Far from being a bucolic utopia, economic conditions were highly unsatisfactory on the eve of the Industrial Revolution. The traditional social system was not elastic enough to provide for the needs of a rapidly increasing population.
All human action stems from the value judgments of individuals. Economics, properly understood, was never so foolish as to believe that all that people are after is higher incomes and lower prices.
The Scholastics were constrained in their development of economics by considerations of deference to authority and by the relatively slow development of the external economic conditions upon which to reflect.
There is a persistent myth that capitalism has destroyed what would have been a natural abundance and peace of mind. Yet nature does not generate abundance or peace. The characteristic mark of the "state of nature" is irreconcilable conflict.
Murray Rothbard was an advocate of the stateless society, but he was never accepted by the anarchist movement and is still considered more a "capitalist lackey" than anarchist thinker.
As flaws in the system of fractional-reserve free banking began to appear, private central bank-like institutions known as clearinghouses sprang up, and they helped pave the way for the Fed.
