Isn&#x27;t unrestrained profit seeking what modernity is all about? Pre-modern societies had all sorts of customary&#x2F;institutional restraints on profit seeking.<p>* The classical Greek had their notions of temperance<p>* Romans had the notion that a proper aristocrat needs to own an agricultural estate, idea of civil virtues (these cost a lot of money) and that one has to spend the money on a huge estate with a court of slaves (familia urbana)<p>* China had their Imperial bureaucracy<p>* the European middle ages had corporatism&#x2F;guilds in the cities<p>Once these restraints were gone we entered modernity.<p>(here is an article why China didn&#x27;t do modernity, despite having had all the big inventions that supposedly brought us capitalism - like the printing press, gun powder, paper money, big advances in materials, a fleet that discovered America. The authors say the structure of institutions was restraining entrepreneurship and progress :<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amphilsoc.org&#x2F;sites&#x2F;default&#x2F;files&#x2F;proceedings&#x2F;1570101.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amphilsoc.org&#x2F;sites&#x2F;default&#x2F;files&#x2F;proceedings&#x2F;157...</a>