From the beginning of civilization, human beings have faced the challenge of survival, which depends upon two factors—work and cooperation with others. Since individuals are notably self-centered, the possibility that humans will not remain faithful to work has threatened society's existence. If there are not enough miners to work the mines or if most miners should decide to follow another line of work; if farmers should decide to fish instead of plow and reap; or if an insufficient number of students studied medicine or engineering, the economy would break down. In summary, if the interdependence of human workers should fail at any vital point in the economy, the world would suffer. During the early portion of civilized life, only two methods safeguarded against such an outcome—tradition and command.
Tradition
The passage of tasks, or jobs, from generation to generation through custom—a carpenter's child becomes a carpenter or a farmer's offspring take charge of the family farm. This reliance on tradition for the selection of a life's work was especially true of the Middle Ages and is still true in many underdeveloped areas of the world.
Command, or Central Authoritarian Rule
The enforcement of economic survival by absolute rule or dictatorship. An example of this principle is the building of the pyramids in ancient Egypt and the carrying out of the Soviet Union's Five-Year Plans in the post-World War II era.
Throughout most of history, one or the other of these two methods has solved the problem of survival. Because the methods are simple and need no economic explanation, there has been no need for economists. Since the Economic Revolution, however, the evolution of a third method—the market system—has presented a more challenging economic puzzle.
The Market System
A system where buyers and sellers, motivated by self-gain, freely conduct business with the goal of making profits. Another name for this arrangement is capitalism. Prompted by neither the "pull of tradition or the whip of authority," free markets are motivated by a single factor—the human urge to acquire goods.
The market system is not the simple exchange of goods which existed in primitive society, nor the commercial fairs of the Middle Ages. Nor is it a farm produce market or a stock exchange. The market system supports and maintains an entire society. Unplanned and slow to evolve, it was brought about through the most far-reaching revolution of the Western world—the Economic Revolution.
Many factors combined to cause the revolution, such as the breakup of the manorial system, the decline of guilds, the acceptance of the concepts of land, labor, and capital, the effects of the Renaissance, scientific advancement, European voyages of discovery and exploration, the emergence of modern nation-states, and the Protestant Reformation, which sanctioned the concept of profit.
The market system emerged only after bitter opposition to change by the people who tried to maintain their role in the status quo. Nevertheless, as the profit motive became respectable, the market system took shape, bringing with it the economists who satisfactorily explained the complexities of the system. In 1776, Adam Smith wrote his amazing masterpiece, Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, a work which helped society understand how changes in economics were leading toward a new plateau in human history.
