#Mercantilism

[alpaca-clouds]

How the French Revolution lead to Capitalism

Alright, this is another thing that I was asked about from some Castlevania peeps, as I mentioned this. And I guess, yeah, it is fair that should elaborate on this.

The French Revolution - somewhat inadvertent - gave us capitalism and everything that came with it. Sure, capitalism would not have happened without colonialism and mercantilism already being in place, but that does not make it less true that the French Revolution was very influential in giving us the system we have now.

If school taught you anything about the history of economic systems, it was possibly that the system before capitalism was feudalism. Chances are, everyone skipped over mercantilism.

To quickly go over it again:

Feudalism was more than just an economic system, but basically is a word to describe medieval society overall. Under feudalism pretty much only nobility and the church can own anything - especially land. Everyone else is just leasing it from them and will hence have to pay part of their harvest or whatever they make on that land to the nobility that owns it. Meanwhile the nobility is beholden to whatever king they live under as well, making the money automatically acrew on the top of the pyramid. If harvests were good, this could work fine. But in years of bad harvests the peasants were often fucked.

Mercantilism was the trading system that was brought on by colonialism. To make it short: Mercantilism was a system that sought to exploit the colonies for their raw materials, to then create products from those within any given country to enhance the value. It also sought to mostly export goods and not import them (colonies were after all "part of the country"), so that the country could acrew as much money (as in gold and silver) as possible. While a lot of the companies used for this trading were held by nobility, this is not true of them all. As such the mercantile system allowed for certain merchants to become as rich if not richer than nobles.

Which brings us back to the French Revolution. Again: France had once again a war with the English. After all, chances are that if you pick any time before the French Revolution, England and France were at war. And because of that war, France then went to help the American Revolution. But two wars one after another put France in dept with a lot of people, and Louis XVI could no longer pay this dept back. So he raised taxes. And as nobility and church, who held more than 50% of the wealth of the nation, were not taxed, the peasants were like: "I don't think so, buddy." Partly, too, because the last two years had had really bad harvests and people were already starving. Hence: Revolution.

One of the earliest things the Revolution established, was that "every man is equal and should be treated as such in the eyes of the law" (of course, at this time, with the asterisk of "unless they are a slave"). While women were generally still discriminated in large parts of France, they still also gained a lot more legal protections and rights such as no-fault divorce. (Which Napoleon quickly did away with, and it then took until 1975 in France that no-fault divorce returned into law.)

Now, some of you might point out, that The Wealth of Nations was written before the French Revolution. But to that I say: "Well, Marx wrote Das Kapital in 1867 and last I checked, we still don't have communism."

Smith, when writing, The Wealth of Nation was largely inspired by the fact that he did not like the Mercantile system in place. As someone who read the darn thing (no, I do not recommend it) I also still have to say, that it is not the worst. While Smith assumes some things that by now we know are wrong (like barter), this is far from the Chicago school capitalism of our days. Smith even muses about the question that his proposed system might work better, if there is some safety of housing and food for the laborers.

Though of course we should also keep in mind, that Smith was originally a theologist and boy howdy, does it show. Something that modern economists do not like to admit: When Smith talks about the "invisible hand of the market", he does not mean that the market is somehow all-knowing and perfect. He means literally God! He basically says: "Well, God will keep the market balanced."

But as I said: Smith very much - just like Marx - laid out a criticism of the current system and a theory for how to improve it. He did not manage to get this system pushed through.

Because at this point Edmund Burke entered the picture. He was a British statesman, who most certainly had some thoughts on the French Revolution. I would even argue that some of them were valid, but not all. Two very valid and for the time progressive thoughts he had were, that he opposed slavery and capital punishment. He also criticized the Revolution for the "everyone is equal" bit, while clearly not treating slaves as equal. A much less progressive thought that he had was, that nobility was a good thing, actually, and so was the monarchy, and everyone actually profited from that. He was a very religious man and thought that the system of kings and nobles was indeed intended by God.

