{"id":2392,"date":"2016-05-13T10:20:50","date_gmt":"2016-05-13T17:20:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.privateinternetaccess.com\/blog\/?p=2392"},"modified":"2016-07-19T10:21:27","modified_gmt":"2016-07-19T17:21:27","slug":"1800s-free-enterprise-never-really-happened","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.privateinternetaccess.com\/blog\/1800s-free-enterprise-never-really-happened\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s the 1800s all over again: Free enterprise never really existed before now"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the years 1791 to about 1850, laws were passed that abolished trade guilds as the permission-givers to run a business. But as we speak of \u201cpermissionless innovation\u201d today, and see how these \u201cpermissionless\u201d businesses often violate old regulations, we realize that the requirement for a permit to run a business never went away: the government just seized the permission issuance for itself.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Before so-called free enterprise<\/em> laws, businesses were regulated by trade guilds. These were effectively industry associations (\u201cguilds\u201d) setting the rules for every business wanting to be part of a particular industry, and you had to adhere to the guild\u2019s rules, or you would not be allowed to run a business at all. This typically meant tightly controlled prices and competition within the guild, and businesses were typically what we would call artisan today \u2013 a single person or a small family of craftspeople.<\/p>\n

Spreading from the Chapelier Law<\/em><\/a> of the French Revolution in 1791, the trade guilds were stripped of all their power, and \u201cfree enterprise\u201d established \u2013 the freedom to run a business without asking permission to do so, freedom to compete freely, set your own prices, offer whatever service was attractive, et cetera. Or so people said, anyway. Specifically, so the government<\/em> said, the governments who passed these laws. The laws gradually spread through the then-Western world, having mostly completed the abolishment of trade guilds everywhere by 1850.<\/p>\n

This concept of \u201cfree enterprise\u201d meant that you no longer had to do as the trade guild commanded, hand over customers to competitors as per the guild\u2019s orders, charge per the guild\u2019s tariffs, et cetera. On the surface, it looks good. Indeed, business flourished.<\/p>\n

However, today, we can observe that \u201cpermissionless innovation\u201d exists, in the sense that it\u2019s a term that carries some sort of meaning. But if we don\u2019t need permission in the first place to run a business and invent and compete, according to these laws, how can it be a thing to run permissionlessly?<\/p>\n

Permissionless enterprise \u2013 free enterprise \u2013 was an illusion all along. You just needed somebody else\u2019s permission: the government\u2019s. Before you had it \u2013 have it \u2013 you\u2019re not allowed to run a business. The whole \u201cfree enterprise\u201d thing was an illusion all along.<\/p>\n

The examples of organizations that have run permissionlessly and run afoul of something are legio \u2013 from known brands like Uber and The Pirate Bay to many, many small startups that never got as known. The common factor is that they built something without asking permission, provided a useful and popular service to a lot of people, and were labeled criminals for it.<\/p>\n

What we can observe today is that we are still just as required to obtain permission to run a business as we were in the trade guild era. The effect of the \u201cfree enterprise\u201d laws passed from 1791 onward was primarily that we had to ask the government\u2019s permission for everything instead of the trade guild\u2019s.<\/strong><\/p>\n

So with people choosing to run \u201cpermissionlessly\u201d, we\u2019ve finally arrived at an era of free enterprise, something governments claimed we had established in 1850 through the Western world. But today, it\u2019s not free enterprise because we aren\u2019t asking trade guilds for permission (as opposed to governments); today, it\u2019s free enterprise because we\u2019re not asking permission at all<\/em> anymore. The difference is stark. Also, the governments are all up in arms about it.<\/p>\n

This matters a lot to privacy and the free Internet.<\/p>\n

When you\u2019re looking at governments today, their actions all over the world are to introduce censorship, bottlenecks, traceability, surveillance, messenger liability, as well as barriers to publication, anonymity, and private correspondence. Only the excuses differ. What people in general are therefore doing \u2013 must<\/em> be doing \u2013 is to protect the internet against governments. People are doing this in all forms: as private individuals, as informal networks, and as businesses.<\/p>\n

And obviously, you\u2019re not going to get the government\u2019s permission to protect the Internet against the government.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Therefore, we\u2019ve finally arrived at an era of the free enterprise. But we haven\u2019t done so with the help of legislators. In fact, legislators are going to fight actual free enterprise in the name of their permissioned so-called \u201cfree enterprise\u201d, which really just means a requirement to ask the government\u2019s permission.<\/p>\n

But as long as we don\u2019t do that, we can still stand up the NSA, the FRA, GCHQ, and all the others who are trying to destroy privacy and other liberties. And we need to do so without asking permission. For the first time, we really do have free enterprise, and it turns out to be vital for liberty.<\/p>\n

Privacy really is your own responsibility.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the years 1791 to about 1850, laws were passed that abolished trade guilds as the permission-givers to run a business. But as we speak of \u201cpermissionless innovation\u201d today, and see how these \u201cpermissionless\u201d businesses often violate old regulations, we realize that the requirement for a permit to run a business never went away: the … Continue reading “It’s the 1800s all over again: Free enterprise never really existed before now”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[206],"class_list":["post-2392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-internet"],"yoast_head":"\nIt's the 1800s all over again: Free enterprise never really existed before now<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In the years 1791 to about 1850, laws were passed that abolished trade guilds as the permission-givers to run a business. 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