Free Trade vs Free Market , Careys American System vs Ricardo-Malthusian system. Monopoly vs Free Market Competition

Essay on the Rate of Wages, with an Examination of the Differences in the Condition of the Laboring Population throughout the World.

Henry Charles Carey

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Henry Charles Carey
Henry charles carey.jpg
Born 15 December 1793

Died 13 October 1879 (aged 85)

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Nationality American
Political party Republican
Field Political economy
School or
tradition
American School
Influences Alexander Hamilton • Friedrich List
Signature
Signature of Henry Charles Carey (1793–1879).png

Henry Charles Carey (December 15, 1793 – October 13, 1879) was an American publisher, political economist, and politician from Pennsylvania. He was the leading 19th-century economist of the American School and a chief economic adviser to U.S. President Abraham Lincoln and Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase during the American Civil War. His work on protective tariffs was largely influential on the early Republican Party and United States trade policy through the start of the 20th century, and his views on banking and monetary policy were adopted by the Lincoln administration in its promulgation of paper currency.

Carey is best known for his 1851 work The Harmony of Interests: Agricultural, Manufacturing, and Commercial, which criticizes the system of laissez faire capitalism and free trade expounded by Thomas Malthus and David Ricardo in favor of the American System of developmentalism through the use of tariff protection and state intervention to encourage national self-sufficiency and unity. Carey was also a critic of the practice of slavery from an economic perspective.

Economist[edit]

In 1835, Carey read the published 1829–30 lectures of Nassau William Senior titled The Rate of Wages and The Cost of Obtaining Money and published his refutation Essay on the Rate of Wages, with an Examination of the Differences in the Condition of the Laboring Population throughout the World.[7][8] Carey agreed with Senior’s principles and main propositions but criticized the Senior’s failure to adjust for real wage rates.[9] He remained an advocate of free trade in the essay, writing that “Laissez nous faire is the true doctrine. . . it is now so fully understood that the true policy of the United States is freedom of trade and action, that there will be every day less disposition to interfere with it.” Nevertheless, his intensely nationalist tone conflicted with economic orthodoxy; Carey identified the purpose of political economy as the promotion of the happiness of nations and the application of national labor for the comfort of workers.[9]

The same year that Essay on the Rate of Wages was published Carey retired from active business with a fortune and devoted his time to economics and related work.[9] He began work on a text, The Harmony of Nature, which he did not feel adequate for wider publication but which became central to his later thinking.[7] Setting this work aside, he began Principles of Political Economy in 1837, an expansion of his refutation of Senior.[10] He completed the three-volume work in 1840. This work was largely adapted by the French economist Frédéric Bastiat in his own Harmonie Economiques in 1849, with some later accusing Bastiat of plagiarism.[1][8][7] The first volume explained Carey’s labor theory of value. Its second volume, a comparative study of credit systems in France, Great Britain, and the United States, reads as a defense of the American free banking system, particularly as practiced in New England, in the wake of the Panic of 1837.[11] It was cited favorably by John Stuart Mill in defense of his own arguments for a similar system in Britain.[11] Carey continued to ground his thinking in standard laissez faire doctrine, writing that “Governments have arrogated to themselves the task of regulating the currency, and the natural effect is that nothing is less regular.” He would soon thereafter abandon the doctrine.[12]

Rejection of free trade[edit]

Following the Panic of 1837 and the perceived success of the protectionist Tariff of 1842, Carey became an open critic of free trade.

Carey’s newfound skepticism was based on his empirical observation of tariff history and his belief that some economic law must exist to explain prosperity under protection and bankruptcy under free trade. By Carey’s own account, he initially expected the 1842 tariff would prolong the recession; when it did not, he sought an explanation and became convinced “as with a flash of lightning, that the whole Ricardo-Malthusian system is an error and that with it must fall the system of British free trade.”[12] Subsequent scholars have challenged Carey’s claim of a sudden change of heart by pointing to his earlier citations of the English occupations of Ireland and India and of Friedrich List‘s advocacy for the German Zollverein.[12] His change of heart may have also been influenced by his own personal experience; between 1837 and 1840, he invested a portion of his publishing wealth in a paper mill that became completely bankrupt.[12] By the end of 1843, Carey was engaged in a public debate with former Vice President John C. Calhoun, a leading advocate for tariff reduction.[12][2] In 1845, in a pamphlet entitled Commercial Associations in France and England, Carey began to reject wholesale the “British” economics of Thomas Malthus and David Ricardo altogether and sought to develop a critique of their underlying assumptions.[2] At the same time in England, the Manchester school of liberal capitalism reached the apex of its influence with the repeal of the Corn Laws.

