Talk:Political Economy/General

From Wikibooks, the open-content textbooks collection

Out of the many centuries of political economics, it was only in the 20th century that there was a focus on money as capital. Whereas previous capitalist models focused on the means of production and the production of commodities, it was not until the 20th century that capital itself and the investment of capital in the money market began being a huge issue. The section on money is not really appropraite for this module on political economy since political economy is focused on the philosophy rather than mechanics of the flow of resources. This conception of money only works assuming a few basic things: free markets, the liberal idea that economics is not a zero-sum game, and that money can be freely distributed and invested. There have been many times in history when not all of these assumptions have been met. For example, in the feudal times, money was not used very extensively and barter was used instead. Also, it does not cover mercantilist conceptions of money in the 1600s. This article is about the development of modern assumptions that are used in the studies of politics and economics today. What you take for fact in those studies are only conclusions reached by the philosophers of political economy. In other words, what you take for granted are only a few theories out of many, because these theories are used as baseline assumptions for figuring the mechanics out of those two studies which have branched from this one. Boneheadmx 00:35, 20 December 2005 (UTC)