However, Burke eventually befriended Adam Smith, and the two of them spend days talking about the economy and God. And through this Burke realized one thing: If the people were no longer willing to just accept the rule of nobles because God said so, they might very well accept it, if it was based on merit.

Now, I do not want to make Burke out as a mustarch twirling villain, because he honestly believed that this was a good thing that would somehow help everyone.

Most of all, he believed in this idea of thr "natural order" of things. (This is a theme that the vampires bring up again and again in Castlevania Nocturne. The idea, that if not by the laws of God, then some still are fated to rule by the law of nature.) And he believed in clear societal hierarchies.

And from this arose the idea of capitalism and the meritocracy. Basically: Yes, we use a free market, and those who have the most money and hence the most influence actually have earned this position through their hard work. They are in this position by their own merit. Please ignore, that former nobility with their generational wealth had a much better starting position in the free market, than your average peasant Joe.

And here is the thing: Burke was at times the paymaster of Britain, so his thought kinda mattered. And while he did not live to see the thoughts he and Smith shared come to fruition, he is one of the big reasons, this system arose.

It was a way to secure nobility's rule over everyone else, even after the death of the old system.

And mind you, this kinda stuff was absolutely also discussed in France. Because once the people managed to get somewhat the same rights for most people, there absolutely was a conversation whether certain things like food and a living space should not also be included in those rights. Especially as during the French Revolution the price of bread and soap (among others) was very, very instabile, making the thought that the state should guarantee it a very natural one.

Some of the people living under the French Revolution - especially those, who also brought forth the anarchist thought - were absolutely proposing something we would today call socialism at the very least. But of course, in the end it was for naught, because the Revolution eventually failed - and once Napoleon was in power, such conversations were quickly stopped.

Of course, it should be noted, that either way: The system we live under during those last 25 years has a lot more in common with feudalism once again, than anything Adam Smith envisioned. And while Smith was also a conservative, he did not approve of feudalism.

[racefortheironthrone]

Why do economists need to shut up about mercantilism, as you alluded to in your post about Louis XIV's chief ministers?

In part due to their supposed intellectual descent from Adam Smith and the other classical economists, contemporary economists are pretty uniformly hostile to mercantilism, seeing it as a wrong-headed political economy that held back human progress until it was replaced by that best of all ideas: capitalism.

As a student of economic history and the history of political economy, I find that economists generally have a pretty poor understanding of what mercantilists actually believed and what economic policies they actually supported. In reality, a lot of the things that economists see as key advances in the creation of capitalism - the invention of the joint-stock company, the creation of financial markets, etc. - were all accomplishments of mercantiism.

Rather than the crude stereotype of mercantilists as a bunch of monetary weirdos who thought the secret to prosperity was the hoarding of precious metals, mercantilists were actually lazer-focused on economic development. The whole business about trying to achieve a positive balance of trade and financial liquidity and restraining wages was all a means to an end of economic development. Trade surpluses could be invested in manufacturing and shipping, gold reserves played an important role in deepening capital pools and thus increasing levels of investment at lower interest rates that could support larger-scale and more capital intensive enterprises, and so forth.

Indeed, the arch-sin of mercantilism in the eyes of classical and contemporary economists, their interference in free trade through tariffs, monopolies, and other interventions, was all directed at the overriding economic goal of climbing the value-added ladder.

Thus, England (and later Britain) put a tariff on foreign textiles and an export tax on raw wool and forbade the emigration of skilled workers (while supporting the immigration of skilled workers to England) and other mercantilist policies to move up from being exporters of raw wool (which meant that most of the profits from the higher value-added part of the industry went to Burgundy) to being exporters of cheap wool cloth to being exporters of more advanced textiles. Hell, even Adam Smith saw the logic of the Navigation Acts!

And this is what brings me to the most devastating critique of the standard economist narrative about mercantilism: the majority of the countries that successfully industrialized did so using mercantilist principles rather than laissez-faire principles:

When England became the first industrial economy, it did so under strict protectionist policies and only converted to free trade once it had gained enough of a technological and economic advantage over its competitors that it didn't need protectionism any more.

