PASSING FROM MERCANTILISM TO PHYSIOCRACY

LUISA ESCOBAR P.

It is well known that history's biggest ruptures have also been humanity's mayor advances, now, diving into economic matter we could say one of the biggest ruptures we have knowledge of is the fact of passing from a mercantilist way of conceiving economy to a physiocratic way. Though this rupture is not as meaningful as others it is very important due to the changes that this current manages to propose.

When we start a voyage from the past to the present of economic currents we start to discover how these have been born, what impact they have caused into society and as my self i think it is wonderfull to find so many brilliant minds. For me, an economy student of 2015 it is almost an existential question wondering how people like Fraçois Quesnay had the imagination and the brightness to go beyond what was known to the time furthermore to discover and create what we could call a theory of wealth circulation, theory better known as the Tableau Economique.

Moreover when we speak about physiocrats we can't only mention the Tableau Economique but also we have the need to mention the change from considering that the amount of precious metals you have represent your wealth to the actual creation of what we could call money, this fact leading to not only a clearer sight of the quantity theory of money due to the possibility of distinguishing money from wealth but also a sharper point of view to the division of social classes and the way these interact, economically speaking.

We can also mention as a physiocratic input to the economy the fact of proposing that consuming less would not increase wealth, yet producing more the wealth would in fact increase. As part of this current we must metion that physiocrats' proposed as a economic policy the none ecnomic policy, this making reference to the fact that the market would regulate itself and there was no need of a state intervention, "laissez faire, laissez passer".

For me as an economy student, each time i get to know a new way of how economy has been conceived starting from the past and heading to the present is actually the reason of so many more questions than the ones i already have.

Physiocracy being one of the first well developed economic theories was proposed over at the eighteenth century as a forerunner to the first modern economic current known as classical economics, this current starting over at the second half of the eighteenth century with Adam Smith and his publication The Wealth of Nations.