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Date: | Fri Mar 31 17:18:55 2006 |
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----------------- HES POSTING -----------------
The expression "robber barons" is used for American business
men of the turn of the century by unfriendly critics. The term was
taken from medieval Europe, when the dukes and counts refused to
submit any feudal obligation to the king, administered and taxed
their own regions independently, and frequently looted merchant
caravans that passed under the walks of their castle. The US
political and economic commentator Matthew Josephson, in 1934,
used this term instead of the more friendly "captain of industry", in
order to stress the idea "that their wealth was in no sense of their
own creation, but was like a tax levied upon the productive workers
and craftsmen of the American economy" ("Robber Barons", by J.
Bradford DeLong, 1998). The expression, and the meaning, has
been since then important to popular economics and also to how
theoretical economist think about the entrepreneur. But what
happened to this expression during so many centuries?
Manuel Santos
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