When the United States industrialized in the 19th century and transformed itself into the largest economy in the world, it did so from behind high tariff walls.

When Germany made itself the leading industrial power on the Continent, it did so by rejecting English free trade economics and having the state invest heavily in coal, steel, and railroads. Free trade was only for within the Zollverein, not with the outside world.

And as Dani Rodrik, Ha-Joon Chang, and others have pointed out, you see the same thing with Japan, South Korea, China...everywhere you look, you see protectionism as the means of achieving economic development, and then free trade only working for already-developed economies.

[sprintingowl]

Leadbellies

Leadbellies is a 30 page tactical merchant mecha ttrpg set in a pastoral world.

It is the direct consequence of me watching too much Spice And Wolf while attempting to fall asleep, and it's about as cozy as a scythe.

Anyway, you take on the roles of mech pilots in a country that is recovering from the last war and carry goods from town to town, trying to avoid scraps with the weird holdout militias that are convinced that with another couple years of war they could totally win this time guys it would definitely be worth it.

Leadbellies uses d6s and a chess board and plays like red rover.

You have a variety of mech frames and loadouts. You can upgrade your mech. You can fill your hold with old bluegrass CDs.

I dunno what else to tell you. You've formed an opinion about the game by this point.

[gailhai1storm]

Ok so i want to take a look at the idea of "earning a living”.

first of all its a fucked up concept in and of itself, the idea that you only deserve to live baced off of the work you do, its fucked up.

but what fasinates and horrifies me about it is that I am willing to stake money on that I know ere historically the idea can be traced.

this is going to be long so I'm going to put a keep reading thing here

Im going to start with feudalism.

In a feudal system you work to make food to provide food for the people who are meant to protect you, the nights.

thats how its ment to work.

but it didnt really, well it did for a bit and then broke down, as does any system. In actual feudalism you were still paying the nights for protection via your harvest but not protection from outside forces or powers but protection from the nights themselves.

if you give us food we wont kill you.

the peasants were held at gunpoint to a deal that only hurt them.

so quite literally your wages, your production were your earn your living you worked inorder to not be killed.

now feudalism came to an end (slowly and there is more to it ill go into at a later date) but mercantilism took its place, especially in northern Europe and England.

Now im the most formiliar witht his transition as it took place in England because that's what I've been specifically studying for a hot minute. So we will use that as our case study.

In England there is a shift away from feudalism, this happens in large part because agricultural techniques improved and less people were needed in the feilds.

This decrease in need for labor in rural areas drives many many people to flood to the cities. These people in the cities are poor. Very poor.

So there is a mass flood of impoverished people who have no experience withworking in an urban environment, and there aren't jobs for them, and suddenly everyone has to see the poor people.

So how do the nobility and middle class cope? How do they justify this disparity?

Well you tell the same lie people tell themself now.

If you work hard and you "pull yourself up by your boot straps" you will “earn your living”.

Youll even be wealthy, so clearly these people who are destitute and have been forced off their land, by the same people who have been holding them at gunpoint for generations, who would not in a million years have chosen to be poor or destitute. They must be choosing it, they must be imoral, must be slothful, because why do you deserve to be comfortable and these people don't if they are working hard.

Now we are a deeply religiouse society, and immorality is obviously bad, so you want these people to work, because as a government you have to do something about it. Now you have to do something about it so you set up housing and governmental programs to help these people who are suffering.

But now the idea that these people not working has been ingrained as bad and immoral, so you make workhouses.

You make houses where the people work till they are raw, work sometimes till they die. You make houses were the poor must work, to stop being immoral, to deserve a roof and a vile meal.

And you are desperate, cause you cant make money any where, there is no other work, because you are poor so no one will hire you, because you must be immoral.

So you turn to the workhouses and you “earn your living".

So ye, the idea that you have to work to live, it is a vile vile thing, that stems from vile systems.

It is an idea that stems from systems built on suffering.

Everyone deserves to live.

