Have you ever read Hans-Hermann Hoppe? Your thesis reminds me of his writings.
Okay, the old kingdoms were relative to modern democracies more like businesses. Unlike a president who serves for four or eight years at most the state is the king or prince’s private property. They take care of it their entire lives and attempt to pass it on intact or enlarged to their offspring. They are infinitely less likely to squander the nation’s wealth as compared to the governments which merely stand in for the people. Not that they could squander it had they wished, given their limited control over the nobility.
I balk at calling the Spanish empire small, if a business at all. It was a multinational conglomerate if anything. But let us drop the analogy. It was only a businesslike relative to other forms of government. There remains a fundamental distinction between the political means of enrichment and the economic means. If the king’s relationship with his lords was quasi-voluntary and akin to private citizens now buying security guards or P.I.s, in the very least its rival England was not like a competitor for marketshare. Coca Cola does not send people over to slit Pepsin employees’ throats (or at least not on such a scale).
I don’t doubt that trade was involved, nor that Spain lost money. But trade war is war, and investing in implements of killing is not a business investment. It is a war investment. Do not let the interrelations of economy and warfare blind you to the difference between trading and killing.
By the way, I don’t deny that the English victory was thanks to English virtues in addition to bad Spanish luck. Only the single instance shouldn’t settle the armada’s usefulness for all time.
I don’t completely disagree. You can’t compare apples to apples in this case. Throw it out if you wish, but I still think the thread’s article is short sighted as it only relates to American companies in the last 30 years. Capitalism is a relatively recent phenomenon in it’s current form so you may be hard pressed to find any examples of companies making bad business decisions before say 1850, but that does not mean bad decisions weren’t made. There was always some form of a marketplace, but the actual decisions were made by nobility, govenment, and church. Merchants and traders existed and worked the free market, but did so as individuals and not as companies and could only amass so much wealth before their lords would confiscate. Manufacturing and services existed, but weren’t competed, but instead ordered from a guild with preset wages.
In regard to sovereign purse strings, you might find this Otto Von Habsburg article interesting.
http://erhj.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/dr-otto-von-habsburg-monarchy-vs.html