3. Feudalism
• Aristocrats control the property rights to all valuable
resources, including people.
• Laborers began to receive more rights and rewards.
• The system of tenant farming evolved.
• The Hundred Years War,was fought in England.
4. Mercantilism
• Products are traded across markets and countries
• Merchants are traders who notice a difference
between the value and price of a product in
onemarket and its value and price in another.
• From the time of the Phoenician traders onwards,
there was a great deal of mercantilism between
countries in the Middle East and Europe.
5. Capitalism
• Private property rights the basis for the production,
trade, and distribution of goods and services.
• Capitalist has many negative overtones because of
industrialists like Rockefeller and Carnegie.
• Proletariat, the vast, faceless mass of laborers who
worked for subsistence wages.
• Trade unions and class systems developed.
6. Commerce
• The hierarchy of authority evolved early to reduce
the transaction costs surrounding business activity.
• The joint-stock corporation evolved to make it easier
for enterprising peopleto borrow capital.
• Barter system led to a problem economists call the
double coincidence of wants arises.
7. Property Rights
• The claims by people to own, use, and sell the rights
to valuable resources.
• In earliest times, the claim to property rights was a
matter of brute force.
• Aristocrats had the incentive to enterprise ways to
use the estates’ land and labor more profitably and
increase their personal wealth and power.
8. The Industrial Revolution
• The emergence of the steam engine was a crucial
event.
• The development of coal mining.
• Affected both farming and manufacturing and led to
a dramatic increase in the wealth and prosperity.
• Constant wars isolated peoplemaking it difficult for
them to learn about new innovations.
9. Conclusion
• Business systems evolved from earliest times to
feudalism, mercantilism, and then to capitalism.
• People organized themselves into business systems
to take control of productive resources and use them
to create capital and wealth.
• The way business as commerce, occupation, and
organization evolved to allow land, labor, capital,
and enterprise to be used more productively and
profitably.
10. References
• Jones, G. R. (2007). Introduction to business: How
companies create value for people. New York,
NY: McGraw-Hill/Irwin