[bongscape]

the other history teachers dont like me because, im not 'supposed to' refer to the suez canal as 'the biggest ultra shortcut this side of the atlantic' even though that clearly conveyed its importance

[kramlabs]

The defense contractors (and Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Agra, Big Gov, along with all retail and tech) are all owned by the Militarized Index Funds descended from Anglo-American Whig Mercantilism

Central Banks (and now index funds) win every war and every election, and humanity keeps losing. They manipulate us, divide us and initiate crisis all for profit and control.

[juvenalesque]

I wanted to include the video here, but tumblr seems to refuse to allow it. I recommend watching before reading my article following. Welcome to my blog:

This video begins a very important conversation in a way almost everyone can understand. Each "different economic system" in our history has only been repeating the one proceeding it in every way: except for those minimum concessions made that are appeasement enough that the oppressed willingly accept the enthusiastic new way of presenting the roles and rituals of the ways of life. Propaganda has been effective each time more readily than the last for the ones who barely grasped to keep ahold of their power educated themselves & cooperated with more zeal to promote their agenda. Whether it be the religion that stands for building a firm foundation for the construction of loyalty or those that conveniently reach the same result while claiming freedom from the cultural constructs of religion, these power modules do not rest when it comes to finding ways to increase their benefit while never releasing a life of extreme luxury as to avoid any useful labor or participation in the function of society. If there is one thing they engrain into their ways it is a simple fact that the truest power is knowledge. This provides the knowledge that to divide is to conquer, to destroy unity and utilize discontented disorder for their justifications, or even to go so far as to allow large parts of the system to be pruned for the preservation of the desired organism. When you see an apocalypse, a war-torn nation of dust, ancient languages lost as quickly as the literacy of a nation of revolution, leaving way for the oath of new ownership called freedom. This is freedom at last. Never again, but every time. To obliterate anyone with a new way of looking at things so that we can bury our heads in the sand of cognitive dissonance for the truth is inconvenient. This is the history of the world, but it is our present. Colonization moved locations, servitude became employment, and loyalty to one another became nationalism/patriotism to the ruling class, and time to yourself become a luxury because if you have time to tarry you have time to think, & that makes you dangerous. If you have basic decency & kindness, you have brotherhood, & that breeds altruism. If you have United thinkers, you start a controlled demolition. The mistake always made by the masses is the one built into the training of every mind born into the existing world as one knows it: foresight becomes the afterthought. It is only by grassroots organizational patterns, voluntary associations, education on facts & commonalities of compromise that the human race can survive this time. IF humanity fails to unite with a new slogan, "Earthlings for Terra & Terra for all Earthlings" or a phrase of the same sentiment, then tick-tock will go the clock, & past stops existing in the present while the future is obliterated by nuclear proportion...possibly literally. People think about how their very presence in the past would change their present if they had access to time-space-travel, but nobody stops to think about how each thing they can do in the present has the same ripple effect on the future. Non-objection is compliance is to be complicit. Wake up every day and choose to always be open to new ideas and change your mind when presented with new and valid information. Maybe you'll be the most valuable piece in saving the world. Above all: be kind. You may realize that this short story also alludes to how our for-profit prisons have been used in this same manner, as we replaced ourselves with nationalism/patriotism, our ears perk at the posh remodeling of language to quench our thirst for peace with pleasant lies so we don't have to swallow the truth. We are not free. We all should be. Yet, just as colonialism never ended, now the capitalist ideology has implemented the military-industrial complex as a means to the expansion of territory and resources-- one of those resources being human beings.

[deydey-04]

Mercantilism- isang sistema ng ekonomiya noong nakaraan kung saan ang mga bansa ay naglalayong magkaroon ng maraming ginto at pilak. Para magawa ito, kailangang magbenta ng maraming produkto kaysa sa binibili nila. Ginawagawa rin ang lahat para mapanatili ang kanilang mga industriya at ma-protektahan ang mga ito mula sa ibang bansa.

