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I wonder if there might actually still be, even in our modern world, some major intellectual insights that future generations, once those insights have appeared, will think of as relatively low-hanging fruit and wonder why it took so long for their ancestors to come up with them, and wonder why their ancestors did not come up with them given that they already had every necessary bit of knowledge to come up with them, and maybe only lacked some spark of genius.
Some examples from history:
It makes me wonder what kinds of insights might be lying around these days, which future generations, if we do not discover them, might wonder what took us so long.
The problem with free markets is that they require a modern state.
Modernity provides the scale and technology to enable now commonplace and relatively undistortionary forms of taxation (e.g. income, sales) with ease and precision. Premodern societies struggled to raise taxes in non-distortionary ways, because anything they taxed needed to be highly legible to a tax collector. Hence, the widespread practice of building taxes becoming taxes on windows, gross floor area, and so on - leading to predictable results of fewer windows and slim but tall buildings in those areas. The most effective way of generating long-term revenue was in the form of tariffs levied at trade checkpoints. ~20% of the British State's revenue during the Napoleonic Wars was from customs duties, so you can imagine there was little incentive to reduce trade barriers even then, despite whatever Adam Smith had to say.
Premodern states simply weren't powerful enough to enable free markets. The local baron was powerful enough to enforce his idiosyncrasies within his domain. Certain products were restricted for his use, others might be required to be produced in a certain way, while 'his' peasants were tied to the land. A king attempting to change this would be attempting to upend feudalism, and find himself killed or forced to agree to limit his powers. In fact, the incentives usually ran the other way, with the crown being encouraged to grant certain monopolies or rights in return for support for new taxes or causes. Meanwhile, while Guilds notoriously fixed prices and restricted supply, they were sufficiently embedded in the social fabric that the King would find breaking them up or restricting their behaviour essentially impossible. Their dealings would be almost completely illegible to a premodern state, who anyway lacked a police force loyal to the crown able to punish cases of the guild breaking the legs, say, of a non-compliant journeyman.
Free markets are reliant on trust. For a village, the trust networks are already there, but at scale, what's needed is homogeneity and stability. Coinage was often inconsistent, and subject to frequent debasement. Only the modern state has the reach to provide consistent governance and enforcement for contracts, arbitrate disputes and so on.
Finally, only modern economies are sufficiently productive to allow free markets without frequent bread riots and the demand for price controls.
Yes, you can explain free markets to an intelligent 17-year-old, but only in modern times could it be anything more than a thought experiment.
Agreed, plus the premodern state doesn't necessarily want economic growth, they want boots on the ground and stability.
The roman empire was broadly free market. They had strong property rights and relatively low taxes. They thought trade was pretty good. But they were quite worried about bread prices, so they arranged for food shipments to Italy to keep the plebs happy. And money had to be found somewhere for warfare, they struggled with getting the tax base to pay for all these wars. It's hard to extract money from all these entrenched aristocrats who naturally develop wealth trading.
In an agrarian economy, food is money so why not have as many people making food as possible? You can get pretty good results with legalist policies of strict state control and contempt for trade. If you read the book of shang yang, it's basically just 'the wastelands must be cultivated' and 'don't let people do what they want, fancy silk clothing is not needed for fielding a gigantic army'. There's not much need for a dynamic private sector economy when you only need grain, swords, salt and horses in huge quantities. The state can handle that quite well with economies of scale alone and conscripted labour.
Only when you start needing hugely expensive ships, optics, cannons, advanced metallurgy and innovation does a private sector economy really start to shine.
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