Well you have mercantilism, which was the predecessor of capitalism
Basically, the difference is the role of government. Think of it in feudal terms - a noble owns a mine, owns an expedition, uses their soldiers for both security of their land and their monetary interests. As far as raw resources/resource producing land, you couldn’t buy that without buying a title first
But it’s a line that blurred as time went on. If you’re a leather worker, that leather came from an animal owned by the king or by livestock owned by a noble. So you’re paying taxes on the inputs, but you can probably sell stuff freely - although imports and exports might be taxed. And if you’re a merchant, you might buy spices from one noble and sell it to others
But the means of production were owned by a noble - they owned the land and the serfs that work it, they own the animals and the mines.
As time went on, it kinda faded… Maybe you sell the rights to mine a site, maybe you partner with a merchant to go on an expedition for spices, maybe you just require a permit to hunt on the land, and so on
But then as supply chains gets more complicated, you kind of naturally evolve into capitalism
See, the trick there is in your first paragraph I feel like. Under mercantilism, trade is under the almost exclusive purview of the government. So I would argue this doesn’t really meet the definition of “free trade.”
But, to steel man a bit, when “the government” is fairly unstructured, like in a feudal system, the line between government control of trade and “private citizen” control of trade can be a bit blurry. And over time I’m sure it gets messy whether a person is a “government entity” or not.
I do also feel like there’s a “difference of scale is difference of kind” problem here. Obviously if you own a copper mine and employ hundreds of people to go down and mine it for you, you own the means of production. But also, if you run a small restaurant in a strip mall and hire a half dozen servers to wait tables, you also own the means of production.
And, to your point, there probably were private innkeepers under mercantilism that took coin in exchange for goods and services. They probably employed people to help work the place. Does that make it capitalism? What if the owner used the money from that inn to build another, then another and another, and eventually had the money to buy a title and become part of the “noble class”? Is it capitalism then? Does a system that allows for that count as a capitalism, or does it need to actively encourage it?
Idk. I think my big issue, at the end of the day, is that the word capitalism doesn’t really mean anything. Or, rather, no one can really agree on what it means, and it just turns into a tribalism stand in word for “anyone who disagrees with me on economic policy.” But that’s so unspecific as to be totally useless. What parts of “capitalism” are you decrying? What would you replace it with? But I feel like any questions are met with anger that you’re not bought into the anti-capitalist agenda, even though no two people seem to agree on what that actually means.
To address your first point, you go into the bazaar, and you buy a shirt vs another shirt. The lord owns the cotton fields, they both come from the same place but have different prices and different quality/traits - that’s a free market. The raw materials belong to the lord, but what you do with it is up to the artisan
You’re trying to cut the difference between raw materials and value added - that’s the murky difference between mercantilism and capitalism
Remember, there was an age where shipping iron to a town was how farmers got tools - mercantilism is about raw materials in and out, once things get complicated it doesn’t make sense
Well you have mercantilism, which was the predecessor of capitalism
Basically, the difference is the role of government. Think of it in feudal terms - a noble owns a mine, owns an expedition, uses their soldiers for both security of their land and their monetary interests. As far as raw resources/resource producing land, you couldn’t buy that without buying a title first
But it’s a line that blurred as time went on. If you’re a leather worker, that leather came from an animal owned by the king or by livestock owned by a noble. So you’re paying taxes on the inputs, but you can probably sell stuff freely - although imports and exports might be taxed. And if you’re a merchant, you might buy spices from one noble and sell it to others
But the means of production were owned by a noble - they owned the land and the serfs that work it, they own the animals and the mines.
As time went on, it kinda faded… Maybe you sell the rights to mine a site, maybe you partner with a merchant to go on an expedition for spices, maybe you just require a permit to hunt on the land, and so on
But then as supply chains gets more complicated, you kind of naturally evolve into capitalism
See, the trick there is in your first paragraph I feel like. Under mercantilism, trade is under the almost exclusive purview of the government. So I would argue this doesn’t really meet the definition of “free trade.”
But, to steel man a bit, when “the government” is fairly unstructured, like in a feudal system, the line between government control of trade and “private citizen” control of trade can be a bit blurry. And over time I’m sure it gets messy whether a person is a “government entity” or not.
I do also feel like there’s a “difference of scale is difference of kind” problem here. Obviously if you own a copper mine and employ hundreds of people to go down and mine it for you, you own the means of production. But also, if you run a small restaurant in a strip mall and hire a half dozen servers to wait tables, you also own the means of production.
And, to your point, there probably were private innkeepers under mercantilism that took coin in exchange for goods and services. They probably employed people to help work the place. Does that make it capitalism? What if the owner used the money from that inn to build another, then another and another, and eventually had the money to buy a title and become part of the “noble class”? Is it capitalism then? Does a system that allows for that count as a capitalism, or does it need to actively encourage it?
Idk. I think my big issue, at the end of the day, is that the word capitalism doesn’t really mean anything. Or, rather, no one can really agree on what it means, and it just turns into a tribalism stand in word for “anyone who disagrees with me on economic policy.” But that’s so unspecific as to be totally useless. What parts of “capitalism” are you decrying? What would you replace it with? But I feel like any questions are met with anger that you’re not bought into the anti-capitalist agenda, even though no two people seem to agree on what that actually means.
To address your first point, you go into the bazaar, and you buy a shirt vs another shirt. The lord owns the cotton fields, they both come from the same place but have different prices and different quality/traits - that’s a free market. The raw materials belong to the lord, but what you do with it is up to the artisan
You’re trying to cut the difference between raw materials and value added - that’s the murky difference between mercantilism and capitalism
Remember, there was an age where shipping iron to a town was how farmers got tools - mercantilism is about raw materials in and out, once things get complicated it doesn’t make sense