Homework Assignment 1 gives you a chance to compare the textbook economics with some alternative points of view. Your assignment asks you to compare Utilitarian economics with some alternative points of view. Here are some additional notes on some alternative social-ethical viewpoints. The Mercantilists evaluated material wealth collectively-from the point of view of the sovereign. Often power and material wealth were measured by the amount of gold in the state treasury.
Gold represents the capacity to obtain the material requisites.
Today this mercantilist view remains very significant in evaluation of economic alternatives-especially in issues of trade, industrial location, and resource exploitation. A Mercantilist view stresses increasing the activities of the economy which generates jobs and material wealth for the community. In this view it is presumably better to be poor and free than rich and burdened by rules and constraints. The economic goal should be to enlarge liberty. This view is non-consequentialist or mixed.