[erebusvincent]

China is a clear example of how central planners lack the knowledge to effectively manage an economy. Instead of adopting China's mercantilist policies that insulate firms from competition, allocate capital arbitrarily, and keep unprofitable firms on life support, the United States should double down on free trade, deregulation, and privatization.

[ousarsonhar]

Depois que aluno virou cliente, a satisfação do cliente é prioridade.

A transformação do aluno em cliente reflete uma mudança profunda e preocupante na concepção da educação, onde o mercantilismo passou a dominar o cenário acadêmico. Essa abordagem mercadológica prioriza a satisfação do cliente-aluno, muitas vezes em detrimento do rigor acadêmico e da formação crítica e cidadã. No modelo mercantilista, as instituições de ensino podem ser pressionadas a moldar seus currículos e práticas pedagógicas para atender demandas imediatas e superficiais, visando mais à retenção e ao lucro do que ao desenvolvimento integral dos estudantes. Essa inversão de valores compromete a qualidade do ensino e ameaça o papel da educação como um processo de construção de conhecimento, reflexão crítica e transformação social.

Nesse contexto, o conhecimento deixa de ser um fim em si mesmo, tornando-se uma mercadoria que deve ser empacotada e vendida de acordo com as preferências do "cliente". A educação, que deveria fomentar a autonomia intelectual e preparar indivíduos para enfrentar os desafios complexos do mundo, corre o risco de ser reduzida a um serviço que precisa agradar, muitas vezes com soluções rápidas e superficiais. Isso pode levar a uma erosão dos padrões acadêmicos, à desvalorização dos profissionais da educação e à precarização das condições de trabalho dos docentes, que se veem forçados a adaptar suas práticas pedagógicas a essas novas demandas. Em última instância, esse modelo compromete a missão essencial da educação: a de formar cidadãos críticos, capazes de questionar o status quo e contribuir para uma sociedade mais justa e equitativa.

Referências bibliográficas comentadas:

1. Giroux, H. A. (2002). "Neoliberalism, Corporate Culture, and the Promise of Higher Education: The University as a Democratic Public Sphere." Harvard Educational Review, 72(4), 425-463.

- Este artigo discute como as práticas neoliberais estão reformulando as instituições de ensino superior, transformando-as em entidades orientadas para o mercado.

2. Naidoo, R., & Jamieson, I. (2005). "Knowledge in the Marketplace: The Global Commodification of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education." Management in Education, 19(3), 5-8.

- Os autores exploram como o conhecimento está sendo comercializado globalmente e o impacto dessa mercantilização na prática educativa.

3. Lynch, K. (2006). "Neo-liberalism and Marketisation: The Implications for Higher Education." European Educational Research Journal, 5(1), 1-17.

- Este artigo examina as implicações da neoliberalização e da mercantilização para a educação superior, incluindo a mudança do aluno para a posição de cliente.

4. Brown, R., & Carasso, H. (2013). "Everything for Sale? The Marketisation of UK Higher Education." Society for Research into Higher Education & Open University Press.

- Uma análise aprofundada de como a educação superior no Reino Unido está sendo transformada por políticas de mercado, com foco na relação entre instituições e estudantes.

5. Williams, J. (2013). "Consuming Higher Education: Why Learning Can't Be Bought." Bloomsbury Academic.

- Embora seja um livro, este trabalho é amplamente citado e discutido em artigos acadêmicos. Williams argumenta contra a visão do estudante como consumidor e as implicações dessa mudança para a educação.

6. Frigotto, G. (2005). "Educação e a crise do capital: A escola pública e a mercantilização da educação." Educação & Sociedade, 26(92), 1377-1399.

- Este artigo discute a relação entre a crise do capital e a mercantilização da educação, abordando como as políticas neoliberais impactam a escola pública e transformam a educação em mercadoria.

7. Dias Sobrinho, J. (2010). "Avaliação, globalização e políticas de mercantilização: Modos de ser e agir nas universidades." Revista Brasileira de Educação, 15(45), 74-90.

