Michael Campbell
EPortfolio
Bus 1050
“The Economic Revolution”
Robert Heilbroner is assuming that man came from the trees because he is basing his
opinion on the bible. Perhaps something to do with Adam and eve. He talks about man not
being able to survive as an individual but as a social group. It is only because man is a socially
cooperative creature that he has succeeded in perpetuating himself at all. Because he has had
to depend on his fellow man has made the problem of surviving much more difficult.
The thing that is more conductive to survival between self-centeredness and
cooperation is cooperation. In society we tend to use cooperation more. However the Robert
Heilbroner touches on the fact that if man does not continue to cooperate it will cripple its self.
However the differences between self-centeredness and cooperation is that cooperation is
about making sure that things and people stay in the same occupation. For example you cant
have all of the railroad men becoming bakers and all of the bakers become railroad workers.
There has to be unity and people have to work and do what they have done. The industries
would be crippled by this change. Modern society is hanging by a hair as put by Heilbroner,
there is a thousand dangers. If its farmers failed to plant its crops, and if the railway men
become bookkeepers and bookkeepers become railway men and so forth so on. Then following
with if all of the industry failed to complete their tasks the system as we know it would collapse.
There are Three solutions to solving these problems. One is the whip of authoritarian
rule like the Egyptians, which meant that every man followed by what there ancestry did so if
your dad was a plumber. Then you need to be a plumber. Then there was the five year plan of
Soviet Union which was based on self-interest. And the third solution was the market system
which bases was that each should do what was to his best monetary advantage. Examples of
tradition of custom based societies to me would be the Amish people; they have a very custom
way of doing things. They don’t use technology or advances in society. They only use tools that
where not created using technology. They make their own clothes; grow their own crops etc.
that is unlike modern society, and a completely different way of tradition. The Egyptians used
the authoritarian rule also, Russia uses the five year rule and both are about one single
authority. If the government in Egypt wanted something done then they told people this is
what needed to be done and by authority it got done.
The Market system is put in the terms that : each should do what was to his best
monetary advantage, Which meant that although each man could do what it was that they
desired that not all would have to do the same thing. That the interplay of one man against
another resulted in the necessary tasks of society getting done. some would ask what about the
jobs that are les desirable. The dirty works of society will get done simply because they need to
be done and not all people will have a specific profession that they are good at. Such as garbage
men, not everyone would want to Be a Garbage man yet it has to get done. Also pretty much
anyone can do that profession, however not everyone will want to. It is a necessary task that
needs to be done. The change from custom and command was a revolution because it was
something completely different and for ages it was looked at with suspicion and distaste. It was
also a long battle for the economists to show that the market system would work. It dates back
to the year 1305 with France.
In the middle ages the church taught that no Christian ought to be a merchant and that
if you where it was a terrible thing. However the gap between the fall of Rome and the middle
ages was a time of mass confusion between what was right and what was wrong you have so
many cultures that are being told one thing to another. This is where the economists came in
and explained the market system. The medieval world could not conceive the market system.
Because it could not conceive the abstract elements of production its self, lacking land, labor,
and capital and the middle ages lacked the market. This meant that society ran by custom and
tradition. Society has always seen the profit motive. Dating back to as early as man we have
seen that men have been driven by profit. Any way that it is put man has always tried to have a
leg up on everyone else’s profit. Most of ancient societies all though believed that they were
not under this category are false. The renaissance meant a lot to “the Rise of personal gain” it
was the beginning of open trade companies and taught us a lot about monopolies such as Jakob
Fugger’s Mining and metal trade company. Which was one of the first open trade companies in
Europe. It taught us that the means of personal gain have been here all a long and it showed
how some people’s personal gains can effect an entire population.
The relationship between business, trade and political freedom from the republics of
Venice. Form my understanding from what I researched is that basically the republic of Venice
controlled a lot of the trade market which did not allow very much free trade. It seemed like to
me that it was basically a one power house that controlled and expanded their political views
and outlooks and instilled it into the other populations and then controlled the trade markets.
the market system should understand the relationship between land, labor, and capitol
because the system will fail if it does not take in to account these three things for instance. If
land was not took in to account and it was just free to everyone and no one was able to acquire
land that they could build their farms on then they would not be able to become farmers. Also
labor if you were not able to come up with these jobs then there would be no labor. The
meaning of enclosure in the 1800’s is not what it means today. What it means was that the
people that had the land and had properties on the land, would be forced out of the land or
given a small quantity of land to live on and there vast majority of the land that was taken was
for sheep heard so that they could collect the market for wool.
The religious decline helped the rise of capitalism and the market system because
religion did not what anything to do with the change in the system or the amount of greed that
was happening. The book quotes that it was “pious to make the most of ones god given talents
in daily business acquisitiveness became a recognized virtue not immediately for ones private
enjoyment, but for the greater glory of god.”Scientific curiosity became the most important
factor in contributing to the economic revolution, because with more science advances meant
more jobs which meant more talent needed and created new professions. The reason that they
wanted to keep the poor, poor. Was because if there was no poor the people that they were
asking to do a days task would have asked for and enormous amount of money to do a simple
task that a normal peasant would do for scraps. If one asked for more then they would all want
more and at that rate no one would have the wealth. Adam smith was considered the anti
Christ because he is the one that helped envision the new world system as we see it. to some
that was a bad thing and to others it was like a new world order. He changed the way that
society is looked at. At the time he did not understand what it was that he was actually doing.
He did not understand the impact of what he was doing and saying would actually have on the
people.