Over the course of ninety days in 1848, Carey expanded on this view by writing Past, Present, and Future,[2] which he said was “designed to demonstrate the existence of a simple and beautiful law of nature, governing man in all his efforts for the maintenance and improvement of his condition… which, nevertheless, has hitherto remained unnoticed.” The work argued in favor of a marriage of industry with capital and the necessity of maintaining domestic markets to promote prosperity; it was met with derision from Manchester school economists.[12] The same year, while living in Burlington, New Jersey,[12] Carey founded The Plough, the Loom, and the Anvil, a periodical journal of economic development, with John Stuart Skinner serving as its publisher. Selections of Carey’s writings in the journal were compiled into his next work, The Harmony of Interests.[13]

Views[edit]

Carey’s views are generally described as nationalist[38][21] and have been described more narrowly as associationist and individualist for his opposition to economic restraints, though Carey makes no distinction between private and state monopoly.[21] Carey’s central rejection of orthodox English economic theory was borne of his belief that the state, as the coordinating power in society, must intervene to prevent private advantage from working public mischief. Carey argued that in favor of developmentalism, stating that state intervention was necessary to remove “the obstacles to the progress of younger communities created by the action of older and wealthier nations.”[citation needed]

Carey’s philosophy is condensed and summarized in his work The Principles of Social Science, which frames social science and political economy from the perspective of the economic development of the citizen, that is, one belonging to and responsible to a social community.[39] In Principles of Social Science, Carey appealed to natural law to argue the characteristics of mortal life must be intentionally oriented toward happiness and peace, and suffering is the result of willful ignorance of natural law. One way in which suffering is brought about is by obscuring the “real” man in favor of the “politico-economical man,” a two-dimensional monster who “can be made to work, must be fed, and will procreate.”[39] Carey therefore defined social science as “the science of laws which govern man in his efforts to secure for himself the highest individuality and the greatest power of association with his fellow men.”[39] Political economy is the subset of social science that considers the measures that give these natural laws their fullest effect.[39]

Economic nationalism and trade[edit]

A common theme in Carey’s writing is the limits of international economic association and the necessary of national association,[40] and his best-known policy position was his defense of protective tariffs. He was described by an admirer as “rigid, devoted, and uncompromising” on the issue,[41] and as “a Cato hammering on his one theme.”[21] Critics accused Carey of Anglophobia for his hostility to the system of free trade under the British Empire and British theories of political economy in general.[3]

Consistent with the law of comparative advantage, Carey argued that global centralization implied an international division of labor by which each nation developed only those resources in which it possessed a natural advantage. This system placed despotic power in the hands of those controlling the world’s mediums of exchange; the places where these middlemen congregated became the global marketplace.[40] This theory, he argued, was the basis for the British policy of imperialism and free trade, by which the Empire intended to establish a monopoly on both manufacturing and shipping centered on London, while other nations were resigned to exporting raw materials.[40]

Carey argued that ultimately, a causal chain could be drawn through “separation of [men], centralization of the mass, subjection of the many to the powerful few, slavery, stagnation, [and] decrease of real civilization.”[40] Instead, the chain should be reversed at its start with “association, complexity of interests, decentralization, [and] harmonious increase of power.”[40]

To check centralization, Carey thus emphasized the need for human association; the preeminent natural form of association in his writing was the nation, an association of citizens. He suggested that the United States and other nations should interpose protective tariffs between the nations and London, increasing the cost of raw materials, fostering domestic manufacturing, and depriving the British manufacturers of a monopoly on finished goods.[40] This would enable the establishment of a middle class, the abolition of chattel slavery, and the encouragement of patriotic feeling.[40] Carey emphasized that the final result of industrialization would be the establishment of “perfect free trade” between developed nations, whose range of production would be limited only by absolute natural barriers.[42] His utopian vision was laid out in writing:

