Editing Capitalism (section)

== Overview ==

Capitalism with the emergence of agrarian capitalism and mercantilism in the early Renaissance Italy though it can be argued that the system has existed incipiently on a small scale for centuries in the form of merchant, renting and lending activities and occasionally as small-scale industry with some wage labor. However, the economic foundations of the feudal agricultural system began to shift substantially in 16th-century England as the manorial system had broken down and land began to become concentrated in the hands of fewer landlords with increasingly large estates. Instead of a serf-based system of labor (where laborers were toiling the lands of their overlord in exchange for protection), workers were increasingly employed as part of a broader and expanding money-based economy.

The economic doctrine that developed form this in 16th to the 18th centuries was mercantilism, a kind of beta-version of capitalism. [[Age of Enlightenment|The Age of Discovery]], was associated with the geographic exploration of foreign lands by merchant traders, especially from England and the Low Countries. Mercantilism was a system of trade for profit, although commodities were still largely produced by non-capitalist methods.

Then in the mid-18th century a group of economic theorists, led by David Hume (1711.–1776.) and Adam Smith (1723.–1790.), challenged fundamental mercantilist doctrines—such as the belief that the world's wealth remained constant and that a state could only increase its wealth at the expense of another state. Another, arguably even greater evolutionary impetus for the nascent capitalism was a little ol thing called the [[Industrial Revolution]] which replaced merchants as a dominant factor in the capitalist system and ushered in the decline of the traditional handicraft skills of artisans, guilds and journeymen.

During the Industrial Revolution, industrialists replaced merchants as a dominant factor in the capitalist system and effected the decline of the traditional handicraft skills of artisans, guilds and journeymen. The era marked the development of the factory system of manufacturing, characterized by a complex division of labor between and within work process and the routine of work tasks; and eventually established the domination of the capitalist mode of production.

After [[The World Wars]] the process of globalization carried capitalism across the world and after capitalism overcame the challenge set by the alternate [[Communism|centrally-planned economies]] it became the encompassing system worldwide, with the mixed economy as its dominant form in the industrialized Western world and elsewhere.

The concept of Capitalism has had an impact on [[/tg/]] like many political systems have, as they are perfect to create races/settings/empires from. Many [[human]] and other civilised nations in other settings use capitalist trade and economic ideas in their settings, and often national relations between races depend on existing trade agreements (busty elf maidens need to get paid somehow!).  

It also helps that concepts of capitalism are the reason we have the internet to view and write all this today.  Short version; the internet was first invented as a communication system for the U.S military, then shared with the public when its commercial potential was realized and soon went global from there.  Capitalism also led to several of the technological advancements that gave society increasingly advanced computers and smartphones (which you're most likely using to read this right now).