- O autor analisa como a avaliação educacional, influenciada pela globalização e políticas neoliberais, contribui para a mercantilização das universidades e a transformação da relação entre instituições e alunos.

8. Gentili, P. (2003). "A mercantilização das políticas educativas: O laboratório chileno." Cadernos CEDES, 23(61), 39-57.

- Este artigo explora o processo de mercantilização das políticas educativas no Chile, destacando como a educação se transforma em um serviço regulado pelas leis do mercado e a consequente mudança na percepção dos alunos como consumidores.

Por Felipe Filgueiras Facklam

[racefortheironthrone]

Many of your economic development plans call for the LPs to climb the "value-added chain". In a late medieval context, what value-added product would give you the most bang for your buck when it comes to timber?

Timber is a bit trickier than the classic case of textiles (where there are more links in the value-added chain from raw wool to carded wool to spun thread to plain woven cloth to dyed cloth to higher-end fabrics).

The first place to start is to shift from timber (i.e, the harvesting of raw, unprocessed logs from trees) to lumber (treating and seasoning, and sawing the logs into standardized boards, planks, beams, posts, and the like that can be used by carpenters to make furniture, housing, etc.). This requires the construction of sawmills (usually water- or wind-powered), usually downstream from the timberland so that logs can be easily floated down to the sawmill rather than going to the effort and expense of carting them overland.

The next step is to encourage the development of associated industries like furniture-making, construction...and most prized of all, ship-building. These industries continue to climb the value-added chain, because there's more money to be made from selling artisan furniture than selling raw logs and more money to be made in real estate than selling planks retail, and thus they allow you to maximize your profits from your natural resources. More importantly, if you can get into ship-building, you not only make money from selling and repairing the ships, but it's a pretty easy step from there to branch out into commerce on your own account (since you are already producing the main capital investment that seaborn commerce requires).

This is why various forms of Navigation Acts were often a key strategy of mercantilist policy during the Commercial Revolution, because if you could make sure that foreign trade was carried out by your nation's ships crewed by your sailors and your pilots and financed by your merchants, that the profits from trade would be more likely to be re-invested at home rather than exported to someone else's country.

[sprintingowl]

All Wolf No Spice

It is pre-industrial Germany and you are a wolf. Through no fault of your own, you have obtained a large cart full of expensive spices. If you can sell all of it, perhaps you can pay humans to stay out of your ancestral forest and leave you alone.

(All Wolf, No Spice is a 1 page TTRPG about standing on your hind legs and trying to convince one or more humans to buy a bag of pepper.)

[hanban371213]

welcome back to hannah's history lessons, check the first tag for the first post with context

Book 4 - Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries - society, power and colonial dynamics.

Part 2 - Triumph of the States and colonial dynamics in the 17th and 18th centuries

At this time, the prominent economic model is Comercial Capitalism, where the main form of profit is comerce (in contrast, right now its financial capitalism, where profit comes from banks, and stocks and stuff like that). Within this model, various states started implementing Mercantilist policies, who had as a goal develop industrial production, as means of turning the country self-suficient, and the increase of customs tax on foreign products, to reduce imports.

England and France both had slightly different aproaches to Mercantilism.

French Mercantilism was characterized by the big importance given to manufactories, owned and controled by the State. France wanted to be as self-reliant as possible by manufactoring everything it could ever need.

British Mercantilism was more flexible, and charactertized for the valueu given to the navy and comerce, through the Naval Acts, that made it obligatory for all British products to be transported in British ships, making it so that Britain gained a big and strong merchant fleet. (different than from example Portugal, that just hired the British and the Dutch to carry their stuff)

With this, the French and British economies were able to become self-suficient.

France, Britain and the Netherlands went through a series of conflicts, caused by economic motives, at the end of which Britain ended up as the biggest colonial power, having annexed French and Dutch colonies in the Americas, Africa and Asia.