“Of the advantage of perfect free trade there can be no doubt. What is good between the states ought to be good the world over. But free trade can be successfully administered only after an apprenticeship of protection. Strictly speaking, taxation should all be direct. Tariff for revenue should not exist. Interference with trade is excusable only on ground of self-protection. A disturbing force of prodigious power pre- vents the loom and spindle from taking and keeping their proper places by the plow and harrow. When the protective regime has counteracted the elements of foreign opposition, obstacles to free trade will disappear and the tariff will pass out of existence. Wars will cease; for no chief magistrate will dare to recommend an increase of direct taxation.”[42]

He contrasted “perfect” free trade to the English system in a letter to Henry Wilson, writing, “Free trade, as ultimated in England, is the most debased ignorance, the most abhorrent cruelty, the most disgusting vice and the most heart-breaking misery that can be seen in any country calling itself civilized and Christian.”[42] Despite this stated view, Carey never backed down from his support for high tariffs, having never believed that the United States had reached complete economic development within his lifetime.[42]

In addition to his long advocacy for protectionism to obstruct international trade, Carey also opposed the institution of an international copyright law, which he argued would dissolve national boundaries and lead to the formation of publishing monopolies.[40] This would in turn lead to a decline in the quality of literary writing, as the best authors did not write for wide audiences and would derive no benefit from a global market.[40]

Monetary and banking theory[edit]

As a corollary to his system of protection, Carey developed a theory of monetary sovereignty which encouraged the production of fiat currency. Carey’s monetary views were taken as the basis for the National Banking Act of 1863 and the issuance of greenbacks and later popularly associated with the Greenback Party.[20]

He criticized the view of David HumeAdam Smith, and John Stuart Mill that currency served only as a symbol of wealth and was the least productive part of a nation’s capital.[20] Instead, he argued, nations should seek to increase monetary reserves by any means; credit money was useful and necessary to the establishment of stable prices and credit growth. National sovereignty would be preserved through the establishment of a domestic non-exportable currency to inure domestic markets against the fluctuations in the value of precious metals, while the gold dollar should serve as the unit of international exchange.[20]

Carey opposed monetary contraction, arguing that increasing business development demanded an increasing currency supply; he instead accused Wall Street of artificially inflating interest rates and predicted that contraction would lead to political and economic chaos.[20] He was also an early advocate of bimetallism and the remonetization of silver in order to secure a stable national currency, fearing that gold reserves were too small.[20] His views on these issues later became manifest in the Greenback Party, with which he was popularly associated, and the populist movement.[20]

In the realm of private banking, Carey was a lifelong advocate of free banking and believed banks were essential as springs of local business life; he discouraged the general attacks on private banking institutions made by some other “green-backers.”[20]

Criticism of Ricardo and Malthus[edit]

In Principles of Social Science, Carey delivers a lengthy rebuke of David Ricardo and Thomas Malthus. He sharply distinguishes value, “man’s power to command the always gratuitous services of nature,”[43] from utility, the measure of man’s power over nature. Value is limited by reproduction and declines with the increase of combination among men, while utility grows with the extension of human association.[43] Because value is constantly decreasing, Carey posits the power and wealth of the laborer will tend to increase both absolutely and relative to that of capital as population and association increase; he calls this “the most beautiful of all the laws recorded in the book of science.[43] As rents continually diminish, the farmer or laborer finds it easier to make his living.[43] Further, Carey believed that the history of human civilization demonstrated that human progress was from poorer to richer soils, while Ricardo’s law of comparative advantage is dependent on the opposite assumption.[43] Charles Herbert Levermore compares Carey’s reasoning to that of Pierre Paul Leroy-Beaulieu a half century later.[43]

Carey was sharply critical of British economist Thomas Malthus, who argued that growth was inherently limited and excessive population led to suffering.

