Trade Barriers in the Eighteenth Century France

France was just as fractured economically as it was politically. Within the kingdom's borders, there were hundreds of arbitrary trade barriers. People starved to death while surplus grain rotted only a few miles away. No modern person with even a basic understanding of economics would design like this. The eighteenth century french system wasn't designed by economists through some rational process. They were totally arbitrary, cobbled together piecemeal over centuries.