Britain saw itself on the agricultural vanguard after a series of improvements in crop rotation, the creation of enclosures by the big landowners(replacing the old traditional open field camps) where plants and animals were selectively bred, and also with the invention of new agricultural equipment. (Agricultural Revolution)

All internal customs tax were abolished, creating a single big unified internal market, alongside the creation of new roads and canals, and externaly British products impose themselves across the Continent.

Britain also posessed an advanced financial system, having created the Bank of England, that unified all of the old smaller country banks.

The textile industry was totaly mecanized, the metalurgic industry became the most important and was indispensible to industrialization, and the vapor machine and first motors were invented, making it possible to replace manpower with machines, this being the begin of the Industrial Revolution and Industrial Capitalism(main source of profit is industry).

All of this, the massive colonial empire, the agricultural advancements, the expansion of it's market, the advanced financial system, and finaly the industrial revolution, all of it led to Britain becoming an international hegemonic power.

Back in Portugal, we're suffering a severe comercial crisis. This is because our industry doesn't exist and our economy is entirely suported by re-exporting colonial goods, specificaly sugar. Said sugar just happened to be usurped by the Dutch(when Portugal was a part of Spain for a few years we were dragged into wars, the Dutch invaded the north of Brazil, took the sugar production to the Caribbean), and was later spread to the French and British. This, alongside mercantilist policies to reduce imports, made it so that Portugal no longer profited from sugar exports.

Amidst the crisis, our Minister of Finance, Count of Ericeira, decided to implement mercantilist measures, heavily inspired by the French model, focusing on developing manufactories to replace imported goods.

Foreign experts were hired to teach the Portuguese workers, privileges and subsidies were granted to the newly started industries, mainly textiles, company monopolies were granted, and the importation of foreign luxury goods was banned("Leis Pragmáticas")

By the end of the century the crisis was basicly over. However. Gold and Diamonds were found in Brazil. In THEORY this SHOULD be a good thing. Portugal was kickstarting it's industry from scratch with nothing, and this money should be a massive boost to develop the nation. But that is not how the Portuguese mind works. Portugal is like that stereotypical person who wins the lottery, and then proceeds to waste it all on luxurious goods. Now imagine if that person won the lottery 20 more times and wasted it all every time, and that's all of Portuguese history.

ALL of the manufactories were abandoned, why struggle to produce local when you can buy British textiles? The ban on foreign luxury goods was also lifted with the Methuen Treaty. 500 tons of gold went into the country, most of it immediately left, 3/4s of it going to Britain. Seeing his life work crumble and be abandoned, Count of Ericeira commited suicide.

Soon enough the gold and diamond mines are depleted, and Portugal is faced with yet ANOTHER economic crisis. The Prime Minister, Marquês de Pombal, decides to implement mercantilist measures to develop the country's industry.

He creates the Junta do Comércio, responsible for all economic activities of the country; he creates company monopolies; he revitalizes the abandoned manufactories and creates new ones; the bourgeoisie is socialy promoted, many gaining the status of Nobles, as to make it a more atractive activity; and the Aula do Comércio is created, the first comercial school in all of Europe.

With this, the national economy prospers again.

[gailhai1storm]

i think my history teacher is going to get to mercantilism in like a week or two of lecture and its going to actually be a wild day.

mostly for him.

im not usually insufferable in class i further lecture instead of the opposite by my commentary. this will not be one of those days.

cause its going to get brought up with triangular trade and its just not actually what mercantilism is.

and god will have fun cause it started in the 1300s not the 1550s tho I do put the start in mid 1500s as well, and it was over before Adam Smith that bitch didn't do shit to end or begin anything the change was well underway

[wickedappalachian]

Finally got the opportunity to be part of a mercantile!

[kramlabs]

Lincoln* would have loved Biden’s 100% tariff on EV’s from China

EV extinction level event

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Link: https://www.americanmanufacturing.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/on-a-collision-course-report-final-022324.pdf

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Link: https://insideevs.com/news/710364/byd-detroit-import-seagull-caresoft/

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*Lincoln and the Whig’s:

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BRICS vs Militarized Index Funds descended from Anglo-American Whig Mercantilism or BRICS VS WHIGS