Malthus, Carey says, “teaches that a monopoly of the land is in accordance with a law of nature. Admiring morality, he promotes profligacy by encouraging celibacy. … Desirous to uplift the people, he tells the landowner and the laborer that the loss of the one is the gain of the other. His book is the true manual of the demagogue, seeking power by means of agrarianism, war and plunder.”[43] Carey also criticizes Malthus for failing to prove his ratios of production and consumption, given variation in the growth cycle of plants and the diets of humans over time,[b] and for contradicting the Christian belief of the goodness of God, who would be malicious to create a world which could not sustain the proliferation of humanity.[43] Carey also cites Herbert Spencer to argue that “the degree of fertility varies inversely [against the development of] the nervous system,” which suggests that resource scarcity is a greater restraint in less developed societies and population is self-regulative.[43]

Levant Company

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Levant Company
Type Public chartered
Industry International trade
Predecessor Venice Company
Turkey Company
Founded 11 September 1592[1]
Founder Sir Edward Osborne
Defunct 19 May 1825
Fate Dissolved by the Dissolution of Levant Company Act 1825 (c. 33 6 Geo. 4); consular establishments taken over by the Board of Trade
Headquarters London, England
AleppoOttoman Syria
Number of locations
Various across Europe and Near East
Area served
Eastern Mediterranean
Products Rum and spices; cloth: cottons and woollens, kerseys, indigo, gall, camlet; tin, pewter, maroquin, soda ash.
Services Trade and commerce
Total assets Merchant shipping
Total equity Joint-stock capital company
Owner Government of England (until 1 May 1707)
Government of Great Britain (1 May 1707–31 December 1800)
Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (since 1 January 1801)
Number of employees
6,000
Parent English/British Crown
Divisions Turkish, Levantine, Venetian littoral

The Levant Company was an English chartered company formed in 1592. Elizabeth I of England approved its initial charter on 11 September 1592 when the Venice Company (1583) and the Turkey Company (1581) merged, because their charters had expired, as she was eager to maintain trade and political alliances with the Ottoman Empire.[1] Its initial charter was good for seven years and was granted to Edward Osborne, Richard Staper, Thomas Smith and William Garrard with the purpose of regulating English trade with the Ottoman Empire and the Levant. The company remained in continuous existence until being superseded in 1825. A member of the company was known as a Turkey Merchant.[2][3]

Stato da Màr

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
State of the Sea

Stato da Màr (vec)
Overseas colonies of the Republic of Venice
ca. 992–1797
Venezianische Kolonien.png
Map of the Venetian overseas domains
History
Historical era Middle Ages
• Pietro II Orseolo‘s expedition
Late 10th century
1202–04
1463–79
1645–69
1684–99
1714–18
12 May 1797

Preceded by

Succeeded by
Dalmatian city-states
Byzantine Empire
Kingdom of Cyprus
Ottoman Empire
Habsburg Monarchy
French rule in the Ionian Islands (1797–1799)

The Stato da Màr or Domini da Mar (lit. ’State of the Sea’ or ‘Domains of the Sea’) was the name given to the Republic of Venice‘s maritime and overseas possessions from around 1000 to 1797, including at various times parts of what are now IstriaDalmatiaMontenegroAlbaniaGreece and notably the Ionian IslandsPeloponneseCreteCycladesEuboea, as well as Cyprus.[1]

It was one of the three subdivisions of the Republic of Venice‘s possessions, the other two being the Dogado, i.e. Venice proper, and the Domini di Terraferma in northern Italy.

The overseas possessions, particularly islands such as CorfuCrete and Cyprus, played a critical role in Venice’s commercial and military leadership. In his landmark study on the Mediterranean world in the 16th century, historian Fernand Braudel described these islands as “Venice’s motionless fleet”.

