What capitalism really means.

Righty · #1 (**permalink**) 10-10-2006, 06:00 AM

Trade Guilds were an abomination to commerce. Thankfully they were forcefully outlawed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guild

Quote:

The medieval guild was offered letters patent (usually from the king) and held a monopoly on its trade in the town in which it operated: handicraft workers were forbidden by law to run any business if they were not members of a guild, and only masters were allowed to be members of a guild. Before these privileges were legislated, these groups of handicraft workers were simply called 'handicraft associations'.

THE HORROR! tHE HORRoR! Try to comprehend for a second the consequences of a trade guild system of commerce nowadays. Enforced monopolies everywhere.

Quote:

Fall of the guilds

Despite its advantages for agricultural and artisan producers, the guild became a target of much criticism towards the end of the 1700s and the beginning of the 1800s. They were believed to oppose free trade and hinder technological innovation, technology transfer and business development. According to several accounts of this time, guilds became increasingly involved in simple territorial struggles against each other and against free practitioners of their arts, but the neutrality of these claims is doubted. It may be propaganda.
An example of the last of the British Guilds meeting rooms c1820
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An example of the last of the British Guilds meeting rooms c1820

Two of the most outspoken critics of the guild system were Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith, and all over Europe a tendency to oppose government control over trades in favour of laissez-faire free market systems was growing rapidly and making its way into the political and legal system. Even Karl Marx (not normally in league with Adam Smith) in his Communist Manifesto criticized the guild system for its rigid gradation of social rank and the relation of oppressor/oppressed entailed by this system. From this time comes the low regard in which some people hold the guilds to this day. For example, Smith writes in The Wealth of Nations (Book I, Chapter X, paragraph 72):

It is to prevent this reduction of price, and consequently of wages and profit, by restraining that free competition which would most certainly occasion it, that all corporations, and the greater part of corporation laws, have been established. (...) and when any particular class of artificers or traders thought proper to act as a corporation without a charter, such adulterine guilds, as they were called, were not always disfranchised upon that account, but obliged to fine annually to the king for permission to exercise their usurped privileges.

In part due to their own inability to control unruly corporate behavior, the tide turned against the guilds.

Because of industrialization and modernization of the trade and industry, and the rise of powerful nation-states that could directly issue patent and copyright protections — often revealing the trade secrets — the guilds' power faded. After the French Revolution they fell in most European nations through the 1800s, as the guild system was disbanded and replaced by free trade laws....

If I would give one reason why the dark ages were so dismal, it would be because of trade guilds.

Capitalism is the abolishment of the trade guild system.

Righty · #2 (**permalink**) 10-10-2006, 06:13 AM

Quote:

Definitions of Mercantilism on the Web:

* A school of thought which was dominant in Europe (roughly in the 16th century through the 18th century). Mercantilism advocates trade restrictions through restriction of imports and expansion of exports so as to accumulate gold and foreign exchange.
highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0072487488/student_view0/glossary.html

* An economic philosophy of the 16th and 17th centuries that international commerce should primarily serve to increase a country's financial wealth, especially of gold and foreign currency. To that end, exports are viewed as desirable and imports as undesirable unless they lead to even greater exports.
www-personal.umich.edu/~alandear/glossary/m.html

Lets review. Democrats don't like Feudalism, Mercantilism, or Capitalism. They are just envious of people who earn more money then they, and hate the rich, all they want to do is redistribute wealth. And they would prefer that the redistribution flow is pointing towards their bank accounts. This is the most disgusting group of selfish unenlightened individuals planet Earth has ever seen.

JavaBlack · #3 (**permalink**) 10-10-2006, 06:31 AM

How many serious Crats are attempting to ressurect Trade Guilds?
And do you really believe Trade Guilds were worse than control by a corrupt church, feudalism, lack of modern medicine, lack of mobility (think it's bad because of Trade Guilds? Try being a peasant in a world of nobility and caste), and generally $%&#%# conditions?
I really doubt it. The Dark Ages just sucked. Period.

Righty · #4 (**permalink**) 10-10-2006, 06:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JavaBlack";p=&quot

How many serious Crats are attempting to ressurect Trade Guilds?
And do you really believe Trade Guilds were worse than control by a corrupt church, feudalism, lack of modern medicine, lack of mobility (think it's bad because of Trade Guilds? Try being a peasant in a world of nobility and caste), and generally $%&#%# conditions?
I really doubt it. The Dark Ages just sucked. Period.

You are sooo cliche.

Vergilius · #5 (**permalink**) 10-10-2006, 06:51 AM

This is far too simple of an explanation for the devopment of a capitalist system.

LadyLazarus · #6 (**permalink**) 10-10-2006, 03:39 PM

The abolishment of the trade guild system was the result of the influence of capitalistic ideas. But there is a lot more to capitalism.

Now, if you wanted to define communism in terms of trade guilds, that would make more sense, as communism essentially produces a trade guild system.

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