• deft@lemmy.wtf
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    27 days ago

    …it depends who or what you’re talking about doesn’t it?

    Monarchism is pretty clear about what it is, support of a monarchy or basically a bloodline that rules the government. Conservative is a broad political outlook that depends entirely who or what topic or group you’re talking about. You can be a social conservative, you can be fiscally conservative, National conservative. None of those have anything to do with a monarchy.

    Mercantilists are literally not liberal at all. Mercantilism and Liberalism at a time were completely opposed to each other, you know laissez-faire capitalism and whatnot. Mercantilism is literally about government regulated trade where Classic Liberalism was about unregulated trade. A social liberal has basically nothing to do with Mercantilism. Then you have neoliberalism which is a rehash of classical Liberalism electric boogaloo style.

    Honestly China’s system is closer to being like mercantilism than the neoliberal governments today because of their focus on exports and heavy handed government intervention but you wouldn’t really call what they’re doing mercantilism.

    So it’s all pretty different. Words matter you know?

    • Talcosis@lemmy.zip
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      27 days ago

      Oh, no, no, no. There is a very specific thing that conservatives conserve. Its like the people that claim the US civil war was about “states rights”–states rights to do what?

      Conservatives are traditionally an explicitly monarchist party. They just didn’t call themselves monarchists, because the French were getting a bit choppy when it came to kings back then. Liberals were the anti-monarchists. Even now, modern conservatives all seek to implement some sort of hierarchical power structure, economic, social, whatever.

      Mercantilism is a rebuke of government controlled trade. Hence mercantilism–from merchant. Regular folks could become merchants and make fortunes that were not the purview of the crown.

      • deft@lemmy.wtf
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        27 days ago

        No they’re not. In some countries conservatives might embrace those ideas but that is not true across the board. I’d agree conservatives generally support power structure but claiming they’re monarchists just isn’t true. Conservatives in China for instance have absolutely nothing to do with a monarchy.

        Mercantilism is literally not a rebuke to government controlled trade. It is government controlled trade. Like you can literally Google this and read about it.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercantilism

        It was intended as a means for the crown to have even more control. It maximized wealth and authority of the central state which is why the term laissez faire came about. You’re literally mixing up a core belief of Liberalism with Mercantilism.