East India Company

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
East India Company
Type Public
State-owned enterprise[1]
Industry International trade
Founded 31 December 1600; 422 years ago
Founders
Defunct 1 June 1874; 148 years ago
Fate Nationalised:

Headquarters East India House,

,

Products Cotton, silk, indigo dyesugar, salt, spicessaltpetre, tea, slave trade and opium

The East India Company (EIC)[a] was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600[b] and dissolved in 1874.[4] It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia), and later with East Asia. The company seized control of large parts of the Indian subcontinentcolonised parts of Southeast Asia and Hong Kong. At its peak, the company was the largest corporation in the world.[vague] The EIC had its own armed forces in the form of the company’s three Presidency armies, totalling about 260,000 soldiers, twice the size of the British army at the time.[5][6] The operations of the company had a profound effect on the global balance of trade, almost single-handedly[7] reversing the trend of eastward drain of Western bullion, seen since Roman times.[8]

Originally chartered as the “Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East-Indies”,[9][10] the company rose to account for half of the world’s trade during the mid-1700s and early 1800s,[11] particularly in basic commodities including cottonsilkindigo dyesugarsaltspicessaltpetretea, and opium. The company also ruled the beginnings of the British Empire in India.[11][12]

The company eventually came to rule large areas of India, exercising military power and assuming administrative functions. Company rule in India effectively began in 1757 after the Battle of Plassey and lasted until 1858. Following the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the Government of India Act 1858 led to the British Crown assuming direct control of India in the form of the new British Raj.

Despite frequent government intervention, the company had recurring problems with its finances. The company was dissolved in 1874 as a result of the East India Stock Dividend Redemption Act enacted one year earlier, as the Government of India Act had by then rendered it vestigial, powerless, and obsolete. The official government machinery of the British Raj had assumed its governmental functions and absorbed its armies.

Thomas Robert Malthus

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Thomas Robert Malthus
Thomas Robert Malthus Wellcome L0069037 -crop.jpg

Malthus in 1834
Born 13/14 February 1766

Died 29 December 1834 (aged 68)

Spouse
Harriet Eckersall

(m. 1804)

Children 3
Field
School or
tradition
Classical economics
Alma mater Jesus College, Cambridge (MA)
Influences
Contributions Malthusian growth model

Thomas Robert Malthus FRS (/ˈmælθəs/; 13/14 February 1766 – 29 December 1834)[1] was an English economist, cleric, and scholar influential in the fields of political economy and demography.[2]

In his 1798 book An Essay on the Principle of Population, Malthus observed that an increase in a nation’s food production improved the well-being of the population, but the improvement was temporary because it led to population growth, which in turn restored the original per capita production level. In other words, humans had a propensity to utilize abundance for population growth rather than for maintaining a high standard of living, a view that has become known as the “Malthusian trap” or the “Malthusian spectre”. Populations had a tendency to grow until the lower class suffered hardship, want and greater susceptibility to war famine and disease, a pessimistic view that is sometimes referred to as a Malthusian catastrophe. Malthus wrote in opposition to the popular view in 18th-century Europe that saw society as improving and in principle as perfectible.[3]

Malthus saw population growth as inevitable whenever conditions improved, thereby precluding real progress towards a utopian society: “The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man.”[4] As an Anglican cleric, he saw this situation as divinely imposed to teach virtuous behavior.[5] Malthus wrote that “the increase of population is necessarily limited by subsistence,” “population does invariably increase when the means of subsistence increase,” and “the superior power of population repress by moral restraint, vice, and misery.”[6]

Malthus criticized the Poor Laws for leading to inflation rather than improving the well-being of the poor.[7] He supported taxes on grain imports (the Corn Laws).[8] His views became influential and controversial across economic, political, social and scientific thought. Pioneers of evolutionary biology read him, notably Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace.[9][10] Malthus’s failure to predict the Industrial Revolution was a frequent criticism of his theories.[11]

Malthus laid the “…theoretical foundation of the conventional wisdom that has dominated the debate, both scientifically and ideologically,[12] on global hunger and famines for almost two centuries.”[13] He remains a much-debated writer.

Free trade

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Free trade is a trade policy that does not restrict imports or exports. In government, free trade is predominantly advocated by political parties that hold economically liberal positions, while economic nationalist and left-wing political parties generally support protectionism,[1][2][3][4] the opposite of free trade.

