"Free enterprise" was originally a call to revolt against the guilds.
And here I thought the 30-fold increase of prosperity of ordinary people came about because we now have ubiquitous access to what, in pre-industrial times, was considered unlimited amounts of energy.
Stop producing electricity, stop burning coal, stop pumping oil, and you'll very quickly see prosperity regress to pre-industrial levels, regardless of what economic deity you worship.
People frequently credit our economic system for uplifting us from pre-industrial squalor.
It's like a young millionaire praising a daily exercise regiment, and hot yoga three times a week for his success, and not the fifty million dollar trust fund he inherited at the age of 18. It helps, but it's not the important part.
Not at any other time through thousands of years of civilization or five large continents.
For some reason, the industrial revolution did not develop in any other societies over the centuries that shared a similar system of free enterprise with imperial England... Why didn't the various Italian city states industrialize during the Renaissance?
And while individuals got very rich from colonizing, and rulers got much pride from ruling vast new lands, the colonizing societies as a whole did not really get richer from it. There are benefits from colonies, but there are also costs.
Of course, Spain and Portugal did build vast preindustrial colonial empires in the New World. Not by being (very) much more advanced, but mostly by the incredible luck of having much better immune systems! The fact that 80-90% of the New World people just spontaneously died on encountering Europeans, for reasons none of the sides understood, is one of the most astonishing events in history to me!!
So they (mostly Spain) had a few centuries of weird prosperity in mountains of gold and silver, while still having a primitive mercantilist economy. Once capitalism and the industrial revolution started elsewhere, they were left in the dust, their pretty metal stashes no match for liberated human ingenuity.
You do ask a good question. Why did the stars align in 1760s England, and not in the several other places in history that seemingly had most of the ingredients? I've seen it asked a few times, and never answered. I won't pretend that I, some random programmer with opinions on a web forum while eating breakfast, have the answer either...
On the other hand, America has adopted the belief that large corporations are only obligated to maximize profit for their shareholders and they are too large and decentralized for social forces to effectively hold them accountable.
How could a group of people who monopolize on a trade "generally be a positive force in the community"? Just because they "provide for the poor" (on their terms)?
> On the other hand, America has adopted the belief that large corporations are only obligated to maximize profit for their shareholders and they are too large and decentralized for social forces to effectively hold them accountable.
Those corporations are also obligated to actually pay their employees, who are obligated to pay taxes. What does the state do with all that income? Fund welfare programs and infrastructure. People may believe the those corporations get "all the money", but on the average corporate profits[1] account for far less money than public spending[2].
[1] https://b-i.forbesimg.com/timworstall/files/2013/05/cp_gdp.p...
[2] https://thumbor.forbes.com/thumbor/960x0/https%3A%2F%2Fblogs...
Those who have paid attention to history understand that there's a fine balance here. Too much taxation and the economy collapses, making everyone poor. Too little taxation and the infrastructure and social system suffers unnecessarily.
Those who understand nothing keep complaining about corporate paper profits and wealth inequality, as if those were the measure for actual welfare.