Friedrich List - National System of Political Economy (Myth20c - Ep278)
Friedrich List - National System of Political Economy (Myth20c - Ep278)
Economics today is an institutionalized profession, with academic departments, research grants, and millions of practitioners in the finance and government sectors.
In the late 18th and early 19th century, however, economists were not part of any formalized profession, and ranged in background from professors of logic and moral philosophy in the case of Adam Smith to dilettantish journalists with wealthy patrons in the case of Karl Marx.
Friedrich List, a former German bureaucrat and eventual entrepreneur emigre to America, saw firsthand the important interplay between government and industry, particularly around protective tariffs for developing a manufacturing sector - serving as a potential “missing link” in the body of thought between the extremes of radical laissez faire free markets and top down centrally planned economies.
As the world continues on a path towards de-globalization and increasing polarization, List’s system of National Economics provides a guidebook to many developing and developed economies alike that seek to increase their level of independence and sovereignty.
