So you don’t actually know how ancient or medieval markets worked. That explains the confusion.
Generally people couldn’t arbitrarily start a business without permission. Rulers would limit who could say sell salt and permission it’s self was quite valuable. Think Arrakis being handed over in Dune, only one house had the right to mine spice and that would change based on politics not just competence.
And that’s just the start as slavery, guilds, gender, etc all limited markets.
Throughout history you can track a huge wealth boom whenever places opened up their markets. England’s wealth traces back before the industrial revolution to the early dissolution of serfdom relative to most places. It was actually far more influential than inventions like the early steam engine.
As to penicillin, invention is onky part of the story having a society where people had free time and resources to do research was it’s self a major hurdle. As would having surplus labor to manufacture such complex medicine.
> England’s wealth traces back before the industrial revolution to the early dissolution of serfdom relative to most places.
So let me get this argument straight:
1. Slavery and serfdom are bad for the economy. We are talking pure economics, not morality
2. Markets have freely sold and bought slaves for thousands of years
3. Slavery predates the concept of a government, it predates writing and predates ancient egypt
4. Abolition of slavery required intervention of government and violence
5. Therefore you have just made a pro-regulation argument while arguing against government.
You cannot claim that unregulated markets magically and efficiently organise economy towards it's most efficient state.
The same situation applies to child labour. The exact same situation arised with health and safety. The exact same situation arises with our markets selling precision weapons to bloody dictators that use our weapons against us.
So we have 4 spesific cases of markets delivering rettible outcome and not a single counterexample from you for marktes delivering optimal outcome.
Abolishment of serfdom as a general practice in a England didn’t require government intervention it was actually outcompeted as strange as it sounds. By the time the law changed relatively few people where directly impacted.
This is part of a long term global trend which relates to the overhead of slavery and then serfdom. Serfdom outcompeted slavery in Europe because it was simply more efficient, and Serfdom in turn failed for the same reason.
Child labor was more an outgrowth of the industrial revolution which initially reduced the need for complex skills or physical strength. Kids going back thousands of years would help with harvesting etc, but it was also common practice to pay tradesmen to take on apprentices because child labor was effectively worth nothing when averaged across a year.
It was only when jobs got ultra specialized that child labor became valued. Though eventually flipped back where collage students are talking unpaid internships because Google etc has no use for their services. Obviously collage students can do some forms productive labor, but ignoring the law what can 10 year olds do? Acting and here it’s surprise surprise perfectly legal in western countries for 10 year olds to actually work. Suggesting it’s more a question of economics than morality.
Generally people couldn’t arbitrarily start a business without permission. Rulers would limit who could say sell salt and permission it’s self was quite valuable. Think Arrakis being handed over in Dune, only one house had the right to mine spice and that would change based on politics not just competence.
And that’s just the start as slavery, guilds, gender, etc all limited markets.
Throughout history you can track a huge wealth boom whenever places opened up their markets. England’s wealth traces back before the industrial revolution to the early dissolution of serfdom relative to most places. It was actually far more influential than inventions like the early steam engine.
As to penicillin, invention is onky part of the story having a society where people had free time and resources to do research was it’s self a major hurdle. As would having surplus labor to manufacture such complex medicine.