Liberal enterprise

Liberal enterprise was the aggregate of activities in the Edifice, originating in eastern Vasarea, that would enjoy some sort of particular advantage, privilege, or freedom so as to be free (līber) relative to and above the rest of society. This sphere of society nurtured many ideas and features that came to define Edificial civilization and its key pillars such as its laws, governments, and economy; it was turn influenced such that it was mainly associated with Arta and higher pursuits that gave it the importance to warrant its freedom. Those preoccupied with liberal enterprise, liberal entrepreneurs or often simply entrepreneurs, were one of the facets and components of the leading classes of the Edifice.

Liberal enterprise descended from cliobic privileges of the 'superior' order as established under the Rudic dynasties, by which they could freely impose their will on the 'inferior' order, or at least bypass the latter's ordinary dignities as independent social organizations. These licenses and exemptions evolved and were used such that entrepreneurs came to establish connections and conventions unfettered by old customary restrictions, such as a free market, standardized law, and networks uniting them as an interest dedicated to liberal enterprise itself. From the 11th century, eastern Vasarean states were strengthened in ways to secure the rights of liberal enterprise, and in turn the endeavors themselves were treated as instruments for a state redefined to surpass its diverse constituent orders and serve Arta. That the academies were the most capable institutions which the entrepreneurs utilized and congregated around would put into enterprises a strong identification with the visions of Instructionism. Many concepts of Edificial government fundamentally came from the theorization of liberal enterprise as a parallel and alternative organization to replace the archaic Vasarean state itself, and the co-optation of these ideas through measures such as the Tenure reform only deepend the conflicts surrounding implementing them in full.

As academies established themselves formally as supreme authorities in the Great Upclearing, liberal enterprise benefited from correspondingly entering the front-stage of society. Grants made in the name of liberal enterprise funded an economy that produced the industrial capitalism of the Reign of Gears, the adventurers that spearheaded the cause of the Edifice in the Silent Conquest and Vellikoppai's wars, and the intensified colonization of Eremia. But now that the worthiness of the state it served was established, the regulation and subordination of enterprise towards the state's goals became the main topic of discussion, and beginning with ordinalism many schools of thought considered it more as something to be kept in check for the sake of virtue and order. Entrepreneurship was still being carried vigorously by Universalists, and the early Aluarian-dominated Celitine system of the mid-15th century witnessed a highpoint where they seemed on the verge of abolishing individual states of the old paradigm. But the disagreements with this system became dominant, and after the Institution Crisis the Edificial world witnessed the assertion of ever-heavier regulations by centralizing governments, and by the time of the 16th-century crisis a smothering of any independent society-directing or Artic initiative altogether. Aspects of entrepreneurial culture did survive in the phenomenon of Protagonist plenipotentiaries among the combinates, where some exchange with curator culture took place.