While the ancient Greeks were philosophical in their approach to all kinds of issues and more inclined to develop metaphysical theories,
the Romans were more practical and pragmatic/ Like they efficiently organized their legions, they did the same with their mainly agricultural economy.
The Roman jurists analyzed facts and produced principles that were not only normative, but also, by implication at least, explanatory.
They created a juristic logic that proved to be applicable to a wide variety of social patterns, indeed to any social pattern that recognizes private property and “capitalistic” commerce.
They gave definitions, for example, of price, money, of purchase and sale, of the various kinds of loans, and of deposits.
The Roman jurists formulated numerous economic concepts, which later in the Middle Ages would form the basis for the analysis of the new mercantile economy.
These concepts had the great advantage of being free from the values and prejudices opposed to wealth-getting, commerce, and investment, which we, for instance, encountered in the ideas of Aristotle.
Those concepts prepared the development of the mercantile economy. A mercantile economy, or mercantilist economy, is a system
where a government intervenes to increase national wealth by maintaining a positive balance of trade, promoting exports, and accumulating precious metals like gold and silver.
This is achieved through protectionist policies such as tariffs on imports, subsidies for domestic industries, and the establishment of colonies to control raw materials and markets.
An interesting observation is, that what became the economic thought of the Middle Ages and later, apparently, is revived by the current president of the USA.
Because this economic behavior characterizes US economic policies at the moment, we could, for a momen,t skip the Middle Ages and look into this matter some more.
So, the primary purpose of the mercantilist era in Europe, which was the 16th to 18th century, was to enrich the nation-state by increasing its wealth and power through government intervention in the economy,
primarily by maintaining a favorable balance of trade, which means that exports exceeding imports, to accumulate precious metals like gold and silver in those days and dollars today.
This system involved establishing colonies to acquire raw materials and create markets, imposing protectionist policies like tariffs and quotas to protect domestic industries, and fostering monopolies for trading companies to control valuable commodities.
Doesn't this all sound familiar? We're running a bit ahead of the herd at the moment, but current events make it interesting to respond to this in advance.
Thank you for your attention again... the floor is yours...
Main Sources:
MacMillan The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2nd edition
of Economic Thought (2012)
TABLE OF CONTENT -----------------------------------------------------------------
1 - 100 Philosophers 9 May 2009 Start of
2 - 25+ Women Philosophers 10 May 2009 this blog
3 - 25 Adventures in Thinking 10 May 2009
4 - Modern Theories of Ethics 29 Oct 2009
5 - The Ideal State 24 Febr 2010 / 234
6 - The Mystery of the Brain 3 Sept 2010 / 266
7 - The Utopia of the Free Market 16 Febr 2012 / 383
8. - The Aftermath of Neo-liberalism 5 Sept 2012 / 413
9. - The Art Not to Be an Egoist 6 Nov 2012 / 426
10 - Non-Western Philosophy 29 May 2013 / 477
11 - Why Science is Right 2 Sept 2014 / 534
12 - A Philosopher looks at Atheism 1 Jan 2015 / 557
13 - EVIL, a philosophical investigation 17 Apr 2015 / 580
14 - Existentialism and Free Will 2 Sept 2015 / 586
15 - Spinoza 2 Sept 2016 / 615
16 - The Meaning of Life 13 Febr 2017 / 637
17 - In Search of my Self 6 Sept 2017 / 670
18 - The 20th Century Revisited 3 Apr 2018 / 706
19 - The Pessimist 11 Jan 2020 / 819
20 - The Optimist 9 Febr 2020 / 824
21 - Awakening from a Neoliberal Dream 8 Oct 2020 / 872
22 - A World Full of Patterns 1 Apr 2021 / 912
23 - The Concept of Freedom 8 Jan 2022 / 965
24 - Materialism 7 Sept 2022 / 1011
25 - Historical Materialism 5 Oct 2023 / 1088
26 - The Bonobo and the Atheist 9 Jan 2024 / 1102
27 - Artificial Intelligence 9 Feb 2024 / 1108
28 - Why Am I Here 6 Sept 2024 / 1139
The Discussion
[13:15] .: Beertje :. (beertje.beaumont): thankyou Herman
[13:16] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): ㋡
[13:16] herman Bergson: This mercantilist approach of the economy did not prevail tho.
[13:16] herman Bergson: It already was dropped as a system by the end of the 18th century, but it seems to be applied again.
[13:17] herman Bergson: The Trump tariffs are an example of it.
[13:17] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): Indeed His stuff sounds just like this
[13:18] herman Bergson: I wonder why he likes this outdated way of governing
[13:18] .: Beertje :. (beertje.beaumont)There were a lot of poor people in those days, in the Netherlands they had to live in "plaggenhutten"
[13:18] .: Beertje :. (beertje.beaumont): sorry don't knowe the english name
[13:19] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): Because he himself is outdated
[13:19] Max Chatnoir: So, mercantilism is grounded in increasing profit?
