Money and capital in the human ecology: Rethinking mercantilism and eighteenth-century France

In the language of human ecology as per Chapter 1, academic fields, as well as schools of thought within a field, are “belief systems,” i.e. “ways of organizing alleged truths and convictions.” Within economics, two of the most significant belief systems, historically, have been “mercantilism” and “neoclassical” framework. The “neoclassical” framework is now dominant in the economic profession, but the recent failure of the Doha round of trade talks shows that governments and economic leaders may actually believe in the “mercantilist” framework. Both are placeholders for heterogeneous school of thoughts that share some common ideas.