Who believed the best economic system was one in which businesses compete to gain profit with minnimal or no goverment control?

  Adam Smith

Scottish philosopher Adam Smith (1723-1790) was strongly critical of the economic system that prevailed in his era.  Smith criticized what he called the "mercantile system" because it restricted trade and thus restricted economic growth.  The mercantile system believed the wealth of the world was a fixed amount, measured primarily in gold and silver accumulated.  The system promoted a nation selling its products abroad but not needing to buy from others, or imposing heavy tariffs if importing anything.  Colonies were created to provide raw materials and resources to the mother country and a market for the mother country's products.  Commerce was heavily controlled by the government through charters granted to specific trading companies.

Adam Smith countered by advocating a free market -- the opportunity individual businessmen and for all nations to increase their wealth by exchanging goods freely with one another according to what would become known as capitalist principles.  We also speak of "laissez-faire" ("let go") as a term for this sort of free-market economy, set free from government controls.  This term came from a French group of thinkers called the Physiocrats (meaning "rule by nature') who were working during the same 18th century era as Smith. The Physiocrats and Smith were in agreement about getting government out of the business of controlling business.

to regulate production on things such as fuel and production

the committees of correspondence were the american colonies’ means for maintaining communication lines in the years before the revolutionary war. in 1764, boston formed the earliest committee of correspondence to encourage opposition to britain’s stiffening of customs enforcement and prohibition of american paper money. the following year, new york formed a similar committee to keep the other colonies notified of its actions in resisting the stamp act. in 1773, the virginia house of burgesses proposed that each colonial legislature appoint a committee for intercolonial correspondence. the exchanges that followed built solidarity during the turbulent times and bring about the formation of the first continental congress in 1774.