Interestingly, according to the definition of one of the founders of the Neo-Classical Economics "School", J. B. Clark, the "Dark Ages" would have been a veritable bee hive of economic activity! (See the last blockquote in the diary.)

Clark points out that wealth is created "from the mere appropriation of limited natural gifts .."and that repelling intruders "is almost the only form of labor which exists in the most primitive social state" (p.10). The atmosphere as a whole, showers or breezes, "minister transiently to whomsoever they will, and, in the long run, with impartiality". Therefore they are not wealth. Those who appropriate them create wealth by so doing. The essential attribute of wealth is "appropriability," to create which "the rights of property must be recognized and enforced Whoever makes, interprets, or enforces law produces wealth". He gives to commodities "the essential wealth-constituting attribute of appropriability". He goes on in that vein: those who seize land and exclude others thereby produce its value; George, who would untax capital, is guilty of ignoring its productive action.

So, Chris Cook, I call your "Total bollocks" and raise you with a "Total bollocks squared!"  We Americans must truly be a mongrel race of cretans to have let such a hilarious economic philosophy dominate our public life for more than a century.  Or will someone rise to J. B. Clark's defense?

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."