Most nations are today members of the World Trade Organization multilateral trade agreements. Free trade was best exemplified by the unilateral stance of Great Britain who reduced regulations and duties on imports and exports from the mid-nineteenth century to the 1920s.[5] An alternative approach, of creating free trade areas between groups of countries by agreement, such as that of the European Economic Area and the Mercosur open markets, creates a protectionist barrier between that free trade area and the rest of the world. Most governments still impose some protectionist policies that are intended to support local employment, such as applying tariffs to imports or subsidies to exports. Governments may also restrict free trade to limit exports of natural resources. Other barriers that may hinder trade include import quotas, taxes and non-tariff barriers, such as regulatory legislation.

Historically, openness to free trade substantially increased from 1815 to the outbreak of World War I. Trade openness increased again during the 1920s, but collapsed (in particular in Europe and North America) during the Great Depression. Trade openness increased substantially again from the 1950s onwards (albeit with a slowdown during the 1973 oil crisis). Economists and economic historians contend that current levels of trade openness are the highest they have ever been.[6][7][8]

Economists are generally supportive of free trade.[9] There is a broad consensus among economists that protectionism has a negative effect on economic growth and economic welfare while free trade and the reduction of trade barriers has a positive effect on economic growth[10][11][12][13][14][15] and economic stability.[16] However, in the short run, liberalization of trade can cause significant and unequally distributed losses and the economic dislocation of workers in import-competing sectors.

East India Company College

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
East India Company College
Location
England
Information
Mottoes Hailey, Hertfordshire
Established 1806
Closed 1858

The former East India Company College, now Haileybury and Imperial Service College

The East India Company College, or East India College, was an educational establishment situated at Hailey, Hertfordshire, nineteen miles north of London, founded in 1806 to train “writers” (administrators) for the Honourable East India Company (HEIC). It provided general and vocational education for young gentlemen of sixteen to eighteen years old, who were nominated by the Company’s directors to writerships in its overseas civil service. The college’s counterpart for the training of officers for the company’s Presidency armies was Addiscombe Military SeminarySurrey.

The HEIC was nationalised and the college closed in 1858, becoming a public school with continuing ties to the former college. The college buildings survive and are now occupied by the public school’s successor, Haileybury and Imperial Service College, a private school.

 

Flag of the East India Company 

https://www.jstor.org/stable/23547679

https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691159065/between-monopoly-and-free-trade

Though the Company held a monopoly on English overseas trade to Asia, the Court of Directors extended the right to trade in Asia to their employees, creating an unusual situation in which employees worked both for themselves and for the Company as overseas merchants. Building on the organizational infrastructure of the Company and the sophisticated commercial institutions of the markets of the East, employees constructed a cohesive internal network of peer communications that directed English trading ships during their voyages. This network integrated Company operations, encouraged innovation, and increased the Company’s flexibility, adaptability, and responsiveness to local circumstance.

Between Monopoly and Free Trade highlights the dynamic potential of social networks in the early modern era.

Awards and Recognition

  • Winner of the 2016 James Coleman Award for Outstanding Book, Rationality and Society Section of the American Sociological Association

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-the-history-of-economic-thought/article/abs/henry-c-careys-zone-theory-and-american-sectional-conflict/47E7CAAFF3A77C86CB7F948209B86B30#

1

The Economic Superorganism: Review and criticism. Close but no Cigar.

Me and Bobby Magee, it will be a long time gone. Fuedalism Going to California 4+20 = Neo Fuedalism “The Rise of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class” by Joel Kotkin

“DESPOTISM” A 1946 VIDEO BANNED BY 1967 FROM MEDIA & LIBRARIES (CAN YOU GUESS WHY?)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1m3yIG3IlpjL_C5lDnzKFLzHsloz1pP8d/view
https://cec.cecaust.com.au/pubs/pdfs/cv7n6_part2of2.pdf

“ESCAPING THE MATRIX: HOW WE THE PEOPLE CAN CHANGE THE WORLD” PARTS 1 AND 2

Keep Dancing til the Music Stops, or Don’t stop til you’ve had enough, Riffing on the Levellers. Globalism and Internationalism are different ideologies, and how the Sovereignty of people’s at a national level is irreconcilable with transnational interests.

Author: rogerglewis

Real Estate Entrepreneur. http://www.realrld.com/

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