Excerpt from :

...... A third interesting factor of early economies is the goal of self-sufficiency that individuals had. Large amounts of wealth were not really attainable, and the basic goal of the time was to have everything you needed. This was the definition of success, whereas poverty meant you were dependent on someone else, not just underprivileged. This leads to a fourth point Polanyi makes, specifically about kinship-organized societies. These groups especially tended to have little extraneous wealth, so there were very few exchanges that actually changed economic status. Such exchanges almost always marked major occasions, like proposals and/or weddings. The principles of exchange in these times were either utilitarian or symbolic, and not part of the gray area they occupy today
3) The Balance of Trade period of mercantilism was a long-running and concentrated effort made by the major governments of the world to protect their own economic interests and those of their citizen merchants. In fact, at this time it was thought that whatever was good for an individual merchant was also good for the nation. Different policies were employed that had different ways of balancing trade and increasing profits, with different effects on the economy both for the merchants

Need this essay? If it's not quite what you're looking for there are over 50,000 more to search from, so you can find the term paper or essay that meets your needs.