playing field, and decides who gets the sweet deal and who does not.
Jump to the 20th century. Fascism and Socialism are basically Palace Economies/Mercantilist societies.
And on the other side, you can have decentralized economies where individuals own things and work for their own self-interest. It's different. You can trace this, in one form or another, back about 2500 years.
Collectism or Individualism. Each society makes a choice. And right now, our society is choosing badly. Who is John Galt?
I have been the Communist Manifesto (1848) The first part of which states the problems of the times child labor,slaves or debt slavery the rise of the factory problems of international trade etc. All very similar to our problems today.
“”””(9) Marx’s comments on the importance of the world market, developed further in passages here omitted, sounds very modern. He argued that the differences between countries would diminish as they adopted capitalism and increased their international trade, paving the way for a stateless world united in communism.
(10) Marx particularly has in mind the European revolutions of 1789-1848, in which the bourgeoisie, which had long before become the dominant economic force in society, asserted its claims to political power as well.
(11) In this famous comment, the modern democratic states are dismissed as mere tools of the bourgeoisie, since it is the wealthy who run them and set their agendas, despite their claims to popular representation.”””””
Our modern bourgeoisie today is probably the Goldman and JP morgue’s of the world as in the past they should pay a 90% Tax unless the money is invested energy production or manufacturing & leave the average millionaire who came by their money honestly alone.