[13:20] herman Bergson: The belief was that a state should accumulate as many reserves as possible in gold and silver...or as today in billions of dollars.
[13:20] .: Beertje :. (beertje.beaumont): sod hut?
[13:21] herman Bergson: The more the state owns the more powerful it is, was the idea.
[13:21] .: Beertje :. (beertje.beaumont): yes but only for the happy few
[13:21] Max Chatnoir: So the condition of the population isn't an important factor.
[13:21] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): That is trump 100%, stealing the peoples money, insurances, medicine ect to make profits for himself
[13:22] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): not for the state, just himself
[13:22] herman Bergson: In the 16th century, a rich state was able to pay a huge army.
[13:23] herman Bergson: In those days it made sense, such an army was a threat for neighboring countries
[13:23] herman Bergson: but that doesn't work anymore these days
[13:24] herman Bergson: a few cheap drones can wipe out your fleet
[13:24] .: Beertje :. (beertje.beaumont): then they have to defend themselves against the drones
[13:24] .: Beertje :. (beertje.beaumont): with more dornes
[13:25] .: Beertje :. (beertje.beaumont): drones
[13:25] herman Bergson: that is probably the way it will go
[13:25] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): seems so I guess
[13:26] .: Beertje :. (beertje.beaumont): what's the use of war?
[13:26] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): I wonder that also
[13:26] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): but also Im not evil
[13:27] herman Bergson: Now we'll see how economic thought has developed from the Middle Ages till our world of free trade.
[13:27] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): aah
[13:28] herman Bergson: Tariffs don't work anymore. Most of the world is now ignoring or trying to circumvent economically the US.
[13:29] .: Beertje :. (beertje.beaumont): the US is becoming a land like North Korea
[13:29] herman Bergson: I hope not
[13:29] .: Beertje :. (beertje.beaumont): T love the little rocketman
[13:30] Max Chatnoir: So for both Ukraine and Gaza, the point is I want to expand my realm.
[13:30] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): He must do that indeed Beertje
[13:31] herman Bergson: Also an outdated concept, I'd say
[13:31] herman Bergson: That is why they needed their armies in the 16th century....not today
[13:32] .: Beertje :. (beertje.beaumont): what is even more dangerous, army in the middle ages or today?
[13:32] herman Bergson: if you take into account the destructive power current armies are more dangerous
[13:33] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): today we have nukes, drones and machine guns
[13:33] .: Beertje :. (beertje.beaumont): and computer nerds
[13:33] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): aah
[13:33] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): that too
[13:33] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): and they are not rigging skipdo tables for sure
[13:33] herman Bergson: a cyber army.....
[13:34] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): DDOS attacks ect
[13:34] .: Beertje :. (beertje.beaumont): yes
[13:34] herman Bergson: yes
[13:34] .: Beertje :. (beertje.beaumont): or worse
[13:35] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): I heard about someone creating a worm that infects the NPM system for Javascript/Node. SInce all these packages are more or less dependent on each other this is a big issue
[13:35] .: Beertje :. (beertje.beaumont): they can by 1 click destroy the whole economy
[13:35] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): at the moment the target seems to be stealing cryptocurrency from site visitors but i bet u can use this for even worse things
[13:36] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): indee
[13:37] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): one way I heard someone describing NPM was "You want a banana but you then also will get the gorilla holding the banana + the enture jungle"
[13:37] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): because all packages are dependent on each other downloading one requires the download of 1000s of other packages taking up sometimes 100s of MB
[13:37] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): its a flawed system
[13:38] herman Bergson: Let's wait and see Bejiita :-)
[13:38] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): and if only one of these packages are infected then ur screwed
[13:39] herman Bergson: Guess we can leave it by that for today and head for the weekend :-)
[13:40] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): hopefully
[13:40] .: Beertje :. (beertje.beaumont): week-end again..time flies
[13:40] herman Bergson: And after that we'll see how the middle ages prepare the road for capitalism :-)
[13:41] herman Bergson: Yes, in no time a week is over
[13:41] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): at least ive got some haloween fixyp ongoing, unmessing, decorating a bit and play some games i always play this time while also doing some gamedev myself at the same time, having a cup of tea ect
[13:41] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): just relaxing into toe cozy facotr, esp now after that contest
[13:41] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): mashing for an entire month more or less nonstop
[13:42] herman Bergson: Then, thank you all again...
[13:42] herman Bergson: Class dismissed.....
[13:42] .: Beertje :. (beertje.beaumont): Thank you Herman
[13:42] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): ㋡
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