0. Predation and Government as Economic Activities the Economics of Predation and Government the Organization of Associational Government

1 ©Meir Kohn 2014 10. PREDATION AND GOVERNMENT AS ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES In Sections 1 and 2, we developed the first strand of our theory of economic progress—an explanation of how commerce promotes production and how the two interact in a self-perpetuating process of expanding markets and increasing productivity. In Section 3, we turn to the second strand of our theory—an explanation of how predation inhibits economic progress, of the connection between predation and government, and of how predation and government evolve. The second strand, like the first, is a theory of process—in this case, evolutionary process. This second process interacts with the first: the evolution of predation and government affect economic progress and are also affected by it. The path of an evolutionary process depends on its past: evolution can only create from what already exists. So developing this strand of the theory requires more attention to the historical narrative. That is, to make sense of the evolution of predation and government, we need to trace their history. In this chapter and in the next, therefore, we will trace the history of predation and government in preindustrial Europe. We begin, in this chapter, by examining the initial conditions with which the process began—the feudal organization of government that obtained at the start of our period. We will then see how this was transformed by the Commercial Revolution. In Chapter 11, we will trace the evolution of government through the subsequent centuries as it was molded by the fiscal pressure of war. In Chapter 12, we will examine the impact on economic progress of the different regimes of government that emerged from this process. From the differences among them, we will learn something of what economic progress requires of government—of what it means to ‘get government right’. Despite the increased attention to the historical narrative, our goal remains theoretical—to understand the underlying forces and the processes they generate. We begin, therefore, with the underlying economics of predation and government.