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Economic Ideas: Bernard Mandeville and the Social Betterment Arising from Private Vices

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One of the major turning points in social and economic understanding emerged in the 1700s with the theory of social order without human design. Before the eighteenth century, most social theory presumed or took as a working assumption that human society had its origin and sustainability in the creation of social institutions through either “divine” intervention, or by human ...

Economic Ideas: Inflation, Price Controls and Collectivism During the French Revolution

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Governments have an insatiable appetite for the wealth of their subjects. When governments find it impossible to continue raising taxes or borrowing funds, they have invariably turned to printing paper money to finance their growing expenditures. The resulting inflations have often undermined the social fabric, ruined the economy, and sometimes brought revolution and tyranny in their wake. The political economy ...

Economic Ideas: Mercantilism as Monarchy’s Planned Economy

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The Feudal System had resulted in the disintegration of the unity that much of Western, Southern, and Eastern Europe had known under the Roman Empire. Following the fall of Rome, Europe was divided into local and regional political and economic entities, each politically functioning and economically surviving in high degrees of isolation from each other. However, beginning in the fifteenth ...

Economic Ideas: The Ancient Romans, Who Went from Rule of Law to Corrupting Inflation and Price Controls

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The ancient Romans failed to leave any systematic body of thoughts on economics, just like the ancient Greeks had failed to. Indeed, many of whatever ideas the Romans expressed on such economic themes they took from the Greeks. The Romans were mostly concerned with “practical” matters, and have sometimes been referred to as “doers” rather than philosophers on these ...

Economic Ideas: Plato, Aristotle, and the Ancient Greeks, Part 2

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When we turn to the other most famous ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle (384 B.C. – 322 B.C.), we find little of the political regimentation that characterizes his teacher, Plato. For Aristotle, the appropriate behavior is the “golden mean,” that is, the avoidance of “extreme” or unrealistic goals or conduct in the affairs of men. While he hopes that wise policies ...