"Western Civilization Free Market Economics?" I always thought it was the Chinese who developed as a market economy long before Europe. The amount of trade and productivity in China dwarfed that of Europe for a long time. It was colonial mercantalism that brought Europe to dominance, and mercantalism is not the same as a free market economy. The use of military force as a means of expanding or protecting one's trade seems to be at odds with the principles of the free market, where competition guarantees that only efficient business models succeed.
The fact is that once certain interests accumulate enough wealth, they hire military, police, or political forces to stifle competition. Free market economics are self defeating without regulation. Just as dictatorships and oligarchies are inherently unstable, so too will an unregulated market produce forces that will destroy what makes it work. An unregulated business will accumulate power until it is a political force, subject to political revolution. That is what happened to the colonial monarchies; the wealth flowed to the ruling class until they were overthrown by the masses.
The danger with this way of thinking is that one puts the economic model above everything else. The truth is that technology is more important. As is just random chance. What brought the west to dominance, above all, was that England was lucky enough to have it's major coal resources near the sea. Everything follows from that. Free trade and free market economy is great if we don't have any clue what we're doing. That's why it's great in times of great technological innovation. But it's only good while the technological driver works to continually rip apart any cartels. Which free market actors will continually strive toward creating. If the market innovation stops then free market is bad.
Mercantilism is a terrible economic model. It makes the classic error of confusing the media (money) with the content (the produced value). Money is just the lubrication of the gears of trade. But mercantilism treats the lube as the main event. Colonialism didn't really generate any value for the colonial masters. In hind-sight it was just a colossal waste of time and money. Obviously Colonial Mercantilism didn't bring Europe anywhere. Europe reached dominance in spite of Colonial Mercantilism. Colonial Mercantilism is like doing ballet in a space suit. You can do it. And if you're good enough you'll be better at everyone else anyway. But to say that it was because of the space suit is silly.
An important lesson is that we tend to adapt our behavior around the society we live in and it's technology. Too often we think that culture comes first. And the rest follows from the culture. But there's no evidence to think that is what happens. We know that culture is very fluid indeed and will adapt to match, pretty much anything. It might not be as fast as we'd wish. But it happens. I think this is what happened in the colonies and that overthrew the ruling classes.
Remember that revolutions happened everywhere, regardless if they were made into colonies. What made life hard for the ruling classes was industrialism. This changed the rules of the game. Ruling classes who understood this got out of the way. In places where they didn't they were overthrown. We're still right in the middle of this shift of bases of power. It's hard to talk about a revolution while we're right in the middle of it.
It would be interesting to study the differences between the economics of the middle ages and colonial eras vis a vis China and Europe. It seems to me that China's ruling class being the confucian scholar gentry, with merchants being a lesser class, might have insulated it from the cycle I just mentioned. Unfortunately, during the era where the comparison would be most interesting, China itself was dominated politically by a foreign colonizer.
It wasn't that big. In the agrarian world power came from controlling land. In China we had "landlords". In Europe we had feudal lords. Not a big difference. Merchants weren't a big thing in the middle-ages. It was mostly about moving luxuries around. Allowing you to show your neighbor that you were slightly more impressive than them. It was all just robotic lawnmowers. The secret sauce of an agrarian economy is stability. To fight change. Once industrialization had taken hold in Europe, this urge to preserve the old was a weakness that the fast moving industrial economies could exploit. That's why China just got increasingly conservative the more it was clear that they were no match for the colonial powers. It's strong central power became a weakness. Which before it had been the source of it's strength.
That's another lesson from history. When things are going badly we tend to become very conservative. Which is usually the opposite reaction we should have. In a changing world we should of course change with it. Which is what is so worrying about stuff like Brexit and Trump. These are conservative winds trying to hold onto an illusory past instead of embracing the new. Which we might as well do, since it's coming, whether we like it or not.
I think this can help explain things like religion. They give an illusion of stability. Which allows us to trick our minds to calm down when things are chaotic around us. And change isn't slowing down. Things are going to get weirder.
