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Trade, merchants, and the lost cities of the Bronze Age (2019) [pdf]

keremcosar.uvacreate.virginia.edu

31–40 of 84 posts

Re: Trade, merchants, and the lost cities of the Bronze Age (2019) [pdf]

#31
post #9

Should we be surprised that economics preceded economists?

As far I know economists are neither historians nor do they perform any management or business function. Considering how necessary economies are and how economists claim economists are unnecessary to run an economy, I wonder why economists even exist. The first thing a rational economist would do is tell the government to fire all economists and stop accrediting economics degrees.

> Considering how necessary economies are and how economists claim economists are unnecessary to run an economy, I wonder why economists even exist.

Biological processes are also 'necessary', and work just as well without biologists. Do you also wonder why Biologists exist?

Or more broadly, should we give up trying to understand processes and systems if they run without intervention?

Re: Trade, merchants, and the lost cities of the Bronze Age (2019) [pdf]

#33
Isn't this the underlying phenomena as to why free markets outperform managed markets. Because theoretically the controlled market can be much more efficient than the free market, you know, because people don't have to fight each other for their share of the market all the time. But they never are. Why? Because nobody has to understand the market for it to work, everybody just pushes and the market molds itself into the form it needs. Where a controlled market operates under the illusion that it can be understood.

Re: Trade, merchants, and the lost cities of the Bronze Age (2019) [pdf]

#34

So what’s a better form than the current capitalistic (?) model? Surely we would say the market is efficient, but at the same time it can’t be good for society that so much capital is localized with a few people (bezos, musk etc.). If the roots for capitalism or similar market economies are so old, what would be better for society?

The interesting part about saying the market is efficient is that currently, the market is headed for optimal extinction.

The better model has always been to treat money as a zero net worth system that cannot be used to carry value into the future at no cost because such an idea inherently contradicts the biological reality that human societies and their economies are built upon.

The consequences of using money as a "store of value" are so predictable and inevitable that I'm honestly tired of explaining it over and over again.

If you can carry money into the future but not the real physical equivalent it is the representative of, then the difference is a loss that is not yet reflected in the state of money. Your decision making will be suboptimal as a direct consequence.

This isn't something that can be swept under the rug or hand waved away.

It's no different than rust eating itself through your car. If you ignore the damage when it is small, the repair will be more expensive later on.

Meanwhile the economic model says, it is impossible for the condition of the car to get worse through a mere passage of time as that violates the idea of pure time preference theory and the idea of interest being a reward for abstaining from consumption. All of these are purely ideological wishful thinking. They basically claim that everything must get better through the passage of time and that rust doesn't exist.

Consider a society where rusting as a phenomenon was illegal to express. You would be allowed to talk about holes in the chassis but not be allowed to invent a primer or clear coat that effectively prevents rust since rust as a problem does not officially exist. Your attempt to avoid rust through economic expenditures would be considered value destruction, because it is inefficient use of resources.

Re: Trade, merchants, and the lost cities of the Bronze Age (2019) [pdf]

#36
This is a very interesting discovery. I'm fascinated by ancient economics. But...

>The full apparatus of commercial civilization, operating without a theorist in sight.

I don't get this framing. Who thinks that markets are a product of theory? Why does the author keep hammering this point?

In any case... there are lots of commercial/numerical tablets available. Most of them, I believe. And... the records go all the way back to the beginnings of Summerian proto-writing. Cuineform was used for records before it was used for prose.

My hunch is that many/most assyriologists are more interested in political history, myth and suchlike. There is probably a lot of room for researchers who want to work on the economics.

Re: Trade, merchants, and the lost cities of the Bronze Age (2019) [pdf]

#37

So what’s a better form than the current capitalistic (?) model? Surely we would say the market is efficient, but at the same time it can’t be good for society that so much capital is localized with a few people (bezos, musk etc.). If the roots for capitalism or similar market economies are so old, what would be better for society?

> but at the same time it can’t be good for society that so much capital is localized with a few people (bezos, musk etc.).

Besides the tendency to absolute oligarchy, there's the small matter of wholesale resource consumption and planet trashing.

Re: Trade, merchants, and the lost cities of the Bronze Age (2019) [pdf]

#39
post #2

It's interesting that commerce/business was this sophisticated in the Bronze Age. I guess it's not that surprising given the famous customer service complaint[0] cuneiform tablet to Ea-nāṣir about receiving the wrong grade of copper ingots and his servant receiving rude service. It's also no wonder that the thing a theory describes exists long before the theory itself. We had language well before we had grammarians,…

> The article weirdly makes a big deal out this.

Ctrl+F "This matters"; of course it's because it's LLM-generated BS which is designed to produce sensationalist slop. (There are about 30 other tells reinforcing this but this one seems to be in literally every single LLM-generated article produced by current models)

Re: Trade, merchants, and the lost cities of the Bronze Age (2019) [pdf]

#40
post #9

Should we be surprised that economics preceded economists?

As far I know economists are neither historians nor do they perform any management or business function. Considering how necessary economies are and how economists claim economists are unnecessary to run an economy, I wonder why economists even exist. The first thing a rational economist would do is tell the government to fire all economists and stop accrediting economics degrees.

Economists can be useful as observers, much like the Universe doesn't need astronomers or the weather doesn't need meteorologists.

>The first thing a rational economist would do is tell the government to fire all economists and stop accrediting economics degrees

Please elaborate.

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